Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi

Bestselling author Alka Joshi returns to discuss her newest historical fiction novel, Six Days in Bombay. Inspired by the enigmatic life and mysterious death of Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil—dubbed the Frida Kahlo of India—Joshi weaves a rich narrative through the eyes of a fictional nurse, Sona, who cares for a dying artist and embarks on a journey across 1930s Europe to fulfill the artist’s final request. With vivid research, immersive sensory detail, and reflections on identity, loss, and artistic legacy, Joshi and host Jane Healey dive deep into the novel's origins, character development, historical settings, and Joshi’s creative process—including updates on her adaptation of The Henna Artist and a preview of her next novel. Jane Healey

Transcript

Jane: 0:02

Welcome to Historical Happy Hour, the podcast that explores, new and exciting historical fiction novels. I'm your host, Jane Healey, and in today's episode, we welcome back bestselling author Alka Joshi, to discuss her latest novel, six Days in Bob May, which released on April 15th. Welcome back Alka. Thank you so much for doing this again.

Alka: 0:23

Thank you for having me, Jane. I love doing this with you. I think you're, providing a service for a lot of people who may not hear about our books otherwise, so I really appreciate it.

Jane: 0:33

Oh, thank you. I'm gonna do a quick bio for you and then we'll dive into questions. I love the book as I was just telling you, Alka Joshi is the author of the Instant New York Times Bestseller and Reese Witherspoon. Hello Sunshine Book Club. Pick the Hena Artist, which was the first book in her jpo trilogy. The Hena artist has been translated into 29 languages. In 2024, Joshie was selected for the Forbes 50, under 50 lists, celebrating women who are shattering. Oh, 50, over 50 lists, celebrating women who are shattering age and gender norms across all sectors of the American enco economy and culture. Six Days in Bombay is her fourth novel. Again, welcome. Thank you so much.

Alka: 1:17

I love this. I love this. All of your, readers are all saying, hello from Boston. Hello from here. Hello from Minnesota. I love this. I love that. I love

Jane: 1:25

that too. I love to see where people are, are zooming in from. We have over a hundred registered tonight, which is awesome. So this was your fourth and it was separate from your trilogy and it's, it was inspired by the Indian artist Amrita. She gill. Who is often called the Frida Kahlo of India. So one of the main characters in the book is inspired by her. Talk about this artist and how you came to write this story and, and the premise of the novel.

Alka: 1:54

Years ago when I was researching the Hena artist, I ran across this name of an artist who used to live in the thirties and forties, and her name was Ritha Cher Gill. And I thought, well, who in the world is this? And so I read a little bit more about her and I thought that because of her name, she was. Indian Aretha Cher Gill, but it turns out that her father was Indian, but her mother was a Hungarian opera singer. So she had this lavish kind of life that she lived and grew up in, in Europe. She was a painting prodigy. So all of a sudden, she is winning all kinds of awards. Her mother is taking her to painting Tudors in Florence and Paris. She just has this lovely life and, private schools wants for nothing. And then decides to start painting in India. She starts painting in India, and starts, getting this fabulous acclaim that she was already getting in France. And at the age of 28, she shows up at a hospital in India complaining of abdominal pain, and two days later, she slips into a coma and dies Now. She was only 28, and so I think that because she died so early and so long ago, we don't know anything about her. And most of us have never heard of her out here in the west. But I think that had she lived longer, I think that we would know her as, well, as we know Frida Callow, I. Or Georgia O'Keefe. I think, female artists often get forgotten unless they kind of live some extraordinary life or live a really long life. And, so, Ritha was, in addition to just being a great painter, was very promiscuous, was very bold, was very outspoken about her political views and wanting to make sure that India got her independence. She was just like out there with all of her opinions. And so I admired this about her. And I thought I would like to explore not only how she died, maybe I can make up some fictional story about how she died since it's never clear exactly what happened in that hospital and why when she was on the mend, would she have died two days later. So I thought, let me explore her story from the point of view of the death, and then have somebody try to solve the mystery of the death. And I thought, what. Perfect person to do that. Then the nurse who is taking care of her and getting to know her in the hospital while, this painter is recovering the fictional painter. And I thought, okay, the real painter died within two days. What if, my painter dies within six days? That, that seems like a long enough period of time. For the nurse and the painter to try to get to know each other. And so during that period, while the nurse is getting to know the painter, she is learning all these things about her past, lovers and friends. The painter dies and leaves the nurse for paintings with a cryptic note indicating that the nurse should travel to Europe and deliver these paintings to the painter's, former friends and lovers. Well, the nurse goes on this journey, and by the time she concludes that journey. Prague, Paris, Florence, London, back to Bombay. She has discovered the reason why this young woman died, and she also discovers more about herself and her mixed parentage. So that's what the story is about, and I think it was, such a wonderful way for me also to explore the many different kinds of people who have lived in India over the years, but also them to give some kind of recognition to the actual painter, Aretha Cher Gill. On whom that fictional painter was founded.

