Critics have accused Indian writers who write in English of peppering their works with Sanskrit to “exoticize the Indian landscape to signal their Indianness to the West.” But does inclusion of these exoticizing elements disqualify their Indian authenticness? “Believe in your mashooq and you will be Indian, a good artist or an adequate one, local and global, soft as a rose petal, and as hard as thunder, not this, not that, and everything you need to be. You will be free.” – Boston Review