Daily Times
May 1, 2021
The other day MH asked me if writing historical fiction was isolating. On the contrary, delving into the past — seventy-three years ago, to be precise — helped me stay sane in this year of isolation. With the present growing bleaker by the day, the past world and the next world offered greater solace. I won’t dwell on the next world for now. Instead, I will write about my journey as an historical fiction author. My novel begins in the months leading up to India’s Independence and subsequent Partition. I started my project in the year 2017, exactly seventy years after these monumental events. The two most memorable books I read on the period were Midnight’s Furies and Indian Summer: The Secret History of an End to an Empire. Both authors write so vividly, they swept me up into the drama, intrigue, excitement, and unfolding tragedy of the era. Closer to the theme of my novel, I devoured books on the state of Hyderabad’s last days as a sovereign state. I won’t name their titles, but they all had the words ‘destruction’, ‘fall’, or ‘tragedy’ in them. Yes, something devastating occurred.