“Sometimes, we do not get a chance to thank each one who has helped us in our journey.”  Let the readers get a chance to know about all the important people who have played a part in this Author Journey of yours.

In my formative years, my family played a huge role in inculcating the love for books and writing. My father religiously took us to the annual book fair in our small town of Guwahati. Books were also the currency in which gifts were given, and amongst all the hand-me-downs that inadvertently becomes the inheritance of younger siblings, books were my favourite. Both my elder sisters wrote actively in local newspapers, though I, myself, joined the party a little late in life.

Then when it came to my career, many of my seniors and industry legends helped me in shaping my style of writing. And finally, there are my close friends, few of whom worked with me in different aspects of finalizing and publishing the book. I would especially like to thank them.

When and how did the idea of authoring “What The Pandemic Learned From Me’ come to you? Can you tell us a bit about your book?

I always wanted to write a book though there wasn’t a definite idea about what that would be about. The pandemic and lockdown sort of escalated that for me. After spending more than a year all by myself in my home, I had to devise ways to keep myself sane like many others. Writing started as a distraction but soon grew to become something more. I realized that people were tired of doom scrolling on social media and of all the scary statistics, everyone needed something happy to distract themselves with.

The book has a few lifestyle viruses other than the infamous one we already know. 

It has a little bit of all the funny and annoying things that we tried when we first began our lockdown lives – right from baking banana bread to growing our beards to finding a holiday home in Goa. Often not very successfully.

It has a secret escape to dealing with the goings-on of this new life, a secret that won’t be so obviously written in words but has to be discovered gradually.

I just wish people have a good time reading the book during these tough times. I hope they see a part of themselves echoed in my experiences, and anchor themselves to something hopeful, or just as pleasant distractions from everyday boiler-plate misery. And in doing so, they find some relief from the harsh realities that now surround us. 

What are the struggles you faced in writing a non-fiction book being a non non-fiction reader?

Even though this is a nonfiction book, it’s like a journal entry where I am talking about my own experiences and reliving the best and the worst parts of the pandemic. I haven’t read too many nonfiction books myself, so I don’t have anything to compare it with. 

It was not difficult to write about what I experienced and perceived. What was difficult was to dissociate from the immense grief that was palpable in the country, to stop myself from spinning out in a vortex of anxiety, and to keep up with the happy tone of my book. It was tough to overcome these internal resistances, be single-minded and settle on the fact that writing it had comforted me and that there were many others out there who would love this. At the end of the day, it paid to go through with it, and I hope I have given people something that narrates our collective experience with as much light-heartedness as possible and gives away something worth remembering post the pandemic. 

How was your experience working with leading agencies like Cheil India and Dentsu Impact Pvt. Ltd.?

It was a rollercoaster ride; both the places have had a great impact on my career and my growth as a person. At Cheil, I got the opportunity to work with my first big brand, at that point of time, Samsung was a market leader in many categories like smartphones, televisions and so on and so forth. I learned how to mine insights for tech products and help the brand retain its leadership position. I also got the opportunity to collaborate on Donate a Face, an immensely successful campaign to help acid attack survivors. That’s also when I realized I have a keen interest in gender sensitive issues. At Dentsu, I had to manage a much bigger portfolio of brands along with being a team lead. I got the opportunity to visit Sweden for an IKEA workshop where I met a lot of talented writers from across the globe and from there on till the launch of the brand in India, the entire journey was amazing. 

I have been very fortunate to work with some fabulous creative minds at both these places, so overall the experiences have been really great.

How long on an average does it take you to write a book? What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

I am just one-book-old as an author, so it wouldn’t be fair to say that this is how long a book takes. Also in my case, I was working to a really steep deadline, I finished the writing part of the book in just over a month. The reason behind this was that I wanted my book to serve a purpose during the pandemic. But I don’t think, the next time I am going to be so disciplined about the deadline.

The difficult part is that writing is a very lonely journey. You need to win over different resistances that your mind might come up with, and trust me in this, they are plenty of them. 

According to you which are the 5 books, everyone should read and also who are your top 3 Authors and what impact they had in your journey as a writer?

