The Literary Mirror

You worked in a visa section yourself before writing this. How much of Arvind is you?

Enough that my old colleagues will recognise some of the office jokes, not enough that any single file in the book is a real applicant's file. I changed every detail that could identify anyone, and where that wasn't possible I didn't use the story at all.

Why one act of discretion a year, specifically?

Because more than that stops being a private act of conscience and starts being a pattern someone in an audit will eventually notice. I wanted a number small enough to be personal and large enough, over years, to matter.

The ending refuses a clean resolution. Were you tempted to give the reader more?

Constantly, in early drafts. Every version where Arvind's decision clearly fixes something felt like a lie about how one stamp actually functions inside a system that large. The honest ending was the smaller one.