what's the meaning of this sentence and the word "it" in it?

He's saying that despite being born in India, the experience of an English boarding school had more to do with making him the person he is today. I think I heard him being interviewed on the radio a couple of weeks ago.

He means "it was the experience of . . ."

it = his life in India

No, it refers to his life in the boarding school, read the highlighted sentence.

I think it impossible for the writer to have been born in India... It is so easy to adore the exotic, and so rair to treasure the domestic....

The notion of ones fate being sealed is never a happy one... Some people surf their circumstances, and some people swim; but the writer is one drowning in his... Every author at a minimum ought to be the author of his own fate... I am the hero of my own fiction, and because of that fact have become the hero of my reality...Tragedy makes good entertainment, but no one loves a victim... We are all guilty of the crime of the tragic anti-hero, and that is Hubris; and for that reason we identify with him, that quality in him that makes us all human, and forgive him, and so forgive ourselves... .Is he singing a gallows song, or giving the cry of an Eagle??? Show me a guy who does not have to talk about his emotions to feel them, and find in them the source of his humanity, and I will show you a hero...A colonial child spilling his guts to some stranger over too many gin and tonics is not the stuff of drama or even intrigue, but is the portrait of weakness and doomed myopia...

It's probably best that we wait until from the poster, but this reminds me of an Indian writer educated in an English boarding school I heard on Radio 4 a few weeks ago.

Clearly he did not read the classics... Achilles did not cry to some stranger, but wept down by the boats over his injured honor... This is no author, but some flip boy whining about the cold and revealing his emotions... Heroic is what people do, and not what they feel... If you listen to the stories guys tell they almost always reveal themselves as the hero of the tale... That is why the protagonists are seldom telling their own tales, because people get sick of me, me, me all the time... If the author is in a story it should be as a witness in court... The worm killed Beowulf, so he could not talk about his deeds; and when we talk about our own heroism, it is as if the worm talks, and tells of his own triumph...

I think you've gone off on a tangent now. What on Earth does the above passage have to do with Achilles? Or did you just want people to know you've read the Iliad?

I think judging someone's writing by one paragraph is very unreasonable.

There is an old saying the exact of and author of I would like to find: That sooner or later, every hero becomes a bore... I would say that sooner than later, every person who is the hero of his own tale is bound and determined to be a bore, and in the sense of Autobiography, what ever part the Author plays in the story he is presenting, he is revealing himself to be a whiney tit, and incapable of achieving Valhalla... Do you think Veni, Vidi, Vici could ever come out of his face??? They say every man loves the smell of his own farts, but you refuse to judge the sound for fear is will not be music... The thing that makes so much of poetry impossible and boring is that people put the drama of their own introspection front and center... It is inevitable that we should reveal ourselves in the characters and events we give our attention to... A little of us is shown if we recognize that one can walk by an injured person in the street, and another cannot without giving aid, but no person conceals so much of their character as when he or she tells all... Drama; fiction, poetry should be about something and some one, and it is the author playing second fiddle that gets to first place... I know that when I write it is all about me, but as Jefferson said: I am already tired of talking about myself... So is everybody else... If you are telling a story, then tell a story... Some one is going to get shot before the thing is over... Just make sure it is not you, and if you done it, then start at page one on the apology... Some people deserve death, and some people dare it for a very good reason... I'd rate bad authors with the former and not the latter...

I'd say: If you want to be introspective, then see a shrink... Do you think Hemingway could paint a character as introspective, or that he would bother??? He had a story to tell...What makes him a good writer is that he was there, but not obviously, and he never tried to send anyone running for a dictionary... No one should need another book to read a book...

Seriously; to spill ones guts to a therapist is a great saving of money and resources... Anyone who does not write for money is a block head; said Johnson, but there are plenty of blockheads who will spend enough money on self absorbed rubbish to keep almost any writer in a state of near starvation...When I think, I have known two people who have killed themselves, one with a lot of promise, and the other without possibility, and that the effort to save the last one cost me my trade and career and income, then I know I do not have to look at myself to tell a tale... And stories are boundless, drama is everywhere; but it is heroes who are in short supply... We have a limited supply of heroes as types, but examples of ignomy are as common as dirt...

ignominy.