On Thursday the 29th of May 2025, I went to an author talk. The author went by the name Shankari Chandran and the talk was around her latest book Unfinished Business.

I’d never been to an author talk before, but I felt compelled to go to this one. It was an intuitive calling.

And before I could decipher the reasoning behind it, I had already purchased the tickets for an evening with my one of my favourite authors.

Shankari Chandran had an aura to her. She wore these simple yet beautiful gold bangles that took me back to my childhood in Mumbai, and had a calm demeanor to her, as she stepped through the plot of her latest book.

Her history as a lawyer in the social justice field, and her passion for story-telling really shone through her latest novel – Unfinished Business. Having just finished reading the book myself, I can safely say that it was one of a kind novel. Chandran highlighted the atrocities of the civil war in Sri Lanka, which went on for almost 26 years and accounted for the loss of almost 100,000 lives.

The way she depicted facts from the human rights reports through a fictional story line made my heart bleed. The words used painted pictures so vivid that I felt as though I was on the journey with the protagonist. Without revealing too much about the novel itself, I can safely say that Unfinished Business managed to open up my world to a whole other genre. And encouraged me to want to learn more about the history of a country that was never on my radar in the past.

But more than the book itself, I want to dedicate this small but humble blog post to Shankari Chandran herself. As a South Asian woman myself, it is very rare to find other women of colour who have successfully made it in the creative field of writing. Growing up in a culture and a household that always encouraged stability over everything else. It was very challenging for me to find my writer’s voice. But I always felt a calling for something more. And as an avid reader, I always leaned into reading as my safe space.

When everything around me crumbled, I turned to writing to help me sift through the noise in my head. Words never failed me. But seeing very few female South Asian authors in mainstream media made it difficult to find inspirational role models. Until I came across Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

I was in the midst of giving up on my second manuscript ‘Chaotic Misfits’ until I went to the author talk with Shankari Chandran. Maybe it was a glitch in the matrix or an inevitable sign from the universe, but after that evening my fire to keep writing was reignited.

So I want to say thank you Shankari Chandran. For giving women like myself hope and inspiration to keep writing.