India, April 11 -- 1Your characters feel the ripple effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Can you tell us how you view the elasticity of time, and how understanding is shaped in hindsight, with such events? I wasn't present at the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I was an engineering student in Budapest - so, behind the Iron Curtain. I have been looking back a lot lately... I'm at a time in my life when looking back has helped me understand a lot of things. This way of making meaning from past events reflects what I have grown to understand as the adverse experiences of my childhood, how the past continues into the present; that elasticity of time you mention. This understanding feeds into my writing - not necessarily into the plot, but into its themes and sensibility, and into the very different perspectives people can have of the same, shared events. 2You also explore shame in the novel. I didn't consciously think about shame when I was writing the novel, but you can't come from my generation of women, brought up in a Keralite Syrian Catholic family, without absorbing vast amounts of shame. You've made me consider this a bit more deeply than I want to! Growing up, I was made to feel ashamed for many things I had no control over: being short; being a gauche, pimply teenager; for any imperfections in my Malayalam. As an adult, it was the choices-not-choices I made: not pursuing an engineering career (and the world is a safer place for it), not having an arranged marriage, working and living all over the world. I suppose there must be something of this in my writing. But what I also hope comes out in it is forgiveness and strength. I am a survivor above anything else. 3You've noted how life is a mix of circumstances and chance encounters. An event like the fall of the Berlin Wall represents immense possibility, and people in the novel mull over what-if scenarios. Were you, in a way, sharing alternative histories through these characters? I believe we need to acknowledge our successes with humility. Very often, it is only by chance or a stroke of luck that something else didn't happen; that we didn't end up somewhere else. Much like being longlisted for the Women's Prize. If you really think about it. masses and masses of luck involved! 4Music is invoked at crucial moments in the novel too. It is a source of energy to me, and a source of solace. My father had a beautiful singing voice; he was often compared to Yesudas. And I married a man with a beautiful singing voice... so, in that way at least, I am a cliche. My husband encouraged me to pick up the guitar again and we now have a band. It helps with the empty nest, as well as the ups and downs of a literary career....