SWATI KAUSHAL: I was born in Delhi. My father had a transferable job, as a result we moved around a lot when I was a child. Looking back it seems that my destiny was somehow connected with the US. My father was posted in Washington DC, at the Embassy, when I was merely three years old. We shifted, for the first time, at that time. We came back, the whole family, when I was in Class III. Since then, and for a long time, I remained in India where I completed my schooling, college and Master’s. Like good Delhi girls I graduated from the Lady Shri Ram College for Women with a degree in economics— one cannot get more Delhi native than that, can they? My destiny was slowly pulling me towards a corporate career as I got through Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata. The institution proved to be important, as I met my future husband there. Post- IIM, like every other management graduate, I moved to a steady corporate job at Nestle—where I started off as a management trainee and worked my way up to being the brand manager. In 1997, right after my son was born, my husband got this fabulous job offer in the US. I, too, believed that the time was right to make a move. I wished to re-think my career and be a full-time mom to my firstborn. So, we packed our bags and went to the US. I found living there quite a struggle—as a society it was independent. And I was soon juggling to be a full-time mother and a homemaker. Get the credit cards done, get the car up and running, get the groceries in time and be there for your child 24*7—for an Indian, brought up in an pseudo-extended family system, it was hectic! A year later, we gave up. We shifted to India, where my husband continued with his previous corporate job, while I rejoined my old job at Nestle. I continued in Nestle till a better offer came in from Nokia. Both of us (husband and I) were deeply entrenched into our corporate lives. However, there was always that nagging feeling that I wished to be there for my son. When both parents maintain fulltime jobs they get to see very little of their child. I realised that as a family we will not be able to sustain the strain of being away all the time. There were some personal events that clinched the deal, and I quit my job. I started to re-think my future, what was that one thing that I loved doing the most. And whether could I pursue it, and give time to my son? When I used to work at Nokia, we had a small marketing team. For the longest time, we did not have an ad agency because we had switched. During that time, I had penned quite a bit of the company’s advertising myself. I realised that I liked to write short and snappy lines which spoke their intent immediately. I did not like browsing through 100 pages before I had the faintest clue as to what was being said. There was an epiphanic moment—I knew that I wanted to read stuff that were pragmatic, logical and to-the-point. More importantly, I knew that I loved writing, so, so much. If no one else would, I will write the language of today, snappy and smooth. Once we moved back to the US in 2001, it was clear to me that I did not wish to pursue the corporate life anymore. We were settled in Minnesota. That is when I started to work on Piece of Cake. The process was not a piece of cake—pun intended. I knew the corporate sector well. I knew the marriage-obsessed, mom-market of India very well as well. But, there is a gap between knowing something, and writing, and in convincing readers about the main protagonist, the romance of the book, the arranged marriage and her corporate life. Fortunately, Piece of Cake became India’s first official chick-lit, a label that I was quite excited about. I have no qualms in admitting that I maintain that fine balance between a metro read and a new-age book. I can make my pages a brisk read, because I love reading simple language myself. However, I cannot compromise on the language, grammar and sentence construction. I love writing for all ages and for all genders, but I realise that a lot of young people read what I write. Therefore, the onus lies on me to maintain balance—my books are pacy, they will never be trashy. As a mother to a teenaged son and a toddler, I have strict standards of what I wish to put in on paper. Having said that, I try to not think of my readers when I am writing. It is a personal experience for me. I go into a zone where I cease to exist as a mother, wife and a homemaker. The Starbucks outlet near my house opens at 6am sharp. I am there after a shower by 6.10am. I am the shower and write person. So, showers are tense moments when I am hoping, praying for a fresh idea, some epiphany or snippet that I can elaborate upon. For an hour-and-a-half at Starbucks, I am writing things down. Anything and everything. It may be the best idea that I have or the worst. It could be something that I will be trashing immediately after I sit down to write next. I believe that the act of writing things down is important. The day when I manage to pen down around 1,000 words, I celebrate. Days when I write around 500 words, I remain quite kicked. That one per cent inspiration bit happens in that one hour in the morning when I am at Starbucks. Writers by nature are quite bipolar; we switch off and switch on different personas. And my management training has equipped me to be present in a situation and work according to clients’ needs. I can switch my American accent on and off. Give me 10 days in India and I shall talk to you in an Indian accent. Even when I am writing in the Starbucks cafe, I may be heavily-entrenched in an America reality, but I can switch that off and think like the Swati Kaushal who was born and raised in India. Having said that, the switching bit has been getting difficult over the years. When I wrote Piece of Cake, I was fresh off the boat, as they say. My Indian reality seemed more immediate, close and tangible. Now, I have been living in the US for 11 years. My home, my roots have changed. India has changed. I have not been a participant in that change. So, to place the story in the Indian context I have to seriously research and talk to several people, before I can even get a starting point. Before A Girl Like Me, which was for mothers and teenagers, I went back to India a couple of times, spoke to my friends and their children. I was like a fly on the wall, while the teenagers would talk. I would record conversations. I would listen to the tapes. To create the character of Nikki Marwah, for my latest detective series, Drop Dead, I visited Punita Bharadwaj, who was one of the first few female officers in Himachal Pradesh. Her inputs were cardinal in the character development of Nikki. Punita spoke to me about what it meant to be the woman in a man’s space. How she handled situations using her feminine sensibilities rather than act as one of the boys. I remember that Punita spoke about one particular incident when she reasoned out with an angry mob rather than use force, which would have been the default reaction of anyone who believed in being more masculine. My latest character Nikki is consciously feminine. Yet, she is as tough as nails. She is smart and sassy. While growing up in the pre-liberalised India, all of us girls had the idea that to be smart and to be taken seriously, we had to be ‘one of the boys’. Today, as a mother to a daughter, I realise that I do not wish my daughter to behave in a certain manner to be taken seriously. She can love high heels as much as she wants, and I believe she can be a rocket scientist if she has any interest in being one. We should consciously try to break the gender stereotypes, those are all passe now. For the first two books, my husband was my main sounding board. He is a voracious reader. He reads for pleasure. I do trust his judgement. We did have some heated discussions with him even when he was not actually reading the stuff that I had penned. I use him to bounce off ideas—do you believe that the character that I have just described would do such a thing? From the time I began my mystery series—I wanted to surprise everyone. Also, all these books that I have written before have given some boost to my confidence. Now, I am a little more relaxed. I seek less inputs from writer and reader friends, not because I am cocky but because I feel the responsibility to surprise them. I also share a strong bond with the people on the team—editors and publishers who have worked so closely with me. Now, I am confident enough—as much as a writer can be.