Daily News & Analysis
I see the world through the lens of being Indian: Kiran Desai IANS Thursday, October 12, 2006 14:37 IST
LONDON: Man Booker winner Kiran Desai has lived in the United States for many years but continues to retain her Indian passport as she is not sure she would really want to surrender her Indian citizenship.
"Now I could become an American citizen, but then George Bush won and I've just been unable to bring myself to do so. But again that's silly because of course I pay taxes there and don't vote, so it's hypocritical in a way, but it held me back. I feel less like doing it (surrendering Indian citizenship) every year because I realise that I see everything through the lens of being Indian. It's not something that has gone away - it's something that has become stronger," she said.
"As I've got older, I have realised that I can't really write without that perspective."
Desai won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction on Tuesday night for her second book 'The Inheritance of Loss.
Speaking to The Guardian on Thursday, she said that it was only when she began writing about the immigrant experience in New York that she realised she would have to return to India.
"And then, of course, I find myself at a disadvantage because India has changed, moved on. I go every year, yet it belongs to Indian authors living in India. The subject belongs to them. So the only way I could put this book together was to go back to the India of the 1980s, when I left," she said.
Desai has been celebrating since Tuesday night, but said she would have liked to be in India that day. "I would like to be in India because they care for the Booker so much. Sometimes it means something in America and sometimes it doesn't. It would have been a lot of fun to be in Delhi, with lots of family and all the generations."
After her name was announced at the awards dinner at the Guildhall, she said: "I didn't sleep at all. I drank lots of champagne and then tried to sleep for three or four hours and didn't manage to."
She said her phone was "full of messages from three continents" and she has yet to even speak to her parents.