"My brain hurts when I finish a book and I need long periods of stillness before I can write again," observes Sir V. S. Naipaul, to Anuradha Mahindra on his recent visit to Mumbai

His eyes are barely visible. Spectacles and an almost-white beard and mustache dominate his eminent face. His eyes are narrow and, even when they are open and you are sitting in front of him, it is difficult to see what he might be seeing, to think what he might be thinking. In Sir V. S. Naipaul's presence, you cannot help but feel a great sense of awe and largely, a great sense of intimidation. His body of work, 27 works of both fiction and non-fiction, is impressive by any standards. He was knighted in 1990 and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. You cannot doubt his high intellect and cannot help but shudder at his greatness. The terror you feel when you are in the audience at his book reading, or sitting next to him at dinner, or conversing with him in his suite along with his wife, agent and daughter, is inexplicable, until you realise that you are desperately looking for signs of his approval and are instead, confronted by a man who prefers to be inscrutable. There is so much you want to know about his life and, despite all the interviews he has given, spanning his long career as a writer, the real truth is hidden in his eyes, now small, tired and more inward looking. In the three days that he met with people in Mumbai, he was careful about what to let on about himself. In his encounters with the public, he largely lived up to the myth of being impatient, at times intolerant and temperamental. It was vintage Naipaul, somebody he knew well and had cultivated well over the years. In his pique at being asked questions which only exposed the ignorance of the interrogator, there was instant snarling, giving the impression of rashness or, that he had given way to impulse. But even those now exceedingly familiar with his acerbic 'Naipaulisms' will agree that even when highly provoked, Sir Vidia, as some refer to him, cannot escape that same sense of measure and same sense of exactness, which he applies to his writing. Herein lies his brilliance. So, you cannot grudge him his reticence or ire whenever asked, 'where is home for you?' It is a difficult question to answer when the space in which you really live is not somewhere in Trinidad or Wiltshire, but is an internal space, the space within which you create.

Naipaul's books often deal with the displacement of his characters, which many feel stems from his own feelings of estrangement in England. But, you also tend to agree with what Tim Adams recently wrote in The Guardian, 'The only place where he feels most comfortable, is in his books'. If Adams is indeed correct, then Sir V.S. deserves his privacy, because as he admits, "My brain hurts when I finish a book and I need long periods of stillness before I can write again." That morning, even as we spoke, I could feel the reserve and thoughtfulness. It was his way of finding silence and when neither of us spoke, his mind had not paused; it had only entered a sacred space, which knew no boundaries but might be closed to the rest of the world.