In a recent interview, you spoke of asking a senior policeman in Mumbai if there was such a thing as a clean policeman, and him replying 'If he's clean, he's not very efficient.' Did that come as a bit of a shock -- that crime in Mumbai is an accepted, acceptable part of life?
Part of policing anywhere involves exchanges with people who are on the other side. It becomes a matter of exchanging information, favours, etc and there are certain lesser evils you let exist. That is why it is such an ambiguous job.
What does frighten and make me angry is the level of straightforward corruption that, I think, is not confined to the police in India. It's everywhere. The frankness with which people engage in it filters into the social realm.
In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, if you have a son who works as an engineer in the Public Works Department, it's almost as if there's a price set on him. It is expected that he will make a certain amount of money, budgets are built so everyone gets a cut, his dowry is arranged on that basis. It is something that surrounds us so obviously.
You have managed to filter out a lot of that rage against the system in Sacred Games, where you are more matter-of-fact.
When you are writing, you want to tell it from the characters' point of view. You want to respect the world they live in, the exigencies that rule their life and that they have to live with on a daily basis. Even in real life, it's hard to feel morally superior. There are certain things you end up doing and that's the way things work all over the world.
I think the downside of the way it is practiced here is that it corrupts almost everything -- from social relations to the media to how we think about the world. I think it also keeps a lot of necessary development from happening. Plans are made and then disappear into thin air simply because somebody doesn't get paid enough!
How critical are your family members about your writing, considering a number of them have dabbled in some form of it or another at some point? (Chandra's mother Kamna wrote Hindi films like Prem Rog and 1942: A Love Story; his sister Tanuja is a director and screenwriter, and younger sister Anupama Chopra is a film critic and author of Sholay: The Making of a Classic).
We discuss writing often; it is an ongoing conversation. Except for my father (Navin Chandra), the rest of us are somehow in the business of narratives. It is interesting to get a response from them and from people outside my family that I am close to. Obviously, everyone reacts differently, and you can never please them all but, if three people question a character's motive, you know you're in trouble.
There are also various tastes. My younger sister Anu (Anupama Chopra) has no patience for meandering narratives, so she will tell me quite frankly if I'm boring the hell out of her (laughs). Also, I suspect most writers write for somebody they love. Even if it isn't a real person, they imagine somebody.
If I were to tell my mother I wanted to meet people from the underworld for research, I'm not sure how she would react...
My mother was a little nervous, at times, but I think we realised it was necessary because we are all writers. The truth is, except for one instance, I never felt threatened. It was quite mundane and ordinary in some ways, not as dangerous and romantic as it sounds.
Read an exclusive extract from Sacred Games: Tales from the Underworld
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