A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support me on the day of my book launch—it truly meant the world, especially as we braved that unexpected scorcher of a day together! I’m so excited to finally share True Love Again with you. Writing this feel-good romance, filled with warmth, hope, and a cast of loveable characters, has been a real joy. At its heart, the story is about second chances—at life, at love, and at happiness. If you or someone you know enjoys heartwarming stories with emotional depth, I promise this one won’t disappoint.
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Reflecting on Five Years of Writing
Reflecting on Five Years of Writing
This month marks a significant milestone for me—five years since the publication of My Heart Sings Your Song, the first book in the Reena & Nikesh University series. It’s hard to believe that in January 2020, I took the first step in a journey of telling my story, the story of the birth of our profoundly disabled son. A story that changed my life in so many ways. Later in March, the second book Where Have We Come, a story of baby loss and grief followed, solidifying my place as an author and allowing me to connect with more readers.
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Photograph: Gulab Chagger
South Asian Heritage Month
It’s the fifth year of South Asian Heritage Month in the United Kingdom and this post was going to be a joyous celebration of how far we’ve come. The East African Asian who came to settle in Britain as we elected a new government and said goodbye to Rishi Sunak, who proudly declared that he was the grandson of East African Asian migrants who came to England after the East African countries sought independence from Britain. But the race riots have left a sour taste in my mouth. Once again I am targeted for being the other, the migrant who came to this country. I had hoped that the racial threats and violence I witnessed and experienced as I grew up would not be an experience that my own children would ever have to endure.
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Image created on Canva
Steamy Romance and Emotive Women’s Fiction
A recent comment by a visiting nephew got me thinking. He implied my books were erotica, and he wasn’t sure he’d want to recommend them as I was his aunty. I told him sex is normal and that I’d like him to recommend my emotive women’s fiction if my romance made him uncomfortable.
Later I received a review on Amazon India for My Heart Sings Your Song, that implied that it was all too racy in the bedroom.
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Image: Unsplash
Book Review & TV Adaptations
in Film & TV
A very different blog post. I’ve been reading and watching book adaptations. Not Great Expectations, BBC One, but other books.
Because of the pandemic, many of us switched to the streaming services provided by Amazon Prime and Netflix. You’ve probably watched many mini series and didn’t even know that they were a book adaptation.
Here’s a list of some of my favourite books and recent TV adaptations.
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
This is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay
Anatomy of a Scandal - Sarah Vaughan
Persuasion - Jane Austen
And if you like fantasy dramas, my favourite is The Witcher - Andrzej Sapkowski. For historical fantasy adventure set in 1700 Scotland its Outlander - Diana Gabaldon and finally for a fix of Regency dramas, Bridgerton - Julia Quinn
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Saz Vora - My Heart Sings Your Song and Where Have We Come with Sneha Purohit - Brit:in
Gratitude and Reflection
I haven’t published a blog as regularly as I did last year and the reasons are twofold.
2022 has been a tough year for me and has left me vulnerable in too many ways.
It was a big anniversary year. Thirty years is a long time, but there are days when it only seems like yesterday that we lost our son. I’ve felt sadder than usual this year and I wonder if it’s because I’ve actually told people how I feel about losing him. How that child, who on a molecular level, is still with me or is it because as I get older I’m reflecting on my life more.
I’m in an anxiety loop and this is what it looks like.
I push beyond my well-being and can’t say no to additional work. When I mean work I don’t mean the paid sort, but just stuff that gets piled onto my to-do pile.
As the list gets longer and longer everything crashes down on me and I don’t do any of the things on my list.
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What's in a name
You’d think that was simple to answer, but it’s complicated. My parents are from Gujarat, India, and when you look at their passports, both were born in what is now known as India, before partition. However, after partition 75 years ago my father and his parents migrated to Tanzania, East Africa. To provide ancillary services, shop owners, tailors, cobblers, barbers, and everything else needed for families to settle in another country. South Asian Diaspora and belonging.