Jane: 5:24

So fascinating. It's such a fascinating story. I loved the novel and I love to hear the premise, like the origin story of, of your ideas. I think I always find that interesting. So it, it, the novel revolves around this unlikely friendship between this, which really sheltered nurse named Sona. Who is taking care of the artist? Who in the book is fictionalized named Mira, who is kind of like all the things you just described, the real artist, and, and they do. You know, it's like, I, I was thinking about it when I was reading. It's, two women who kind of met at the, at the right time in their lives. And it, and, and so Mira really has an impact on soda even though they didn't know each other for very long at all. How did you develop these two characters and their dynamic?

Alka: 6:07

It sort of happened because this is kind of the way that the nurse is finding out about the painter is the way that I was finding out about the real life painter. So initially, when I find out about her and how popular she was in her time period, I. I am looking at her the way the nurse is looking at her patient. Wow. What an incredible woman so young in her twenties, so prolific with the painting and so out there with her views. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could be a devil, may care kind of person. I. I'm not, I don't know about you, Jane, but, but I am not, and most of us are not. And I think this is why we find these larger than life people so fascinating because we think, well, how did they get the chutzpah to be able to go out there and be this amazing person? So that's how I was looking at her. And then I started doing all of this research. There are books that have been written about her, by her nephew and by various art critics in India. And so I found all these books. I went to New Delhi. I looked at the, the Modern Art Museum in New Delhi where you can find all of her paintings. About 19 paintings are exhibited there, and I just fell in love with the paintings. I thought, oh my God, this woman was only 20 and doing so many incredible things with her painting. Just imagine if she could have lived to 40. Or 60. And so the nurse is also looking at the painter in this exalted way, but the more she finds out about her, the way I was finding out about the real painter, the more she's finding out that, the painter was a far more complicated person than just somebody to be admired like this, that maybe one of the reasons why she was so driven in her painting was because she was compensating for something else. And I think that, we find out. Throughout the novel, through the eyes of the nurse, that sometimes when we're looking at somebody and putting them on a pedestal, maybe we need to step back a little bit and go, ah, they're just human. We are all just human. We're all trying something. And maybe sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But we're imperfect. Sometimes, our, our work makes it to the foreground. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes we make an impact on people, sometimes we don't. And I just ultimately through the nurse had to decide that, we are all pieces of a person. We show one piece to another. We show another piece to someone else, we, nobody really gets to know the measure of us unless they have lived with us a long time or been part of our family. And so that's kind of, how we end up with six days in Bombay. We know a lot more about the painter's life, and now we also then know a lot about the nurse's life and why she was so compelled to go on this trip on behalf of the painter.

Jane: 8:56

That is a great segue into the trip because this is, I mean, this is just one of these, like immer, you're so good at like setting and and atmosphere and you, you bring in smells and tastes and so this, someone on the nurse ends up taking this like epic journey to, let me make sure I got Bombay, which is now Mumbai, and then to onto Istanbul, Prague. Florence, Paris and London. And I read in your notes that you visited all these cities, you did extensive research for this story. Talk about your, your research and your process, and if anything surprised you along the way.

