He has run the marathon alright. With his second book, The Solitude of Emperors, David Davidar, better known as the Penguin guy, is very much in the race. The book set in the backdrop of the Mumbai riots and its aftermath, cleverly weaves in the lives of everyday people with the greats like Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhi.

“After I finished The House of Blue Mangoes, I did not have a thought in my head. And about two years ago, I realised I’ve always wanted to write about the Bombay riots. Initially it started in Meham (in the book) with this bunch of old men, the brigadier and the fuschia growers. I thought what would happen in this isolated place if there was a communal instance. What would a bunch of old people do. And then Noah came along and Vijay came along and Mr Sorabjee came along,” he says in a chat with Sunday Herald.
Excerpts.

Your three emperors — Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhi — of renunciation, faith and truth respectively, besides being secular, are all believers. Does that mean to engage with communal forces one needs to be religious?
Absolutely right. That was what I started with. I was just thinking most of us, hopefully sensible people, are secular. But why don’t the most hardened secularists make much headway with the fundamentalist. Because there is no common meeting ground.

The one thing when I did my research was I found that Ashoka, Akbar and Gandhi, all of them were men of deep faith. Totally secular. Inclusive more like. That was so fascinating. That gave me my entry into the subject.

The reason you picked these particular three...

I was looking at pretty much every age. There were many, many examples. And I had some terrific referees, including Ramchandra Guha who seemed to think these were the right choices. I mean every Indian knows these three. But how many know about them? I was also focussing on their religious life and how they tackled religion.
These guys were head and shoulders above many of the people of their time.

...and the communal theme?
Because of what happened in Bombay. Because Bombay is one of my favourite cities as well. I’ve always wanted to write about it. Wanted to see what I could do. Frankly most of us are powerless to do anything about anything except our lives perhaps. So the kind of reaction to that feeling is to be passive. But somewhere we need to take a stand. The media has been brilliant in the way it has tackled the subject. But I felt fiction might have a way of making the point differently.

Noah is the emperor of everyday...
...and godless. What I was trying to do — and which is why I created Meham — was I wanted to see the interplay between three people: a man of god (Rajan); a man without God (Noah) and a man, sort of in-between person, idealistic, confused (which is Vijay). And I wanted to set them in a backdrop of religious violence and see what happens. I did not know how the book was going to end. I was happy to have found the characters, happy to have found the situation. And then the narrative took over.

You talk about the revenge of the dispossessed...
Once I was talking to this historian Niall Ferguson, who teaches at Harvard. He is writing about the Third Reich and other instances of genocide. He says that it is normally believed that when a country is on its knees, that people turn on one another. It’s not true. He said it is economic volatility that is the fertile ground for exploitation.
Where do people like Sorabjee, who are inspiration to many, get their strength from?
From deep personal convictions, I think. Some of us are made differently. I started my career with this magazine called Himmat with people like Raj Mohan Gandhi and Kalpana Sharma. They are such extraordinary people. I was 20 something. It was pure luck that I fell in with this lot. Otherwise I would have aimlessly wandered around, doing drugs.

They stayed the course. They continued to engage. Sorabjee comes from that. Fortunately such people exist in this world.

Now that you’ve come out with your second book, have the criticisms stopped?
No. It will never stop. I can’t stop being who I am. This is a stick that can be used to beat me to no avail. But at the end of the day, I do not decide the fate of every writer in the country. Besides hopefully I am professional enough to not bother about what people say about my writing. These are two separate compartments.

Did the publisher’s eye pose a threat to your writer’s spontaneity?
I tried very hard and largely succeeded in keeping the two separate. If I had thought about it as a publisher I doubt whether I would have written a single word. Because I know what the pitfalls can be. Some books succeed beyond expectation some books fail...if I sat there trying to figure out the odds I would not have written a single word.

You speak of the ‘kick’ — the moment — in the book. When did your kick come?
When I turned 30. I thought I should do something different with my life. I figured I would never be able to run 100 meters in 9.8 seconds; I could not play tennis like Pete Sampras; I boxed in school, but there was fear of injury. So I thought let me do something that I am capable of, and that was to write a book...which went nowhere. Also at that point of time I was going around with somebody who was literarily inclined. Was I trying to impress her? And then all these were wrong reasons to write.

It took me 10 years to finish The House of Blue Mangoes. Then as I was approaching 40 — I remembered a conversation I had with Vikram Seth soon after he published A Suitable Boy ; he said if you ever want to write I’ll have a look. So I wrote this 200 pages and sent it off to him thinking if he likes it I’ll continue otherwise abandon it quietly.

Publishing scene in Canada...
...is totally different. There are different challenges. Unlike India which is a fast growing market etc, Canada is a mature market. So your publishing needs to be very innovative to make your books work. It’s a totally new kind of experience. I am an experience junkie. I get bored very easily. But yeah, I am very fulfilled at this point.