Megha Bajaj has written several books (and many more are on their way – including a National Bestseller). An editor once commented, “Megha can take the most complex of subjects and make them appear so simple. She has brought God into the neighbourhood, through her words.” Her niche is writing biographies of inspiring personalities from across the globe and she has this uncanny ability to sniff stories from anywhere and everywhere and make them come alive in the most beautiful ways. In her own words: 

Stories are here, there, everywhere. Like rats running upon the grey pathways. Or stars shooting across the inky skies.

They cross us in our everyday lives, like the saree clad, red bindi aunty you met beside the vegetable vendor and smiled at. Or grow with us, like the hands of your grandmother, which aged and wrinkled a little more since you last visited her.

Some stories are pungent – like mango pickle. Your face scrunches in all possible directions, but you know, you just loved what you bit into. Other stories are bland – like water. Tasteless, and yet so essential to our being.

From the time I was a little girl, stories have wooed me. Ask the four year old me, “How was your weekend?” and instead of the common, “I watched Doordarshan with my cousins, and collected shells upon a seaside,” I would respond with trysts with dragons and flights upon mammoth butterfly wings.

I wasn’t lying. I just could not help the overactive thalamus – imagination was something I caught upon the first breath itself. And it’s grown into epic proportions within me.

As I grew up, storytelling became my very nature.

I realized the way I see, listen, taste, touch and smell the world is so delightful, so intense, so beautiful that I simply had to let others know what was going on.

Words became my companions and I held onto them for dear life. To make sense, and non-sense out of everything that was.