Many people believe there’s a writer within them. How did you make that come true and how did Ancient Promises happen?

I’d always enjoyed writing, even as a child, and I was never in any doubt that being a writer was the best job in the world. I also had a great-uncle who was an acclaimed writer (Thakazhi Sivasankaran Pillai) and seeing him turn up in Delhi to collect various awards and rake in the accolades only strengthened that opinion.

Ancient Promises, however, had a rather prosaic start, growing out of a spell of joblessness and a desire to teach myself word processing functions. All I’d intended doing was write a two or three page memoir which I would then use to spell-check, cut and paste etc. It might sound trite but, once I started to write, I could not stop and, before I knew it, I had about 40 pages, and the beginnings of a novel.

What was the leap to commercial fiction like? Is it possible to handle serious themes in this genre?

Absolutely possible, commercial fiction writers do it all the time. Marian Keyes, for instance, has tackled domestic violence in This Charming Man and mental health issues in The Brightest Star in the Sky.

When I was commissioned to write the ‘Secrets’ series, Harper Collins in the UK wanted many of the standard features of commercial fiction, such as glamorous characters and far-flung settings. But they gave me free rein with the themes and stories so Secrets & Lies is about bullying and an abusive childhood, Secrets & Sins explores infidelity and A Scandalous Secret follows a girl who was given up at birth so it’s about maternal rejection in a way. I don’t think I could write frothy and inconsequential books, regardless of the genre. I’m terrible at humour too so certainly couldn’t do the rom-com sort of writing, alas!

What are the women in your novels like, what qualities do you give them?

They’re usually strong and stubborn (so I wonder what that says about me!) Occasionally, I might develop a character who is more diffident and uncertain of herself, like Sam in Secrets & Lies or Neha in A Scandalous Secret. In my opinion, self-doubt is not necessarily a negative trait in moderation as those people are, by and large, more reflective and think through their actions better than others. They also give a novelist better opportunities for ‘inner dialogue’!

Tell us about the anthology on Motherhood you’ve just edited. Interesting stories or lessons that emerged?

It turned into one of the most interesting writing projects I’ve taken on. I did it only to fulfil a pledge I made when I was invited to an event hosted by Save the Children but, once I’d decided to ask my writer friends and acquaintances to contribute, it took on the energies and enthusiasms of all those talented writers. The synergies were fantastic and we not only met the planned deadline of International Women’s Day this year for publication, we even managed to rush enough copies through to be able to launch it at the Jaipur Literature Festival where Shabana Azmi did the unwrapping and made a stirring speech about the problems many mothers in India face. Even though most of the pieces in Mothers & Others offer the middle class, urban view, it nonetheless offers an unusual view of motherhood, moving away from the normal Hallmarks card type of pink-ribbons-and-perfect-roses portrayal.

We have included the archetypal joyous experience, of course, but there are also pieces (fiction and non-fiction) about adoption, special needs, childlessness, bereavement, foeticide and abuse – aspects that are often left out of the general discourse on motherhood. There are top names amongst the contributors – Manju Kapur, Shashi Deshpande, Urvashi Butalia, Bulbul Sharma, Kishwar Desai, Sarita Mandanna, Meena Alexander, Tishani Doshi, Jai Arjun Singh … a truly scintillating line-up of established and new voices. I hope men will read this book too, not least because proceeds go to support Save the Children and Zubaan.

You’ve lived in London and now Delhi. How is the West different for women, in terms of safety, for instance?

It’s vastly different, I have to say. Delhi is no longer the unhurried and romantic place of my youth but is now over-crowded and aggressive and really a quite frightening place to be, especially for a woman. It isn’t that terrible crimes don’t happen in cities like London too but in Delhi this seems almost the norm now. Almost as worryingly, our survival mechanisms turn us all into hostile and pushy individuals and I have to remind myself, when I’m in other cities in the world, that I don’t need to stick my elbows out and fight my corner as fiercely as becomes second nature in Delhi. This level of hostility is driving me away from Delhi actually and I’m currently in the process of emigrating to Trivandrum, where my mother lives. Such a shame as some of my best memories are bound up with the city of Delhi and I still consider most of its citizens as people with great heart.

What do you most enjoy about being a writer, woman and mother?

Fourteen years of being a published writer and I still think it’s the best job in the world so that’s saying something, isn’t it? There aren’t many jobs that allow you the freedom to do it from anywhere in the world, and while sitting around in pyjamas too. Writing enables me, therefore, to spend time between mother in Kerala, mother-in-law in Delhi and daughter in England, which no previous job has allowed before. I feel grateful that I can enjoy time with all these people whose welfare matters a great deal to me. I derive most of my sustenance from family life and friendships and do try to make more time for those than my writing.