Q. What prompted you to enter into an uncharted territory? Why, according to you, has no Indian male author ventured into erotic fiction until now?
A. It started out as a conversation around the lack of good erotic fiction in India, especially given the success of EL James and Sylvia Day. I was asked by my publisher if I’d like to write a novel and I accepted. It wasn’t a question that came out of the blue — my colleagues knew that I had written short erotic pieces before. Yes, we did know that this was uncharted territory. I think Indian fiction either takes itself too seriously, or has always played safe. It’s a very thin line between good writing and bad, further discouraged by awards for bad sex writing. It could also be cultural, it’s hard to tell.

Q. You belong to the publishing world; so weren’t you tempted to base your story in it as well? Or was the challenge more in dabbling with another area/profession?
A. Now that you ask, no, I wasn’t ever tempted to base the story in publishing (though if one were to write one, the possibilities are limitless). And yes, I believed that setting the story within an unknown world would help the narrative breathe and let me take some liberties. The protagonist is a photographer, and that is one thing I know something about, though I’ve used it only as a context and the book is not about photography in any way.