Influences

• Salman Rushdie
  
  Maxine Hong Kingston
  
  Chand Bardai
  
  Meerabai

Favorite Books

• A tough one this: Dante is a start! He's my personal guru!
  Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children completely set my imagination afire as a teenager. After that one, I love his Satanic Verses and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, especially the latter.
  I love all of Yashpal's novels but Teri, Meri, Uski Baat (Your, My and Their Story) is definitely the favourite.
  The most difficult book I have ever read must be Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversations in the Cathedral but totally worth the slog.
  Other than that, I love Harry Potter's impeccable plotting and much of Lord of the Rings. I love the philosophical sophistication that Phillip Pullman brings to His Dark Materials Trilogy.
  Jostein Gaarder's Solitaire Mystery makes me smile every time.
  Arkady Gaidar's Timur and His Gang still makes me laugh and cry.
  Beyond that, the list is endless.....

Favorite Authors

• A tough one this: Dante's Divine Comedy is a start! He's my personal guru! Then there is Chand Bardoi, the medieval Indian poet. Meerabai, an Indian woman poet from the 16th century, is an inspiration and often my muse.

  Salman Rushdie taught me that English could be my language, that I could think and imagine in Hindi and stretch English to express myself.

  Again the list would be endless and crosses over to some of the writers mentioned in the books list. But here are some special ones: PG Wodehouse makes me laugh even at the point of despair; Georgette Heyer reminds me that romantic heroines need not be spineless; Louis L'Amour and JT Edson showed me the importance keeping the language simple and yet evocative. Alastair Mclean and Jack Higgins taught me to pay attention to pace and speed.

What I'm Reading

• American Gods, The Nightwatch/Daywatch books, The Arthashastra by Chanakya.

Web Links

• Sunny Singh Online
• Sunny's Blog
• Blogging the Arthashastra