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My inspiration, my creative memoir
Thirty years ago, this child came into our life, my creative memoir
My inspiration, my creative memoir. It all started with him thirty years ago this week. Our son came into our lives, turned it upside down and then left us exactly eight weeks later. When it happened, I believe we were in shock and went back to normal. If you call being childless normal, the worst part of it was pretending everything was all right, pretending that your heart wasn’t shattered into tattered rags, some so thin that no matter how much you tried to stitch it together there just wasn’t enough of the cloth left to sew into. So you let them go and they swish around in the cavity that holds your heart. That rag analogy came to me as I write the second draft of my next Bollywood inspired University series duet, Sonali & Deepak. It's a scene when Sonali eventually
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Sisters celebrating Diwali.
Festivals and cultural heritage
Diwali, Deepawali, Divali is celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and some Buddhists. It is an ancient festival mentioned in early scriptures as far back as the 1st millennium CE.
For someone like me who grew up in England, Diwali often coincides with Bonfire Night, 5th November. A burning of the effigy of Guy Fawkes who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
This year, the two events coincide again, and we will have fireworks in abundance across the land.
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Ealing Fiction Panel - Host Lisa Evans, Nicola Rayner, Robin Duval, Saz Vora. Photograph credit Chiswick Book Festival
Personal appearances and the new norm
When the organisers of Chiswick Book Festival contacted me, I felt honoured to join Nicola Rayner and Robin Duval, fellow Ealing authors on the Ealing Fiction Panel. The discussion was great and Lisa Evans did a fantastic job of asking the right questions. It wasn’t a huge turnout but enough to create an atmosphere. If you want to listen to us, it is on the University of West London click on the name to take you their YouTube Channel
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Gently shaking the world with storytelling
‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world’
Mahatma Gandhi
I came across this quote when I was preparing to present for the UK Asian Film Festival Wembley Park's screening for Independence Day. Check out my social media and my YouTube channel for more.
It reflects what I feel about my work. When I first wrote about my experience, I was sure that a memoir wouldn’t be appropriate. After all, I’m not a famous broadcaster, presenter, blogger, or artist. Sure, I’ve won awards, I’ve had nominations, but when you work in television production, you have an entire group of people who work with you to create your work. It isn’t all about me, me, me it’s more us, us, us.
Set-up for online event
Creativity and the challenge of uncertainty
Almost a year ago, I was proofreading the paperback, checking the cover art of my first set of books, My Heart Sings Your Song and Where Have We Come. They had lifted the lockdown in England and we could go away. We booked a mid week break to Brighton, and I waited for the paperbacks to arrive. To say it excited me when they did is an understatement, you’ll get an idea if you read my blog from last year.
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Photo at the UK Asian Film Festival 2021
My heritage and identity, my way.
I thought I’d write about an incident that actually happened to me, an anecdotal retelling. I’ve taken liberties obviously, changed names. But it was real and it made me feel like an alien, like I’d suddenly grown another head, or my mask had slipped and revealed my true likeness. What annoys me is that it’s still happening. Come on people, just because someone decides to wear clothes they identify with, whether it's a saree, salwar kameez, dhoti, sarong, lungi, kitenge, dashiki, kimono, kilt, doesn’t mean they can’t speak English or understand you. Would you ask a Scotsman, ‘Do you speak English?’
It's just a piece of clothing to identify with their heritage and my skin is a layer that protects my vital organs. The combination of both doesn’t make me any different to you.
Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash
Who Am I - Life's most defining question
I’ve been thinking about Identity for a while, wondering why I class myself as a Gujarati, East African, Indian, British.
