About Me

Reader, writer, traveller and Indophile. My several identities that merge and blend in my work: four full length novels and lots of short stories published over the last two decades.

I am a masters in Mass Communications who began writing by dabbling in middles, features and travel writing, until I found my forte in fiction. My short stories have been extensively published in magazines and anthologies. My debut novel The Wheel Turned was published in 2010 and is a love story set against the backdrop of military action in the North East during the early sixties. My second novel Edge Of All The Light (2013) deals with the cross cultural dilemma of a young woman who goes abroad to study and work. My fourth novel (and first in the genre of historical fiction), The Legend of Kuldhara (2017) is set in and around 19th century Jaisalmer, when eighty four villages were abandoned overnight to save the honour of a young woman. Cursed to lie deserted forever, the villages remain in ruins to this day.  The latest book, Mandu – The Romance of Roopmati and Baz Bahadur, is the recreation of a five hundred year old legend of a Sultan and his lady love – a peasant girl named Roopmati. This book won the first prize in the category of Historical Fiction at Coimbatore Literary Awards.

I am an avid reader, amateur artist and an ardent itinerant. As the daughter of an army officer, then as the wife of an IAF fighter pilot, I have travelled widely, both within the country and abroad. Often I find forgotten stories hidden among the ruins of old monuments and forts, and these stories have inspired me to re-imagine and rewrite them as historical fiction. This genre excites me enough to set my next book too in yet another period of India’s history. This is a work in progress and should be ready by end 2021.
My short stories have been published in various magazines and I have won prizes in the British Council-Unisun Fiction Writing Competition for the stories The Summer of Paati’s Destiny (2006) and Going home, Babulal ?(2007), and my story Soul Sister won a prize in a Pomegranate contest.

Some of my short stories have been published in the anthologies A Cup of Chai and other Stories, The Shrinking Woman and Other Stories, The Curse of the bird and other stories (Unisun Pubications) Bhelpuri, Door in the Wall and Tales from the Hearth (Songbird Publications).

I conduct Creative Writing workshops for adults and children under the brand Melting Pot.