Alka: 9:32

As you know from reading my novels, I like to have my readers understand, exactly what, where we are going and what we're smelling, what we're tasting, what we're hearing.'cause I want them to stand, side by side with the protagonist and the characters of the book. So, of course I have to go travel to all these places. My life is hard and so. So, yes, in Istanbul, I went to, all of the tea houses and I went to the Hagia Sophia, and I saw all the mosques and so on. And, I had to figure out how in 1937 when the novel takes place, how did people travel from Bombay into Europe? Well, they used to take this fancy steamship called the RMS Viceroy, and it had indoor pools and badminton courts and, cigar rooms and ballroom. It had everything that, modern day cruise lines do, and it was very expensive. But I will leave the readers to figure out how our very humble nurse. Of humble origins gets to afford, this trip to, through the Suez Canal and onto Istanbul from Istanbul. Passengers would, get off and then take one of the six. Orient expresses that they would take into Europe. So one Orient Express would go into Prague, another one might go into Paris and so on. So our nurse is going to take one of these Orient expresses. Now, I love the whole idea of Agatha Christie murder on the Orient Express. I think it's so glamorous and so I had so much fun researching all of that and how I would, be in a sleeper car and I'm just imagining myself in there. I'm imagining the Porter taking down my. From my seat into a bed, every night turning down my bed and, being able to go into the dining car, which everybody had to get dressed up for, like no jeans, no sweatshirts in 1937, right? The women were all wearing gowns and the men are all wearing, soup coats and so on. And then. I have her go from Prague, which is where her father is from, which which is where the painter's father is from and where the painter grew up. Then I have her go from there to Paris and then to Florence, and then finally to London. And now before I start on any of this journey myself. I have to find experts in each of these places so they can walk me around where I think my protagonist is supposed to be going. And so I found, art critics, I found art historians, photo archivists, academicians, experts in the interwar periods. So they could tell me about 1937. And I made appointments with them before I started traveling. So in Prague, I met Martina, who is a professor of psychology and took me through a walking tour all over Prague where she felt my protagonist would go. And she took me into all of these exhibitions, to show me what people were. What kind of furniture they were buying, what kind of, glassware they were using, that kind of thing. And then in Prague, I, found that in 1937 there was a World's Fair, and it was where Picasso painted Guernica, which is one of his most famous paintings, and why he painted it in 1937 was because the fascists and the Nazis had just bombed this town in Catalonia that he loved. And so it became a statement, a revolutionary statement for him, and I found that artists were oftentimes in that era, especially in Paris, making all these relu re revolutionary statements. Then I dropped down to Florence and I met Samuele. Samuele is an art historian. He teaches at the University of Milan, but he took a train down to Florence to meet me and walked me all through Old Florence to show me where the protagonist, would have gone. In search of the painter's life and in the real life painter, Amitha Cher Gill's experience. She studied at one of the academias in, Florence. So I got visited that and tried to figure out, okay, how would she have, been a student here? What, what would her. Experience have been like, and I found out this one interesting thing. There's a beautiful shopping area in Florence called the Via Torn. That's where all the really fancy, very expensive shops are. At the very end, there is a Palazzo Faro. And of course that was where the designer Faragamo, was making his shoes for women. Well, Mussolini is in power at this time, and Mussolini says, Faragamo, you cannot, make your heels from steel any longer. Your stilettos are gonna have to be made out of some other material because steel is not manufactured in Italy, and I only want you to use materials that are manufactured in Italy. So what does Ferma do? He designs these cork wedge heels, which he thought were kind of ugly. But they took off like a house on fire number one, because they're Ferragamo branded, but also because they were really comfortable for women as opposed to stilettos, which made their back hurt all the time. So just, I mean, all the little details that you learn as you go along are amazing. I also learn. That, and this kind of made me proud, that, Amrita, the real painter's family had moved back and forth from Europe to India, consistently before World War ii. And the reason they kept going to India is because they were escaping persecution, by the Nazis because Aretha's mother was, Jewish. They were escaping persecution by the Nazis in coming to India. And I thought, well, that's interesting. What is that all about? Then I learned that, the Jewish people had been coming to India for over 2000 years to escape persecution from other lands. They had always been welcomed in India and in Mumbai alone, there are eight synagogues. There are kosher butcher shops, there are kosher bakeries. I mean, there's, there's a whole, a microcosm of a Jewish life that happens in India. And our earliest Bollywood actresses in the 1920s were all Jewish women, because Hindu and Muslim women were not allowed to perform on, the big screen. They were not allowed to perform in public. So it was only Jewish women who were allowed to do that. And so they became our earliest, bombshells, basically. I mean, just all, I just, I love historical fiction for this reason. And then I get to. Find all these little tidbits and then find a way to incorporate them into the story.'cause I have to, I know my readers are gonna find these interesting too. So I have to find some way to get all these tiny little, gems into the story.

