Shashi Deshpande in The Hindu compares a writer’s imagination “not to a butterfly’s flitting, but to the eagle’s swoop and soar in flight”. The article is about writers as activists. Deshpande often has the sense of a “finger in my back prodding me, telling me ‘now write!’” And she asks big-league questions: “Now, where does the social role of a writer figure in this?” and even more pertinently, “Now, where is the reader in all this?” The Babu is an admirer of Deshpande’s novels, but even an admirer has to draw the line somewhere.