Anyone who has worked in a standard organization has faced the exit interview from the HR (human resources department) while leaving the organization where he/she is asked questions about his/her working experience in the company. I have seen from my own experience and from my research, which I did by asking friends and relatives, that very few people write truthfully in the exit interview. Sometimes people even write/say lies to take revenge on seniors or colleagues. Often these facts are used to harass and manipulate existing employees or no one cares about what an employee writes because he/she is leaving anyway, and the opinions don’t matter at all. I have seen you can rarely write the truth about your real experiences and my book is about all the things the protagonist Rasha Roy can’t write in her exit interviews as she moves from one job to another. Like she sees no point in writing about the sexual harassment she faces at the workplace. Before writing the book I spoke to a lot of women working in the corporate sector and other industries and almost all said they faced some kind of sexual harassment but they never reported it to the management because they were unsure how they would react.

Rasha is a fun loving, forthright, uncomplicated person. She is like any Indian woman looking for her own identity. Her character has its faults too. Sometimes she is too ambitious and absolutely selfish and sometimes she is loving and selfless. She is a victim of circumstances and finds nothing is in her control but she is not willing to give up. I would say Rasha Roy is everything I am not or could not be. Like all first-time authors I have taken a lot of moments and anecdotes from my real-life experiences and interactions. That’s where my similarity with Rasha ends.

It is the journey of a journalist but people from all walks of life will be able to identify with it. Everyone has faced difficult bosses, controlling parents and had supportive colleagues and friends who have often saved their day.

The book is set in the contemporary societies of India, Dubai and Egypt. I had to do research to understand Egyptian society better and realized it is in so many ways similar to Indian society.

The story begins on a negative note where Rasha’s confidence has received the biggest jolt. Then the story proceeds in the flashback. It ends in a positive note. The message is: There will be constant ups and downs in a person’s life but that does not mean he/she should ever give up trying.

I firmly believe in women’s empowerment but I also believe that the journey of a woman becomes much easier if she comes in contact with sensitized men. That is why my book has very strong male characters who are sensitive, eccentric, over-the-top yet very real. I have often seen when the protagonist is female the villain is male. That is why I have very consciously created both male and female negative characters in my book because that is the reality of our society.

As a journalist I have always written real-life stories but as an author I realized how fulfilling it is to write fiction. Because everything is in your hands, how the characters would shape up, how the plot would unfold. I would keep tossing and turning in bed all through the night thinking of the direction the next chapter should take and when I translated my thoughts on the computer it was very creatively satisfying. But I am glad that after reading three of my chapters Rupa Publications gave me a kind of deadline to send in the whole manuscript. That really worked for me because I am a journalist for whom a deadline really works. Also I realized a goal and time frame is sometimes very important even if it’s a creative pursuit like writing a book.