Jane: 16:10

Oh. And so good. And, you know, you really picked terrible cities to visit. I mean, I was like, if you, if you had like, set up a tour, it's just amazing. Do you have, did you, did you have a favorite city that you went to? I,

Alka: 16:24

I did, so in 1978, I had gone to Prague because I spent my junior year in Florence, at the, at the college program. And, I took a trip, you know, took a side trip in the wintertime and went to Prague. Prague in 1978 was still communist, so it was very medieval. There were no billboards anywhere. There's no advertising in a communist state. Right? And so everything was very somber. Nobody spoke any English. I was very interested in going back to Prague to see what it's like in 2024.'cause I just went there last year and it is so different. It is like a very clean and beautiful and Cafe laden. Paris, that's what it's like. And so that became my favorite city because, it was like Paris, but not as crowded as Paris. It was still pretty crowded. But, you know, everything was so clean. You know, the sidewalks are clean. You can walk everywhere. You can feel safe everywhere you go. I just, I loved it. And the food was incredible. The food was incredible.

Jane: 17:27

I've heard, yeah. My husband had to travel there for work and I never made it'cause the girls were little, but but yeah, that's on, that's on my list. It sounds amazing.

Alka: 17:35

And you know, one of the things I love is to talk about food in all the places that I go. Yes. I'm, I'm surprised that I, that I don't look like an elephant because I love to eat. I love to, I love to sample food from different areas and I love to talk about food. And oftentimes when I am actually writing about the food, I get so hungry, Jane, I just have to put everything, down. And I have to say to my husband, honey, we have to go out, we have to go out to a restaurant which serves this kind of food, Baltic food, French food, Italian food.

Jane: 18:09

I know Denise. Oh, God says, I love all the food in your books. I do too. I love, I love foodie food. I'm a foodie too. I love foodie descriptions. It's so fun. Oh, I had a question. So I wanna talk about time period. Your choice of time period this time.'cause the henna artist begins in the 1950s in India. Six days in Bombay goes back in time to the Inter Warriors 1930s. Talk about the historical landscape in India and Europe and, and writing about that time period and, and what was that like compared to the Hena artist trilogy? I.

Alka: 18:41

I wanted to mirror as closely as possible to the real painter's life. And right before she died, now she died in 1941, which was too close to World War ii, for my comfort because I didn't want the world wars to take away from her story. And so I set the novel in 1937, which I felt was far enough away from World War ii, but at the same time, in 1937, what's happening in India? Is that there is a huge movement afoot to get the British out. You know, please, you've been here for 300 years, we welcomed you and now you oversee you're welcome. Please go. And so, the nurse who is half Indian and half British, because those kinds of alliances between the British employees and the Indian women were encouraged for, over 300 years by the East India Company, so that they could have. Sort of a bridge between the two cultures and the two languages. It's not so fashionable anymore to have that alliance, and Sona is a product of one of those alliances. And so she is looked at a little suspiciously by Indians. Who think does she owe her allegiance to the British or to us? Sona is, product also of, she's the target of people who are now calling her Blacky White and all these racial slurs against her. So she has to be very careful where she steps, and there's a lot of resentment towards the British. And it's only 10 years from independence, so we know it's coming. We know it's coming. I. Now in, Europe, by the time our nurse gets to Europe, she finds the same thing is happening. This, all this underground rebellion is going on against the fascists and the Nazis. So wherever she happens to be, there's a lot of looking over your shoulder kind of business. People are just not quite sure what they can say. Outright and what they need to be careful about being able to say, because you don't know if there are spies in your midst. And you don't know if you'll be caught. So even though she herself is half Indian, half British, she realizes that wherever she's going, whether it's the Czech, the French, the Italians. There is a lot of uncertainty and some upheaval, that is about to happen. And it's so interesting to me. I didn't even know, I never made the connection between all these parts of the world where, there's a lot of uncertainty and rebellion going on. I had not even considered that, but, finding that there was this symbiosis all around the world, was really fascinating. And then of course, we learned from, Sona, our nurse because she is a, the product of an Indian, mother and a, an English father, a father who abandoned the family when she was only three years old and went back to England to the first family that he had left in order to work in India. She has a lot of resentment towards that father, and, she doesn't know why, why couldn't she be loved enough for him to stay in India with her and her mother? I. And she has to get to some sort of reconciliation about the resentment that she has towards him and maybe try to find out where he is. So we don't know quite, at the start of the journey, I. Whether she is going to try to find him in London or whether she's going to give up on that and just go back to Bombay. So I think that this is something that she has to find out for herself, and I didn't know up until the very end whether she was going to go to find that father or not. It's so interesting, right, how these characters take up. A life of their own, and they let us know whether they wanna do something, not do something. They have very clear ideas about how their lives should go, and I just have to listen to them.

