When Anil Dharker, founder and director of Mumbai International Literary Festival, writer and illustrator Ashok Ferrey and journalist, novelist and poet C.P. Surendran got down to talking cities as part of 'The cities in our head: Mumbai, Kolkata, New York, London and Delhi as literary characters', the topic at the final session of the day, they just had to agree to disagree on certain points. Immigrant writer Deepak Unnikrishnan could not attend the session because his flight was rescheduled. In the session, moderated by Dharker, the writers revisited the many cities that they had lived in during the course of their childhoods or careers, discussing the impact it has had on their works. 
 
Surendran, festival director of Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters felt that writers from smaller cities were at a disadvantage when it came to attracting a global audience with works based in their hometowns. He said that the impact Kerala has on him is something he has been trying to escape. He cited the example of places of worship within the capital city itself that were steeped in history and mythology but owing to what he called Malayalam and other native tongues in India to be - 'not phonetic-friendly languages', drawing readers from around the globe remained a challenge while readers could immediately warm up to stories set in cities like New York or London. Anil Dharkar begged to differ, mentioning examples like R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days and Kiran Nagarkar's works. Surendran added that attempting to translate writing based locally for a global audience could spell trouble while making the effort to translate works based in metropolitan cities into a local language would find acceptance among readers here. 
 
Ashok Ferrey, having been born in Sri Lanka and raised in different countries in Africa, had beautiful memories of the cities from his school years. Ferrey said that he hopes to write of his days in a Benedictine Monastery in Nairobi. He was optimistic that over a period of time, stories set in smaller cities and towns in India too would win its share of international readers. He confessed to the African cities he lived in having a huge bearing on his short stories. Ferrey said he identified the cities in his books with specific time periods. His The Professional, for example, is set in the 80s.  
 
Surendran remarked that he disliked the characterisation of a city. Both he and Ferrey were of the view that writers who preferred to have the setting for their novels in third world countries probably did so  in an effort to draw stronger emotions out of readers. Dharker mentioned V.S. Naipaul's An Area of Darkness, based in India as an example. What they did agree on was the pattern of, perhaps a latent sense of racism, in the works of writers who based their novels in third world countries.