They have different demands: for me, poetry requires more space to write. By space, I mean a slower pace of reading, writing, thinking, living, as well as elbow space around oneself. I cannot combine it with my academic routine. Fiction is easier to manage to write – though it demands space too – along with other kinds of work and language-uses.

One cannot choose between one’s children, can one? But I consider works that I published before (roughly speaking) the year 2000 to have been part of my learning process, and I have no real desire to see them re-published. Of course, one continues to learn, but perhaps less obviously once one has gone through an early and necessary phase of ‘finding one’s voice,’ as they call it (and I cannot find any other way of putting it).

It is basically the second part of my engagement with the convoluted matters of Islam, Islamism, terrorism, islamophobia and global politics today, which, given my background, I could not ignore. The first part was the largely humorous novel, set in Denmark, ‘How To Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position.’ It basically featured three men, two from Muslim backgrounds and the third from a Hindu one, and the way they see each other and are seen by Europeans, particularly Danes. But that left me with the matter of Muslim women, their perception and self-perceptions, and I think ‘Just Another Jihadi Jane’ grew out of the need to engage with that. It also turned out to be a very different kind of novel, inevitably.

Depends on the book, but generally I write when I have sufficient time and peace of mind, then I get interrupted, then, when life allows, I go back and revise and write a bit more, and one day the manuscript gets done… or abandoned. I spend anywhere between six months to two years revising and editing a ‘completed’ manuscript.

No. I do not get as much time to write as many ‘full-time’ writers. I have a day job, a demanding one: an academic job where I get no recognition or support from my university or managerial colleagues for my creative writing. So I have ideas building up, bottled up, and when I can finally sit down and write, there is no time to agonize over the writing process and develop such largely privileged neuroses as writer’s block.

This is difficult. If you asked me a year ago, I would probably have two or three different names in the list, and I guess that will be the case a year from now too. One relates to good writers in different ways, depending on one’s own situation and writing, so the list can keep changing. But, at the moment, I would say: Shakespeare, Emily Brönte, Ghalib, Italo Svevo, Ismat Chughtai.

I hate weekends, unless I am doing something with my children. I particularly hate Sundays.

Sheer Chai (a traditional kind of sweet masala tea). But a good thick lassi comes close too.