Anita Desai — Indian Novelist born on June 24, 1937,

Anita Mazumdar Desai is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times; she received a Sahitya Academy Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Academy, India's National Academy of Letters; she won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea... (wikipedia)

Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.
Many characters in the novel are representative of types that exist in India. He represents the caste system in India with an air of superiority, the caste system in India and the people thinking that western things are better.
The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past - I felt I was digging a tunnel back to the past.
Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.
My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.