Goodreads asked Aruna Nambiar:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Aruna Nambiar It’s hard to say where ideas come from – they just seem to pop up in your mind – perhaps you need to be observant. The actual sifting through of those ideas, the development and the weighing of them to see what interests you enough to turn into a short story or a novel – that is the real work of the writer. Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth started as the seed of an idea about exploring the nature of relationships between householders and the domestic help – how interdependent and intimate these relationships are, and yet how aloof and hierarchical. And then it struck me that as children we experience these relationships closely without ever thinking about them deeply – until a point in our lives when we awaken to the social inequities being played out around us. This was the central theme of the story. Everything else – the eccentric characters, the small-town 1980s Kerala setting, the frivolous tone, the gags – this was the framework in which I explored the theme.

flag