She certainly isn't the first runner in the race to save the Narmada Valley's inhabitants from submergence. But the Booker-winning author's entry onto a stage shared by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has been accompanied by the attendant glare that a Medha Patkar or a Baba Amte haven't got in the long years they have been struggling against the dam. But, sitting on the Cricket Club of India end of the Wankhede stadium before attending a function to release her essay in book form, Roy reasons out why she threw in her writing skills, time andopinion with the movement.

``I just knew that hundreds and thousands of people were going to be submerged to supply the water to somebody else. Even before I found out what the issue was all about, I knew that it lay on the faultline, that the debate would crystallise... That debate leads to the Narmada, where it is happening on a Stalinist scale,'' she says.

It also led to the Greater Common Good, a typically Roysian polemic on what the valley residents - mostly Dalits and tribals can expect if the dam height is raised. A Supreme Court ruling in February this year permitted rising the dam height from 81.5 to 85 metres with three additional humps. This, says the NBA, will result in the submergence of an additional 2,500 tribal families in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

``When the Supreme Court lifted the stay, it was like an emergency,'' exclaims Roy. When I arrived on the banks of the Narmada in late March 1999, it was a month after the Supreme Court had suddenly vacated the stayon construction work of the Sardar Sarovar dam. I had read pretty much everything I could lay my hands on hands on (all those secret Government documents)... The story played itself out like a tragic film whose actors I'd already met..., reads her essay. Published in Outlook and Frontline magazines, the piece is still raking in wah-wahs as well as blistering who-does-she-think-she-is rebuttals.

``There could be nobody who could have more reason to not get into this issue than I,'' muses Roy. ``But the more I read on the dam, the more I realised that the information has been compartmentalised. Nobody was drawing the strings together. But then, that's what writers are for.''

Roy is only among the few English language writers of her generation who has stuck her neck out on as divisive an issue as the Narmada Valley project. In the past too, she took on Shekhar Kapur head-on for Bandit Queen with the The Great Indian Rape Trick, parts I and II. And GOST wasfollowed by the End of Imagination, an impassioned plea against nuclear weapons.

``Sadly, a lot of writers don't live here, so it's difficult for them to interfere,'' says Roy. ``But I've been part of all this. I could very easily live in the Bahamas, or Paradise. But I'm too invested in this society and its argument.''

She continues: ``Civil society has abdicated the political arena to the politicians. But you don't have to be a politician to reclaim that space, you just have to do what you can do. Writing is about making yourself vulnerable, about being able to take responsibility. In some way, I'm doing the opposite of what nuclear bombs do: I'm binding people.'' In keeping with that, she exhorts all who come to readings of the essay to `just visit the Valley once and see for yourselves, what's happening'. Roy will also join A `Rally for the Valley', which will converge in the valley on July 30.

Yet, the writer who grew up on the banks of the river Ayemenem in Kerala says she's no activist,but is only using the space GOST has gifted her. ``I could never be an activist or a leader, because I walk alone. But Medha's there in the valley right now, on a hunger strike. She can do that, and I can do this,'' she points out. The royalties from the Narmada essay will also go to the NBA.

There are detractors who dismiss Roy's politics as her attempt to get her yearly fix of the limelight. Says an unfazed Roy, her book, her essays, are all woven around the same philosophy. ``It's ultimately a battle for a worldview. In any case, I don't need anything from anybody.''