READERS MUSE: Hello Aditti, thank you for consenting to answer questions for Readers Muse. I am so excited to begin!
ADITTI GAUR: Hey! Thanks for having me for your blog, it’s indeed my pleasure!
Who is Adhira?
Adhira is the soul of every single caring heart. She resides in you, me and everyone. She has a very positive attitude towards her life. She lives life to the fullest without expecting anything from anyone and that is what makes her stand out. You will find different shades of her personality in every one. You just have to look at her with a positive vision. She is caring, compassionate & clement but at the same time unfair to herself. She believes only in giving and sometimes it makes us feel she is beyond human but such people do exist in this world. They not only live for others but actually die for others too. And Adhira is one such person, she can die for you. Sounds inhuman – again? I know, but this is what makes her unique and loved by everyone.
From the book, I learn that you have a lot of interest towards music. Please tell me more about that!
Yes. I love music a lot. It’s inseparable from my soul and I cannot even think of any single hour spent without music. Music encourages me, inspires me to write. It motivates me and fills me up with positive thoughts.
Was there one defining moment when you started writing Adhira?
I have no idea since when this story started knitting itself in my mind. Whenever anyone asks me this question, I have no concrete answer. I think I lived this story, it was nurturing within my soul since I started understanding about relationships. I always had a deep fascination towards intense and mature love-stories and that is how all this started. One fine day, I shared the initial idea of Adhira’s story with my husband and he suggested I should write it out. At first, we hadn’t planned to publish it but with time, when he read the entire manuscript, he urged me to get it published as a full-fledged book. That is how this book ‘Adhira’ came into existence.
What do you think are the three most important things people should value in life?
I think people should value themselves first. Because only if you love yourself, can you love others! Loving yourself gives your life a positive attitude towards everything you do and you eventually fall in love with everything by having that positivity in your heart. Secondly, most importantly, value the people who care for you. We should always value them, be it in our family or friends because they are the ones who trusted us when we are nothing.
Who or what inspired the title and the tagline of the book?
After completing the story, I started to search for a suitable title for the book. I searched a lot but nothing suited the book better than the name ‘Adhira’ itself. Adhira, in Hindu mythology means ‘restless’ No other title can justify the life of Adhira better than her name itself. So, I ended up putting her name as a title with a tagline ‘Love: Lost & Found’ which reflects the events of her life.
How did you choose to name your characters? And where they modeled on anyone you knew?
Adhira as a name belonged to me. My mother named me Adhira when I was 5 but she changed it because many people told her that the meaning of this name is not good for any child. As I grew up, I got to know about it and since then this name stuck in my mind. I have developed a liking towards this name and that is why I chose to name my first female protagonist – Adhira.
Another character from the book is modeled on someone whom I follow whole heartedly. Shekhar – his name and character is inspired (in parts) by the singer ‘Shekhar Ravjiani’. I am a huge fan of his voice and when I wanted to write about a character with similar characteristics, I penned down the imaginary character of Shekhar for my Adhira. Although, I have just taken the liberties in naming and the profession, the imaginary Shekhar is only my tribute to the original, and the life events are in no way real.
Apart from these two, all the characters’ names are fictional and a product of my imagination.
If you want readers to pick Adhira up, what would you say to convince them?
The only words I have to say to them are… If you want to feel love without getting mushy, go read Adhira. This is not just another love-story, this is much more than you can ever expect from love-stories.
Tell us about the sequel you are planning! (This is an RM exclusive, dear readers!)
Yes, I am writing Adhira’s sequel with haste. The story in the first book is incomplete. In ‘Adhira… Love: Lost & Found’ we talked about her disease. But the further process and her struggles (mainly with treatments) will be shown in its sequel. As this is a very sensitive topic to write about, I wanted to be fully aware about the pros & cons of the treatment methods. I have done complete research on this disease ‘Bone marrow Aplasia’ and now I am meeting few specialists and doctors who can enhance my knowledge and can give me a practical view in addition to my research.
For now, all I can say is, if you loved Adhira as a novel or as a person in the first book, you would fall in love with her all over again in the sequel.
What do you take back from Adhira?
Adhira is my whole identity. She has become an inseparable part of me. She taught me how to keep calm in adverse situations, to tackle everything in life with positivity. Now, when someone asks me my name, I subconsciously answer them ‘Adhira’. *laughs* I know it’s funny but it actually happened with me many times. This is the effect Adhira has on me.
Can you share one memorable moment you had while crafting Adhira? As a Readers Muse exclusive?
There are many memorable moments and most of them happened during the editing process. I still cherish the 4 AM chats we had – discussing every aspect of the story in detail. Both me and my editor have many memorable moments but I will share my favorite here, the one thing which I can never forget. While talking about Shekhar’s character for one important scene, my editor mistakenly mentioned an image just the opposite of what I’d imagined about him. Her descriptions were so different to how I’d imagined Shekhar would be, but to our surprise it fit accurately to his personality. While editing one intense scene, Dhivya mentioned about ‘dimples’ on Shekhar’s face, which I never wrote or thought of at all. When she confessed that she’d always imagined Shekhar with dimples, I was wondering how the image can be so different. While re-reading the entire scene sequence I came to this change (the one she’d inserted) and burst out laughing because I’ve never ever imagine that she would go for this small and cute detail of the person she never saw in her life. The whole reason behind this shocking laugh was also that I knew she hadn’t seen Shekhar Ravjiani in real or in any picture. In-fact, I also haven’t noticed this detail in any of his picture, so I was not aware of this. This slight change in mid of the intense scene made us both laugh to the core. We still cherish this memory.
READERS MUSE thanks Aditti for her candid and interesting answers!
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