I am a full-time writer & a full-time mother though previously I would never have envisioned that product descriptor for myself. Writing was for the romantics (didn’t I know Mirza Ghalib’s life story well enough to shudder at the thought of posthumous fame and riches?) Besides, I was a corporate executive and motherhood, while on the agenda, was meant to add, not subsume. But Life is a tough tango partner and it taught me that a pause can be as significant as a step. Writer-mother – the two are inseparable in their omnipresence: at my writing desk, a part of me is wondering if my daughter will remember not to jump from the school steps and graze her knee; while playing with her, my fictional characters plot their next moves!

I have been writing since 2001 and am happy to report that every morning the steady blinking of the cursor unnerves me – it also spurs me on. Kafka said of writing that it must “… serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us” – it is advice I try to remember as I engage with the world through themes that are important to me.   

A few of my healthy obsessions include Urdu poetry (having grown up on a diet of ghazals and Pakistan TV), Shakespeare, dogs and travel. At some point in my life I want to spend six month-stretches writing in places that inspire me. Imagine, being able to… gaze on endless fields of lavender in Provence, sip Chianti in the lap of Tuscan hills, stroll through white Andalucian villages, lie in the Cumbrian grass and watch daffodils sway. Wishing for too much, you would say? That too, on a writer’s meagre income! Ghalib, as always, has the answer: Hazaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle…

Thousands of desires, each worth dying for…