If there’s one thing author Amitava Kumar wants readers to take away from his latest, The Green Book, it’s to inculcate the habit of walking and keeping journals. 
The book, released earlier this month, is the third and final volume in his diary-and-sketchbook trilogy. Like its two predecessors—The Blue Book and The Yellow Book—this volume too is filled with Kumar’s original artwork and photographs, along with observations jotted in his diaries as he walks through life.

By the time this reporter arrives at the Bandra cafe where we’re meeting Kumar at 11.30 am on Wednesday, he’s already scribbled about things he’s seen since stepping out of his AirBnB in the morning. There’s a hilarious anecdote he’s recorded from a journalist friend he was meeting earlier on, who narrated how he had arrived late at an event that VS Naipaul was to speak at, only for the author to storm out of the venue on learning that his name had been misspelled on the invitations. There’s also a sketch Kumar has made of the chauffeur driving him around town on his last day in Mumbai. In the cafe, he’s insatiably curious, whether it’s about our magnetic powerbank, or another patron’s high-tech-looking insulin pump discreetly placed on their leg.