Even Boris Johnson, then the British prime minister, who had once written an article saying that I didn’t deserve the knighthood I had received in June 2007 “for services to literature” because I wasn’t a good enough writer, now found some grudging platitudes. India, the country of my birth and my deepest inspiration, on that day found no words. And, inevitably, there were voices expressing pleasure about what had happened. If you are turned into an object of hate, there will be people who hate you. That had been true for thirty-four years.
