1. Tell us more about your background and journey.
Born and raised in the city of joy, I have always found happiness in the smallest of things. Every time I took a stroll in the park with my father, I would look around and imagine about the lives of people that I had crossed paths with.
My city has always given me that emotional aspect to look into and that gets reflected in my stories. My stories may lack a storyline but it will never lack emotions.
Even as a kid, I had been very observant about my environment. I would always go deeper into things that people are not saying out loud but are definitely feeling.
As far as my journey is concerned, I think I have only just begun but also if I look back, I am obviously a little ahead of where I had started which mostly included me writing about my school crush in my journal and hiding it from my mom.
2. When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
I remember this one time that I borrowed ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank from my school library.
I was probably fourteen by that time and while reading that book, I felt something in me stir because I could never imagine how a girl my age had seen life in the most gruesome form and still managed to find hope in it; that was the beginning of my writing journey.
I had started jotting down everything since then because it was only towards the end of the book that I realised you are your own storyteller and it’s only you who can make your story beautiful, no matter how sad it is.
3. Is it a financially stable career?
To be very honest with you, writing is all fun and games until you decide to write for a living. In the initial days, it is not a financially stable career at all. Sometimes you would have to publish your work for free just for the sake of exposure, let alone the fact that sometimes you would even have to pay the publishers.
But once your work is out there and people have started noticing, the money starts to flow in. If you are looking for fast-paced success, this is not the right place for you but if you are looking for a career that fills your heart more than your pocket, then you are in for a treat.
4. Who is your favourite writer and why?
Well out of a lot of great writers, my favourite is Haruki Murakami and Rabindranath Tagore. Reason being they both find the most relatable of things to talk about while making you realise that every ordinary thing is extraordinary in its own way.
The way Murakami expresses surrealities as a part of everyday life is what makes me root for each one of his stories.
And when it comes to Tagore, I think we all know what kind of magic he is capable of creating.
5. Where does your inspiration lie?
My inspiration lies in the small things of life, the ones that we usually forget to notice; for example, I would rather tell the story of the fish being cooked in my grandma’s kitchen than talk about someone travelling the whole wide world.
Inspiration lies in places that you mostly are not looking at- like the cup of chai you just took a sip from, or the leaf that had fallen and just landed on the ground.
6. What does your typical day look like?
My days look exactly like everyone else’s. Working as a software engineer in an organisation, my days usually started with me waking up to make chai for myself and my mom, running to work, travelling back while looking outside the window of my car, thinking about my next story and chilling with my dog.
On weekends, I would go out to rooftop cafes with my friends, listen to some live music and have the best times of my life. And once in every two months, I would plan a trip and just go on about it. If friends and family didn’t agree, I even travelled alone.
Of course with the social distancing now things have started to look different. My mornings start with my dog licking my face all over, then the usual work from home routine. The evenings are more relaxed with my mom and I making dinner together, having our cup of chai in the balcony, taking care of our house plants, exploring works of different writers and writing some stories of my own.
7. What piece of advice would you like to give to future aspiring writers?
Being an aspiring writer myself, I don’t think I am in the appropriate space to answer this question but one thing that has helped me throughout is writing every day and writing from the heart.
I would only advise to not write something that you are not feeling just because your audience is asking for it. If it doesn’t come from your heart, it will never reach theirs.
8. Which is your favourite book and why?
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini simply because it is a masterpiece. What we root for the most in stories is an engaging plot accompanied by an ending that moves you, an ending that stays.
And no other line has stayed with me more than ‘For you, a thousand times over.’
Interview by - Shamayla
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