There’s one group I enjoy connecting with called East African Asian on Facebook and Instagram. I don’t have many memories of my childhood in Tanzania, but those I do are vivid, the sight and sound of the market with my masi and the feeling I had when my dadima pulled at my cheeks, a safari trip when a European offered me a boiled egg, a breakdown of a bus and a giraffe with his dark tongue at the window. My first day at nursery school, trips to the beach. Mostly it's the smells and sounds that take me there, to the land of my birth. But I was told recently that I wasn't East African, that I was Indian and I was back in India and told that I wasn’t Indian but British and I remember being asked where I came from by someone I worked …
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Image of helper at food market, Wembley
Selflessness and acts of kindness
Seva is a Sanskrit word meaning selfless service and perhaps considered the most important part of any spiritual practice. It lies at the heart of the path of karma yoga—selfless action—and asks us to serve others with no expectation of outcome.
Selflessness, I heard this word used often recently in some stories I read and mentioned a lot on social media. It means a giving of yourself wanting no recognition. Not sure if the use of the word in the stories is appropriate for the protagonist, but I understand why. Someone who cares for their friends, family and colleagues. Someone who is always available as a shoulder to cry on and gives back to the community. That image of a selfless hero/heroine, someone who is likeable.
Wishing Shelf Book Awards Finalist Medal, Nikesh & Reena Debut novels and a photograph of my inspiration
Inspiration, Resilience & Amplification
I started this month in trepidation. It is the first year anniversary of the publication of Where Have Come, what should have been a celebration has turned into a time reflecting on what type of society I want to live in.
The date we lost our son is also the date for International Women's Day. He is the inspiration for who I am and what I do now. I believe he has shaped who we are, as a couple, as a family, as parents and most importantly as human beings. I believe we are better people because he came into our life.
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Potato Potaho
There are far too many words for the humble potato and tomato and who doesn’t like a good bateta nu shaak or is it bateka? Even in Gujarati the language many things are pronounced differently too. I came across one of Parle Patel’s skits on Instagram about hando, ondhwo, andhwo, and it started me on a quick research. What do you call potato and tomato in your language? I got a huge response on social media, for our staple go to starch and the fruit that’s disguised as a vegetable.
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Where Have We Come and photographs of our sons
Embracing the unknown
A new year and a new beginning. I used to have new year’s resolutions, but as I grow older and wiser I’ve abandoned them. So I welcome 2021 with a blank slate, not much in the calendar. A huge embrace for the unknown and what the year has in store for me and mine. In this time of uncertainty, it is futile to plan holidays, family gatherings, or even a catch up with friends. It will happen, just be patience. New mantra, it will happen.
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Limited print run of My Heart Sings Your Song and Where Have We Come - University Reena & Nikesh
Reflection on first year of publishing
December for most people is a time for reflection, and this year more than ever has given me a time to think of where I was last year.
If you read my last blog post, I’d already mentioned celebration, and COVID has certainly provided a memento of celebration, albeit differently.
But first let me tell you where I was this time last year;
I published my first blog post
I finished my menus and glossary for my books
I created a file to upload onto Draft 2 Digital, a platform for ebook publishing and distribution
I had artwork back from my book cover designer, the amazing Mita Gohel
It has been quite a year. My journey from wanting to tell my story to finally building the courage to write it down, send it to people who read it, who asked questions, helped hone it. Then sending it into the world for all to read it or not. Self-publishing has been tough. I’ve joined groups where authors have hit the best-seller list on launch day. I even found out that one debut author’s husband sent everyone in his firm, free copies of his wife’s book.
A few of my ardent supporters brought my books and left reviews, one of my nearest and dearest commented, “ all these reviews are from friends, they don’t count.”
Autumn and other .... stuff
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
John Lennon as we remember him on his 80th birthday
It's been tough these past weeks, everyone fearful that the virus is spreading again. Confusion reigns. Only six people can meet in doors, is it the same six people in your bubble? Or can you meet with five different people, one after the other? Are children counted as the six? What about restaurants and pubs? The questions that haunt us all in this time of uncertainty. It’s far too complicated. I feel for all the people who had shielded for so long and had met with loved ones again. The people who are suffering from isolation, and the increasing levels of anxiety.
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