All the privately-owned trees that die in Delhi or within a radius of a few miles of the city land up at this one taal and the trunks are auctioned – in Punjabi – every morning. So nearly all the furniture in my home is actually made from firewood! It means choosing your timber very carefully – you can’t work with any old wood – and then seasoning it very carefully and ever so slowly, so that it ‘behaves’ in a manner that makes it useful for furniture.

I have another hobby – polishing wood. I derive a great amount of pleasure from polishing wood in various ways, especially with penetrating oils. I hope you don’t find that ironic too?!

Mr. Krishen, you grew up in Nairobi; experimented with film-making; served as a "most exacting critic" during the writing of your wife's novel The God of Small Things; now you are a celebrated tree chronicler. What to expect next – Trees of India?

I wish! The Trees of India would have to be a parliament of trees, somehow. Choosing no more than about 250 to 300 trees out of the 4,000 odd trees that we have on the subcontinent. This would mean representing every ecosystem in this varied land of ours, dividing it up into oh, I’d say, 12 or 13 ecological units, and then choosing representative trees from each one. I couldn’t possibly do it on my own. For the trees of India to be do-able in a reasonable amount of time, I’d need to work with collaborators who know their own ecosystem really well, then perhaps we could bring in a really representative book within say, three years' time. The trouble is that it would be quite expensive to mount, all the research and travel and photography. I’d love to do it, but it needs someone with very deep pockets to back a project this ambitious. In the meanwhile, I am starting work this month on a book on the Forest Trees of Central India.

Mr. Krishen, Good luck and thanks.