I love words, I always have. The short and the long ones; the twisty, winded ones; the ones that smell of books and bring with them the whiff of an idea; words that open up like treasure boxes; that crackle and rattle and snap and slur; words that break your heart and fix it. 

I was born in Mumbai and spent my childhood frequenting the neighbourhood library, making up mysteries that my friends and I could solve, running a penpal club (yes, we wrote letters then!), putting up badly produced theatre performances for my unfortunate parents to suffer through, and writing poems in which sense was sacrificed to rhyme. 

I think I knew very early on that I wanted to be a writer. My favourite subject at school was English; all I needed was a writing prompt and I was off like a hare. I studied English Literature at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and it was the most exhilarating thing: to read and write my way to a degree. If I could return to college again, I’d still study English Literature. There are thousands of books out there, thousands of stories told by thousands of authors –  and one life. It doesn’t feel fair at all. 

I took a Master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University because I thought that writing for magazines and newspapers would give me an excuse to roam the world and to meet all kinds of people – which it did. I wrote for news outlets in the United States, Japan and India, and I was often drawn to offbeat stories. An elephant who painted for a living; old Mumbai mansions going under the hammer; the last Japanese soldiers of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. Stories that didn’t have short shelf lives, like news articles do; stories that gave me the space to stretch and fold my words around the experience. 

It was at The Japan Times in Tokyo that I started writing a fortnightly children’s book review column called On the Book Trail. The books began to turn up at my office by the boxload, and as I read them, I fell in love with children’s literature. It was as if I was back in the neighbourhood library of my childhood, and my imagination found its wings again. 

My first book Wisha Wozzariter was about me, wishing I were a writer and writing my way to becoming one. I never imagined, for a minute, that a tiny 77-page novella would win the Crossword Award. The message took its time to sink in: maybe, just maybe, if so many people had enjoyed reading my book, I was a writer after all? 

I went on to write Horrid High and after, Horrid High:Back to School, Twice Upon a Time and now, more recently, Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words. I quit journalism. I wrote some more. Each time, I tried something new: a plot-driven school adventure (the Horrid High books), a fairytale retold (Twice Upon a Time), a book for grown-ups (Maidless in Mumbai), a biography (B.R. Ambedkar), and most recently, a book (Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words) that seems to be finding readers both young and old.

When I’m not writing and reading, I love being outside, swimming and walking, or dancing salsa, or learning a new language. (Right now, it’s Portuguese!) It’s in these quiet moments that the words begin to swirl again, to take new shape, and there’s the promise of meeting a new book as one might make a new friend, of getting to know it, word by word, and page by page.