Megha Majumdar

And he is this, you know, ordinary man who finds that his students are always trying to get out of gym class.

They don't really respect him.

And he feels that he's not having the kind of vigorous impact on the nation through his work as a teacher that he might have hoped for.

And he also feels himself a tiny bit alienated from the other teachers, a little bit removed from his students.

And because of this place of alienation and place of a little bit of jiltedness,

he becomes drawn to the workings of this right-wing political party.

social media is so much a part of the current reality of India.

I think India has the most number of Facebook users in the world.

So there's a huge population that is just now gaining access to the internet and to social media through these inexpensive smartphones and phone plans.

And I wanted to include that reality.

And I also wanted to challenge this idea that

social media or the internet can be any kind of free terrain because I think for some people who are vulnerable in particular ways in their real life, those vulnerabilities carry over onto social media.

Not everybody is free to speak their mind.

Some people can get in big trouble for doing so.

And I wanted to see how this person who sees herself moving up into the middle class is enjoying her new smartphone is still caught up in this web where she doesn't realize that she is not free to make jokes and she's not free to write skeptical statements in the way that other people might be.

That is such a perceptive read.

I think you're right that in many ways the book is about

who has the power to tell their own story, who is believed when they tell their own story, and who has to struggle and push back against a narrative that is put on them.

Jeevan, the central character, is somebody who, like you said, gets in big trouble with the justice system.

And part of it is that