Jane: 22:26

It's so interesting. I, I, this actually brings me to my, I wanna talk, I have some writing related questions, because. I love talking about process and, and how how you develop story and the fact that you didn't know the ending and, because I'm more of a plotter. And I remember our conversation from last time'cause I was like, wow. Like you, you map out scenes in your head for a while before you get them on paper. So, so tell everyone about your process and I just wanna know if it evolved since, since the trilogy with this book, or has it stayed pretty much the same?

Alka: 23:01

It has stayed pretty much the same. It always starts with one scene. And for me, in six days in Bombay, it's the first scene that you read about, which is where, the nurse is learning that she is now being put in charge of this very famous patient who has just come in. And luckily the nurse has actually rent. Things about this patient because she's also famous in Calcutta, also famous in Bombay. Her art has become famous and, she's excited about wow, you know, being able to be in charge of this particular woman. And over time she learns that, the painter is very, she's very intrusive in a way. She wants to know all about Sonas personal life. She wants to know, you know, has she ever had sex? Has she been involved with anybody? Has she, you know, what, what does she feel about her father? And Sonas very like, taken aback because in that time period also people didn't really talk about their personal lives very much. And she's thinking, wow, this is a whole different kind of person. I've never been. Opposed to before, she's a little bit like fearful and resentful of the painter for being so intrusive, but also I think very ad admiring of a woman who is able to be that forthright and then the painter shares with, the nurse, all the many. You know, people that she has slept with. I mean, the painter slept with men and she slept with women and she seduced anybody. She seduced everybody that, came along. So, so my process is that first scene came and then from that scene I knew that it was gonna lead to another scene where now we see the nurse thinking about her life. And now we need to know what the nurse's life is like. So then I tell you a little bit about, how she grew up and what, who her father was and who her mother is. And now we see her in her home environment.'cause that's the best way for us to see how her life goes. And it just goes from one scene to the next, to the next. I just let the scenes unfold just like that. And I don't start writing until I actually have most of the story in my head. And then I can start writing. I make notes. Right. So I have my phone and, and I will start, you know, like I, I wa speak into the voice recorder, or I make little notes in the note, you know, memo. I, I just like make little notes about things that I think, I don't wanna forget this. I don't wanna forget this. And luckily, because I'm traveling with my iPhone, I can always take pictures. I take pictures of everything that I want to describe later on.

Jane: 25:33

That's good too. Yeah. So interesting. So you had a very successful career in advertising and pivoted to writing novels, later in life and achieved, you've achieved great success. What advice do you have for aspiring writers who may feel like, oh, it's too late. I can't do this. It's never gonna happen for me.

