“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.

The most important person I am grateful to is my 7-year-old daughter, who sees my work as ‘work’ and makes sure that when I am working no one disturbs me. Sometimes, she would stand at the door and allow no one to enter inside the room when I am writing a blogpost or conducting a webinar. Besides her, my whole family has always been supportive.

When and how did the idea of writing books come to you? Can you tell a bit about the books you have written and share a few lines from any of them?

I feel all of us have stories to tell we find hard to express, it is only a matter of time we gain the courage to pen it down and give a form of novel or poetries. As bloggers or writer, eventually we all have this desire to publish our own written work, so with this thought I had published an eBook in 2019 “26 Days 26 Ways for a Happier you” which was also a part of Blogchatter A2Z writing challenge. It is a self-help book, helping you take onus of your life and struggles and work on them, one struggle at a time. After being downloaded for above 1000 times, I made it free to download from my website Sanity Daily.

Recently, I have published my first ever Hindi poetry book named “Ardhaviram” (semi-colon). It is a collection of 24 soulful poetries describing the daily fights we fight within and how we choose ourselves every single day. It is available at Amazon.

You have been actively working to generate awareness about mental health through your blogs. Why do you feel drawn towards this particular issue?

Well, it is a long story but to cut it short, few years back I had suffered a critical illness and during my treatment period, I faced a lot of anxiety issues. I have been there and I know how it feels, where it takes you when no one understands what you are going through and sometimes even you fail to understand what’s exactly happening to you, because we lack awareness on this subject at large scale. The more we talk about it, the more we normalize mental illnesses. I am on a mission to help my readers prioritize their mental health and take complete charge of their life.

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

To raise mental health awareness, I have been trying all the mediums, like blogging, vlogging, Podcasts and YouTube, I try to be consistent everywhere and recently I have finished my certification in Neuro-linguistic programming, so I am NFNLP registered practitioner now. During the pandemic, I have been conducting sessions and workshops for teachers, students and institutes for stress management, mental health management and creative writing as an art therapy. I am writing an eBook side by side, which I plan to release in January.

According to you which are the 5 books everyone should read and also who are your top 3 Authors?

Authors first, my top 3 favorite authors are:

1.) Paulo Coelho (I fell in love with reading with his books, have read almost all of his work)
2.) Sadhguru (for his wisdom and intellect)
3.) Manav Kaul (for the love of Hindi reading)

Top 5 favorite books:

1.) The Alchemist – Paulo Coehlo
2.) Man’s search for meaning – Viktor E. Frankl
3.) The life-changing magic of tyding up – Marie Kondo
4.) You can heal your life – Lousie Hay
5.) Inner-engineering – Sadhguru and also My Gita – Devdut Patnaik

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

I belong to a traditional Marwari family married to a south-Indian family, happily mothering a 7 -year-old girl who calls me her BFF. I am a hard-core optimist and I like being around positive and productive people. I don’t like people who judge others, who are insensitive and ignorant.

Could you share few tips for Young Authors?

I would say that don’t write because everyone is writing, write when you are ready. Stories happen throughout your life-span but it is that one moment when you actually feel to give it a shape of a book. So, wait for that moment, which will be yours. Read a lot, try to read different authors, understand their ways of writing, describing an event, a character. Don’t worry about the length of the book or those 50,000 words, begin with a single word, and try to write 100 words daily and increase the words gradually. Your first draft should be unfiltered, read, edit and proof-read later.

You have maintained a practice of sending handwritten letters ‘#lettersofcompassion’ to your readers and friends under ‘Sanity Daily’. Please let our readers know more about this thoughtful idea and the vision behind this.

Ever since, I got into writing around mental health, I talk to people from different walks of life daily and I came across a feeling of emptiness and loneliness in so many of them. I just thought to come up with a simple gesture that could brighten their day or put a smile on their face. Personal touch to anything helps you form a connection with anyone and writing and sending hand-written letters did solved the purpose to a greater extent. It will be a year of sending love and compassion through a single piece of paper. I love doing it as when I sit to write, I actually sit with that person and try to write what he/she wants to read.

At Sharing Stories, we have an ongoing campaign ‘Empowering Our Kids’ where we are trying to encourage and inculcate reading habit from a young age. We are trying to pick up 20 to 30 must read books for children and try and make them available at our library in Jaipur, also take this initiative across the globe. Please suggest some books which you think every child should read before the age of 15 (mostly the character defining age).

Books by Sudha Murthy, Ruskin Bond, Enid Blyton and Dale Carnegie.
Diary of a wimpy kid, I am Malala, Anne Frank: The diary of a young girl, Harry Potter.

Rapid Fire Round

Favorite Place, Person, Food, Beverage- Place : Jaipur (native place) Person: Father Food: Dal, rice and potato fries, Beverage : COFFEE

Your other Talents- Singing, Dancing and Home décor.

Your First Love- Guitar

Favorite Quote- Swami Vivekananda’s Quote: “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it; think of it; live on that idea. Let the brain, the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”

Favorite Character from a book- Hard-core non-fiction reader

What if Round

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

My daughter, books and a laptop.

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

Oh, I wish I could just change the way people see the ones going through mental illness.

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

I will travel the world with my daughter starting from Paris.