"I was devastated at first—the reviews have been so personal and vindictive. Arundhati Roy warned me about it, but I didn’t expect it would get this vituperative, violent and vindictive. It’s envy, I think, disguised as a review. I’ve always threatened the coffeeshop reporters by my way of doing things, right from the start of my career, and now they are taking potshots at me, these people who disguise professional jealousy as reviews.
"Of course I am familiar with the bitching that goes on here, it’s been happening to me all my professional life. When I first started out in journalism, for example, colleagues used to put me down, saying I was too nice, I didn’t have the killer instinct, and if I refused to attack people, how would anyone read my boring stuff?
"Then in 1983, when I was doing the Sri Lanka stories, they started their character assassination, only because I was exposing the armchair reporters by my field reporting. Oh, she’s a woman and charms her way to high places, they said behind my back. I think people felt threatened. But I decided then that there are only two ways of dealing with it: spend your energy attacking your detractors, or save it for building yourself up. Then it never bothered me what people said about me, that I’d be relegated to the dustbin of Indian journalism by joining Time. I proved them wrong.
"And now again they are at it, tearing my book to pieces just because it is not a conventional reporter’s diary or a history textbook. That was not my intention, it is a very personalised account of an ordinary person in extraordinary places. I wanted readers to identify with me—that I was exactly like them—and then take them with me to witness the horrors of war. This is not a history text or literature. All I wanted to say is: please appreciate the normalcy of your life. You’ve no clue to how lucky you are till you lose it."