This is a really difficult question because I don’t really believe in lists like this. I don’t think there can be such a thing as top 5 books which is suitable for everyone because it’s very subjective and everyone expects different things from a book. But I will try.  

1. Wuthering Heights
2. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 
3. Stories of Tagore 
4. The God Of Small Things
5. The Great Gatsby

As far as authors go, my favourites keep evolving, right from the classics to contemporary books but it’s practically impossible to pick 3. Amongst the classical writers, I did enjoy Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and the Brontes. Then there’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I recently rediscovered my love for Murakami. Amongst Indian authors I have enjoyed Indu Sundesaran, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amitava Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry and Kiran Nagarkar. 

Tell us a bit about your family, likes and dislikes as a person.

I grew up in Guwahati in a simple, protective middle-class family with great emphasis on education. But I never really was a proverbial meritorious student, as a child there were far too many things elsewhere that interested me – dance, art, films, stories, and make-belief play. Studies merely got in the way of everything else.  

I would like to think that all fine things fascinate me, whether it is natural or something man-made. I am an introvert who loves the outdoors. I enjoy traveling and can’t wait for the day when I can go to someplace pretty once again. On some days, I like to think that I am a simple and blunt person, something that has always landed me in a lot of trouble. On other days, I have to overthink about everything under the sun. But on most days, I pass off as a human.

Could you share a few tips for Young Authors?

You out there, you will know if there’s a writer hiding in you. You just need to come out of your little hidey hole and put yourself out there for the world to see you. Quit with the overthinking already, everything else will fall into place. As for the little voices in your head telling you so many things, you need to hush a few of them, and listen to the ones that matter. 

Are you working on anything at the present you would like to share with your readers about?

There are a couple of ideas floating in my head, and I did start working on one. But honestly, it is too early to comment on it, and I want to take it slow this time. It’s going to be a fiction novel and of course, it will be seasoned with a nice dose of humour.

Please share with us about your amazing journey from a Copy Writer to a Creative Director and now an Author?

I have been a copywriter throughout my career, right since I passed out of IIMC Delhi. Now I am not sure I can do anything else. I have written and conceptualized for all kinds of brands in the last 12 years – right from color cosmetics to newspapers to automobiles to smartphones to airlines to luxury homes to tractors to fashion brands to masalas to anything and everything. 

It’s been one hell of a journey filled with crazy adventures, methodical madness, endless all-nighters, sleepless nights, mind-numbing exhaustion, 48-hour shifts, hectic shoots, award seasons, at times a lot of self-doubt, failure, and always coming back with a break-through idea. 

From here on, only something amazing can happen. There’s a lot of more to be done both as a creative person and as an author.  

How can a writer keep the mental block or writer’s block away from his/her creativity?

With experience, everyone develops a sort of ritual or process to deal with it, writers after all are creatures of habit. Even as an advertising copywriter, I face this quite often. A deadline doesn’t help much either. But unlike my initial years, I don’t get all worked up now, I know inspiration is going to strike at the moment I least anticipate.

At Sharing Stories, we have an ongoing campaign ‘Let’s Empower Our Youth’. Please suggest some books which you think every child should read before the age of 15 (mostly the character-defining age) which will teach them life lessons. Things like empathy, sympathy, relationships, etc.

Diary of Anne Frank 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Rapid Fire Round

Favourite Place – Austrian Lake District, it’s prettier than a fairy tale.

Favourite Person – It’s very hard to find a person sillier than me.

Food – Luchi and Chicken Curry on most days.

Beverage – Lemon Iced Tea all the way.

Your Other Talents – Serial plant murdering, nonstop daydreaming, effortless people intimidating, everything organizing, boredom killing…it’s endless. 

Your First Love – Dancing, when compared to it, walking is so overrated.

Favourite Quote – “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

—Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Favourite Character from a Book – Sherlock Holmes, Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium Series, Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind, Jane Austen’s Emma.

What if Round 

What if you had to live with only three things all your life, what would the three things be?

Internet, unlimited supply of lemon iced tea and ‘hope’.

What if you were given the power to change one thing from this world, what would you change?

I would change the power and make it power to change many things. 

What if you had all the money in this world, what would you do first?

Buy a fancy yacht, wear a vintage Chanel swimsuit, take a trip around the world and maybe never return.