The Lights of Shantinagar
My debut novel
When is a work of art truly done?
When I finished the third draft of my first book, back in 2019, I thought I was done. I called it Chai then.
When I signed with the agent of my dreams in 2020, I thought I was done. We collected rejections over 2 years, changed the book’s name to The Things We See and went on to collect more rejections over the next 2 years.
If forty or so editors don’t believe in me, am I still a good book, was the question it asked me every single day. If no editor anywhere ever, believes in me, what would you change in me?
Not much, I realised.
(The full, blow by blow account of this phase is here.)
When it won a competition in 2024, I thought I was done. We edited, changed the title to The Lights of Shantinagar, edited some more, worked on the cover, read proofs for over a year. June 2025, a week before pub day, when I held a physical copy in my hands for the first time, I thought we were done.
Turns out, the book was not done with me. A week before pub date, through an unprecedented, unbelievable series of events, I was faced with an impossible choice - whether to pull the book back or let it enter the world in the middle of a storm.
What do you choose to believe when everything you believed in seems to slip out of your fingers? the book asked me. When the future is uncertain, how do you choose to show up in the present? How do you hold on to hope? What does it all mean?
I didn’t have to look far for answers, they were in the book!
I begin to nod slowly too. All those years of drip feed of rejections were just practice runs. This was the real trial. We had built enough muscle and so we walked into the storm.
The Lights of Shantinagar have has been out in bookstores in the UK for a month now. Bookstore managers are warm and welcoming. Family and friends are reading it and sending lovely, heartwarming messages of how much they’re enjoying it. (Family doesn’t have another option and my friends are nice). It will be in bookstores in India and the US soon.
Is the storm over? Who knows.
Will the book survive it? I hope so.
Can we live in the present and celebrate it? 100%.
We think we write the words, but the truth is, the words write us. This book took my hand and said, “Let’s go for a little walk.” To figure out what it all means…success, failure, rejection, acceptance. What is worth, where does it comes from, how do you want to show up for the things you believe in, how much are you willing to fight for them?
While I was having fun writing metaphors for the book, the book quietly became a metaphor for me.
Something tells me it is not done with me yet.
Will there be more storms ahead? Probably. It’s called life.
Will I survive? I hope so. That’s the goal.
Can we live the present moment fully and celebrate what we have? That’s about all we can do!
Here’s a little bit about the book:
The Lights of Shantinagar is a warm and lively portrait of family life set in modern India where new philosophies are reshaping old traditions and one woman’s astute observations can change everything.
Aspiring quantum physicist Sumi is newly married and has moved into her husband’s family home. Here she observes that the beguilingly tranquil middle-class town of Shantinagar is not very different from her beloved quantum world: the happenings in one house are cryptically entangled with things next door, objects mysteriously disappear and unexpected interactions reveal surprising truths.
As the line between right and wrong begins to blur, new discoveries force the residents of Shantinagar to reflect on what they truly know about themselves and the ones they love. Meanwhile, Sumi must blend logic with love to make sense of her new circumstances.
Winner of Unbound Firsts 2024
"Incandescent" —
, author of My Daughters' Mum"Storytelling at its most novel" — Saurabh Sharma, queer writer and cultural critic
"Vivid, engaging and truthful" — Shelley Weiner, acclaimed novelist and journalist
"Illuminates the lives of women on the cusp of change" — Sara Lippmann, author of Jerks
"An eloquent new voice" — Zahra Barri, author of Daughters of the Nile
Amazon UK: https://amzn.eu/d/cPIOHeL
Amazon India: https://amzn.in/d/3Cm2e1c
US: Coming soon!