I have lived across deserts, mountains and cities, carrying stories with me in battered trunks, old photographs and memories gathered along the way.
For more than two decades, the Indian Army took me to places I might otherwise never have known, and into the lives of people very different from myself. Somewhere along the way, I became interested less in extraordinary events than in ordinary lives: in what people say and what they leave unsaid, in the ties that bind families together, in the choices people make for reasons that may not always be visible to others, and in the moments that stay with us long after they have passed.
Perhaps that is why I am wary of easy judgments.
People are rarely only generous or selfish, brave or afraid, kind or cruel. Two people can remember the same moment differently and both can be telling the truth. A decision can hurt someone without having been made with cruelty. Sometimes there is no final explanation or neat reconciliation. Life carries on anyway.
Those are often the places from which my stories begin.
I have always chased rainbows and been caught red-handed in the act of gathering fleeting moments, stolen smiles and the small details of everyday life. Some become fiction. Some remain memories. Others wander somewhere between the two.
The stories here move through families, friendships, marriages, villages, railway compartments, government offices, mountain roads and homes left behind or returned to. India is never very far from my writing, although I now live in the United Kingdom. Distance has changed the way I see home. What once felt familiar can look different from afar.
I do not always know what I think about my characters when I begin writing them, and I prefer it that way. I am less interested in deciding who was right than in understanding why people did what they did. Sometimes forgiveness matters more than explanation. Sometimes nothing needs to be fixed. Sometimes life simply has to be allowed to take its course.
And through all of this, I still believe a cup of masala chai can solve most of the world's problems.
Not because it provides answers. It just slows people down long enough to sit together and listen.
So, if you have found your way here, pull up a chair.
The chai is warm.
Perhaps somewhere in these stories you will recognise a person, a place, a feeling, or something you thought only you remembered.