At the end of a recent interview, I couldn’t help but ask the charming author of the Booker-nominated Sea of Poppies a filmi question:

I noticed where, in Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times,  in the piece “The Ghat of the Only World” Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn, you mentioned you both shared an attachment to old Bombay films.   What were some of your favorites?

The films we used to talk about were the “˜70s films like Aradhana and Padosan and films like those.

Do you watch much film from India nowadays?

I do sometimes.   Usually now I watch films on planes, and sometimes they’re lovely.   I think what Bollywood does really well are young love films.   I think that’s its great forte.   They’re doing a lot of those, some really nice ones.   I saw Jab We Met, which I really enjoyed.