He is back in mumbai, this time for the 2006 Crossword Book Awards. The last time he was giving interviews at large, he was promoting his book Sacred Games in Mumbai. This time, he’s fresh from a favourable response from a large section of the western press, and signing off translatations in several languages, including Dutch and German, with the Italian version due to be out next month.

There is a more relaxed air to him now. “Right now, I have given myself the permission to read what I want and watch a lot of films and television,” begins Vikram Chandra. “I recently finished reading a superb novel called The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea based on the true-life story of his great-Aunt Teresa, who was born out of wedlock to a 14-year-old Indian girl and a rich rancher.” And well, that too “evokes the turbulent, violent decades of the late 19th century in Mexico” just as Sacred Games mirrors Mumbai’s turbulent bloody date with the underworld in the recent past.

Among the reviews was an enthusiastic Kevin Rushby writing in The Guardian: “I was grateful (to Chandra) for my full-blooded lesson in Hindi curses. All are brilliantly embedded so that every meaning is clear, a remarkable achievement.” Says Chandra of the excercise in unadulterated abuse: “It was great fun doing it.” He adds: “Isn’t it true that while learning a foreign language or visiting some foreign place, the first words that you learn are the bad words?” Chandra had resisted the limited glossary that accompanies the book’s US version (it’s not in the UK and Indian versions) after his American publishers insisted on it.

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