The Indian-Irish poet on the Mahabharata retelling that inspired her to write, Arundhati Roy’s courage, and the poetry of Lucille Clifton
My earliest reading memory
My father was a sailor and my mother a teacher. They were both voracious readers. I was lucky enough to come from a home full of books and when we joined my father out at sea for extended periods of time, my mother carried plenty of books for me to read. I remember sitting by the porthole in our cabin, looking out at the sea on a sunny day, the ship moving calmly through the waters. I was reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, a book that still feels like a dream. I was four years old.
My favourite book growing up
There were so many, but when I was a child experiencing the death of my great-grandmother, a maternal figure who I adored, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende became the most essential read for me. I must have read that book a hundred times. I also loved the Winnie-the-Pooh books, Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree series, the Panchatantra tales, Malgudi Days by RK Narayan and the Asterix comics by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo.