Author, columnist and traveller Pankaj Mishra has been an early essayist for Outlook with a famous takedown of Rushdie. He is an avid reader of magazines and a prolific writer for both Indian and international publications like The New Yorker and Granta. He was perhaps the first author to bring small-town India to a global audience with Butter Chicken in Ludhiana and wrote acclaimed books such as From the Ruins of the Empire, and The Romantics. In an interview with Namrata Joshi, he discusses the ways magazines impacted his life and his worldview. Excerpts:

What does a magazine mean to you, as a reader, as a writer and how have you evolved as a magazine reader?