"If you think of India and Pakistan, 50 years ago it was the same culture and now we want to kill each other. Or people pretend that we want to kill each other. It's only the governments that are doing it. To go to Lahore, which is 45 minutes away from Delhi, I have to go to Dubai and then go to Lahore, and then I'm in a dining room and it feels like I'm in Delhi. It's the same jokes; crazy, you know? And you're actually living in real danger of nuking each other. It's outrageous."

In all this, what's most appealing is her crudity. Her essays are littered with colloquialisms and treacly, emotive metaphors; she drizzles her writing with the word "cool" and phrases like "finger-licking good". Roy says she likes to feel ridiculous: "I think it's important not to take yourself too seriously. I'm a great believer in small doses of vulgarity."

There's an Indian dance called the Kathakali, from her native region of Kerala, that has been an influence on her storytelling. "It moves from epic stuff to something really vulgar. It's so elastic and to me the fitness of a storyteller is the ease with which you can move between the two, instead of just pitching it at one level."

What keeps coming across is her delight in the small pleasures of life. Ask her what she believes in and she says, "Luck, happiness and magic."