Where interview subjects go, it has been a long journey with Rohit Chopra. Our first conversation was back in June 2014, when as the anonymous account @RushdieExplains, he became the toast of the Twitterati within a fortnight. His observations ranged from witnessing "Sushma Swaraj sipping tea from a samovar on the Volga" to "So honored to be keynoting 'Postcolonial Oversensitivity' conference at SOAS! Sponsored by B-Tex lotion!'"

Sometime the next year, he unmasked himself, as a professor of media studies at California's Santa Clara University and later, at a request from the man himself, Salman Rushdie—when trolls directing their hatred towards both the real and the parody account became too strong a force—switched the account to @IndiaExplained. Within the year, Chopra too became a regular target of Hindu nationalist trolls for tweets that criticised the government and its policies.