Tanika Gupta: From Kashmir to 'Grange Hill'

Tanika Gupta, 38, was born in Chiswick, studied Modern History at Oxford University and worked as a community worker before taking up writing full time in the Nineties. She has worked as a script writer for EastEnders, Grange Hill and The Bill, was writer-in-residence at Soho Theatre (1996-98) and penned the award-winning The Waiting Room for the National in 2000. Her latest, Sanctuary, opens at the National's Loft space this week.

Your new play is partly about London's multi-cultural society. How integrated do you think we are as a country?

If you sit on the tube and look about you, we are living in a very diverse world and it is so rarely reflected in the media, in the newspapers, the TV and on the stage. London is very different, of course, to the rest of the country and one only needs to step into the Home Counties to realise that it's not so mixed and you do get stared at if you're a non-white. Up in Manchester recently I felt very different "multi-cultural" vibes than I do in London. Here it's cool, up there it felt strained. An actor friend of mine told me that when he was filming East is East in Greater Manchester a gang of white youths tried to attack them in the middle of the shoot!

However, saying all that, I do think we're often more integrated than we realise. Sure, there's still a long way to go, but we don't all live in separate worlds anymore.

What inspired you to write Sanctuary?

I went on my honeymoon to Kashmir in 1988 and stayed on one of those houseboats on Dal Lake. I've travelled quite extensively in my life but I still have the image of that place floating around in my head. It is paradise. The day we left, there was some kind of a disturbance and gun shots were heard ringing out. Since then, thousands of innocent civilians have died in the war and tourists are advised not to go there. I wanted to write a play that dealt with one of those many thousands of civilians.

What do you think of the Government's line on asylum seekers?

It stinks. Guilty until proven innocent. I detest David Blunkett's language where he intimated that refugee children were "swamping" the schools. I abhor the attitude that all refugees are "bogus" asylum seekers (perpetuated by the tabloid press) and I am disgusted by the detention centres and the fact that most of those traumatised refugees are sent back to the countries they are trying to escape. The Government on this issue are unsympathetic, inhuman and downright racist.

Was there a eureka moment when you decided to become a playwright?

Not really. It's hard to remember an exact moment because I've always written stories almost as soon as I learnt to write. At the age of six I wrote the whole of the Mahabharata for a class assignment and my parents met and fell in love in Rabindranath Tagore's educational ashram in Santiniketan. My father was the most amazing singer and story teller and my mother was an Indian classically trained dancer so the arts were all around me. I was taken to see Tagore plays from such an early age that I can't even remember a time wanting to do anything else. It's not so much when I wanted to become a playwright so much as if I'd succeed.

You've written for some of the nation's favourite soaps and dramas. Is that just bread-and-butter work or do you get a kick out of it?

It was never simply bread-and-butter work, although television money is always very welcome and I continue to write for it! To be honest, I was writing for television long before I had my first stage play produced. I wrote for Grange Hill for four years and enjoyed every minute of it because I watched it myself as a kid and it's still a popular show. I watch television and so I do like writing for it too. However, there does come a point when the writer's lack of control over the storyline becomes hugely frustrating – especially when you get so much respect as a writer in the theatre.

Are you a disciplined writer?

I am fiercely disciplined. Sounds scary but I have three children and so I only have a set amount of time in which to write and so I have to go for it. A lot of people say how nice it must be writing from home, and often they think I'm just dossing. But you have to have an iron will.

'Sanctuary': National Theatre Loft, London SE1 (020 7452 3000), previewing, opens tomorrow to 10 August