‘I Don’t Believe There Are Only Two Genders. I See Gender As A Spectrum And I’m Somewhere On... Arundhati Roy on what shaped her, what moves her, and what gets her to start writing.

'Why are women involved? Because, broadly speaking, they are under attack from both ends, from tradition as well as this new market-driven "modernity". I myself grew up in Kerala, dreaming of escape from a life of 'tradition' but then came up against a type of modernity that I wanted to flee from too. So you have to pick through it all and find your own path. In this country we have people who practise female infanticide, female foeticide in which millions of girl children are killed—and not only in traditional rural communities—we have honour killings based on caste, and at the same time we have the freest, strongest, most vibrant women anywhere in the world, the most independent and radical women, original thinkers who are on the frontlines of struggles—in India, we live in several centuries simultaneously.'