Alka: 25:52

Luckily, writing is one of those things you can do all the way until the last breath that you take. I think that the older you are, the more experience you have already had with grief, with love, with loss. With changes in your life. And so you can write about those in a very significant and deep way that you can't, I think when you're just in your twenties. In my twenties, I could never have written these books in my thirties. I couldn't have written these books. I needed to go through a certain set of experiences before I could do that. I also think that, and when you're older, you have a, a different sensibility about change in your life and that maybe it's okay to have changes. All your lives you have had change, all your life, things have changed around you, whether it's family, whether it's, death, whether it's, you know, new children coming into your life, new people coming into your life. And so why wouldn't you be able to write about them now in a very different way? I think that there are three things everybody needs in order to write well. Number one is you have to have passion for whatever it is you're writing about. The Hannah Artist came about because my passion was to give my mother a life in fiction that she didn't have. In reality, I. And that person in the book became Lakshmi as a stand-in for my mother. So Lakshmi is doing all the things my mother could have done but didn't do, which is to leave her marriage, keep herself child free while she's doing that, and then to make sure that she could make a living. All on her own terms as a henna artist and an herbal healer. And look at what that, what happened with that. That led to the second book, the Secret Keeper of Jaipur, and then that led to the Perfumers to Paris, and it became a trilogy, which I never expected. So I think you have to have passion to begin with for your subject matter in order for you to keep going with that project. Number two, you have to have persistence. There are so many people along the way who are gonna say, you're not ready to be published yet, as happened to me. You're not ready. You haven't quite learned enough about this. Why don't you work on this some more? How about, yet another revision? I know you've done 20 revisions already, but how about another one? And so that's why it took me eight, eight years, no, nine years, nine years before my agent ever sent off my book to a publisher. Nine years of revisions and revisions and revisions. And then I think the third thing people need is patience with themselves. Mm-hmm. And the patience is, I am not a very patient person, but I had to learn to be patient with myself and say, okay, Alka, it's not gonna happen tomorrow. It's not gonna happen next year. Maybe you're just gonna have to ride it out until somebody says, okay, I'm willing to take a gamble on you. Don't give up until. That happens. So passion, perseverance, and patience. I think those three P's are very important for anybody who wants to write at any age.

Jane: 28:56

Yeah, I can, I could not agree more. That's all excellent advice. I have a couple more questions for you and then if anyone has questions for Alco, put them in the chat or the q and a. I see a couple. I'll, I, so last time we talked Netflix had acquired the rights to the Hena artist, so I have to ask, about the update. I actress Frito Pinto is, is attached to produce and, and star in it. Is that correct? Is that still happening?

Alka: 29:20

Yes. Okay, so here is what I will explain to you, and I think that, this is another thing that I have learned in my, old age and that is that, I think that whenever one door closes, an opportunity comes up. So after four years of being on board with the Hena artists, Netflix finally decided to pull out because we had gone through two different rounds of scripting and they weren't getting the kinds of script that I think they were looking for when they initially, wanted to develop the Hana artist as a TV series. So last. November, late, late in November, they said, okay, you guys we're pulling out. I was only a few weeks away from, re-upping the option for my producers who actually held the option. And I decided at that point, let's just take a breath, let's regroup. Let's try to figure out what is the best way moving forward. The other thing that I wanted is by now I really feel that I have learned enough about the screenwriting process. I've been taking classes, cool and and really learning how to write the screenplays myself. And so I thought, why don't I exert a little more creative control than I got to have in the last four years and sort of take charge of this project? So I, rewrote, along with a friend of mine who is, a director, writer. We rewrote the pitch to take out the project again to another set of producers. So that's where the project is right now. And I do think, you know, my agent says absolutely we're gonna be able to sell it'cause there's a lot of interest in this project and hopefully we will come out with a product that I am really satisfied with. That I think really reflects the book, the Henna Artist. You know, I think that some of the other scripts that I saw weren't reflecting the actual characters and the intention that I have. And my intention is always to show these women in all kinds of different phases of their life and whether or not they have agency and if they don't have agency. How are they struggling to have agency? How are they struggling to get and grab that agency? And that to me is the crux of, this entire trilogy. And I want more than anything just to, you know, be able to convey that in all of the TV series as well.

Jane: 31:47

I love that. I love that you took screenwriting classes and And wrote it yourself too, because that is a whole different beast, right? That kind. Writing.

Alka: 31:55

Writing. I know.

Jane: 31:56

Yeah.

Alka: 31:57

I. Yeah. And it's very exciting. Oh, and then I'll tell you another thing I did, Jane, is, for six days in Bombay, I wanted to, take three scenes from the book and, bring them to life.'cause I wanted to just give people a feel for 1937 and the two main characters, Mira and Sona. And so I teamed up with this director, writer, and she brought in a crew of mainly women. It's like 90% women. And over the course of one day. We filmed three of the scenes from the book. She had already done all of the table reads and cast, the, the three scenes. And so we had this wonderful, opportunity to. Build these little films about six days in Bombay. So that is the same woman once I'd already worked with her on that and they're beautiful. You can see them on my YouTube channel, you can see them on my Instagram. So, they're so professionally produced that I thought I had a really easy time working with that director. I'd like to work with her again so that she's the one that I tapped when I said, you know, I'm interested in exerting more creative control over this next round of the Hannah artist. Could you work with me on it? And she goes, oh my God, I would love to. So

Jane: 33:11

that's Oh, amazing. That's, see, it was, yeah. Serendipity, right? That's so amazing. Yeah.

