REFLECTING CHANGE

Seth said he was not out to portray any particular passages of India's post-independence history, but only those that were relevant to his characters.

He did, however, expect A Suitable Girl to reflect changes he had seen in his native country.

"The last election that we had ... there was a pretty clear indication that people were not going to be, in spite of what happened in Bombay recently, led by people who were jingoistic or anti-Muslim, so that really helps."

"Now with the judgment, for example, that came out this morning by the Delhi High Court, again one can see how ... the climate of opinion has changed.

"Many things have changed in India and many things have remained the same and that's going to be part of the fascination of writing this book."

On Thursday the Delhi High Court ruled that gay sex was not a crime, bolstering demands that the government scrap a British colonial law which bans homosexual sex.

Seth, who reportedly received a seven-figure advanced fee for family memoir "Two Lives", declined to discuss how much he was paid by Penguin, which has published him in India before.

"Money isn't the motivation," he said. "I certainly fight hard for it because I want to make a living and I don't have patrons ... but I spend most of my time writing poetry, for example, and there is nothing less remunerative."

A Suitable Boy took Seth 10 years to complete, including planning, publicising "and recovering", but he was confident he could meet the target date of 2013 with A Suitable Girl.

... contd.