What was the process of Kari’s character design like?
Amruta: Kari is the ultimate fly-on-the-wall. Teeming inner life that contrasts with her solitary outer life. She is introverted and genderfluid. A silent engine. I thought she would make a necessary and much-missed counterpoint to the sociable, shrill, hyperfeminine protagonists one meets all the time. AspisDrift.com: Kari turns 21 in the book. How old were you when you wrote the novel? Amruta: 28. Which as anyone knows, is eons away from 21. AspisDrift.com: You’re in Angouleme these days. What are you doing there and for how long? Pick up any French? Amruta: The city hosts an International Comic Books Festival every January. I’m here on a year-long writer’s residency – steering the tail of an elephantine graphic novel project based on the Mahabharat. I am rocking the supermarket French and the ‘Ou sont les toilettes?’ French. Social interactions are a stretch, but I listen hard – and am happy to find that sounds are slowly percolating into meaning. AspisDrift.com: Amruta, a little bi