Alka: 33:16

Yeah. And Frida is still very engaged in the pro, in the project and I know that she would still love to play Lakshmi. So all of that is still in play. And as long as I really feel like, as long as I have Frida in my corner, you know, I know that we're going to be successful producing the Hena artists.

Jane: 33:35

Oh, I have no doubt. I'm so excited for it. Um, and so are you ready to share one more question and then I have like one or two questions for the audience? I don't wanna take up too much more of your time. Are you ready to share what you're working on next? Are you, are you like Yeah, you're in like crazy tour mode, so I don't know if you're working on anything new yet, but

Alka: 33:55

Yeah, I am almost done. I'm doing my final revision of the fifth novel, which is going all the way back to 1920. Now, I had done so much research on the cortisols in the Hena artist. That was where Lakshmi learned how to do Hena art and all of the different designs that she comes up with. But also, I had done research on them in the perfume, Mr. Paris, because the cortisols of Agra all owned a fragrance house, where they made their fabulous sense as well. And so I thought, you know, as I was researching them, I thought these women were incredible. They were really good business women. Mm-hmm. They, with the money that they earned, entertaining all of these very wealthy men, they used them to buy businesses, movie houses, laundries, all kinds of things that they knew would, make them money. And so they were making so much money that they started financing India's independence movement. So the, the movement to get the British out, they were financing. Now, when the British found out about that, they were very upset and, they started taxing the, houses very, heavily. I. To punish them. But in addition to that, they also ruined these women's reputation. They tarnished them by calling them ordinary prostitutes, which they were not. They would only be beholden to one man for a long period of time, and that man would have to take care of any children that resulted from that reunion. Mostly they were entertaining them with these classical arts. And so I just thought, you know, I want to, I wonder what would happen if in the 1920s when no respectable girl was allowed to dance the classical dances at the Cortis dance because they were considered prostitutes at that time and nobody wanted to emulate a prostitute. What would happen if there was a girl who wanted to dance like the cortisone, but she can't find anybody to teach her. Because that is not respectable. She can't even tell her family that this is something she wants to do. They will disown her. And how then if she ab does find a teacher, how will she ever be able to perform in public? That's just not gonna happen. So, so these are all things that I found really fascinating and I thought, I wanna explore a young girl who is trying to learn this dance at the same time. She has lost her mother, and her mother is going through her own transition in this other part of, the city. And I can't give too much away without giving away the novel. So, the, the mother and the daughter are both going through a, a sort of discovery of sorts of what they're capable of doing. Yeah.

Jane: 36:41

Amazing. Amazing. How can readers best stay in touch with you?

Alka: 36:46

Oh. My email is so easy. alka@alkajoshi.com. Since the last time I talked to you, Jane, I've done over 900 book clubs on Zoom, and I still continue to do them every single day. I have either one or two book clubs and it's really fun for me. So now six days in Bombay, everybody is getting lined up to, talk about six days in Bombay. As soon as my book. Tour is over. Boom. I start talking to book clubs on Zoom. And so the other way that people can of course stay in touch with me is to go to my website, alka joshi.com and, my Instagram channel, which I love, love, love keeping up with. I think it's so much fun to have an Instagram channel and a Facebook account.

Jane: 37:30

Excellent. Excellent. Well, we've already gone over and I feel like I could talk to you for another hour. I love talking to you. I'm so happy you came back and I'm so thrilled. Congratulations on the success with of six Days in Bombay. Everyone should read it. And, and you know, I'll, you'll have to come back for the next one because that sounds Absolutely. Thank you. Absolutely. So that's all for tonight. Thank you so much for everyone for coming. Thank you so much, Alka. Remember to subscribe. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow the podcast wherever you listen for podcasts. Have a great night, Alka.

Alka: 38:02

Thank you.