Nikhil Lodha

I was born and raised in a small town near Ahmedabad, in a Rajasthani family living among Gujaratis. Like a good proportion of the country’s populace, I grew up in a lower-middle-class family where fantasy and imagination were the only toys at hand. At the age of thirteen, I realised that I was really good at visualising things, and structures, and people. I even started marking errors in the stories published in regional newspapers. Sometimes I would read true crime stories in the newspapers to understand how the police find out the details of a crime. I loved it. I penned my first story at the age of thirteen and soon accepted that I neither knew anything beyond my world of existence nor the art of writing itself. I loved reading, but my town had no library and I did not have enough money to approach the bookstore. Eight years later two things happened – engineering, and I drafted 70,000-word story. I absolutely loathed both. I deleted the copy and quit writing for another three years before I sat down to write this story. At this point, I feel, there are only three things that are and will remain constant in my life – coffee, books and Pink Floyd, in that order. Beside thrillers, I love history and historical fiction and I hope one day I shall be qualified enough to write one. I currently work in an Internet advertising company that deals with the nuances of digital advertising. That keeps me closer to technology, where I feel most comfortable.