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Hello there!

Smita Bhattacharya

Thanks for stopping by.

What can I tell you about myself? I dream a lot, and sometimes they come true. Like writing a few books, like travelling to a few countries, like loving a few precious people, like being able to talk to you. Now.

I was a storyteller before I was a traveller. At the age of eight, I realized how much I loved making up fairy tales for my younger brothers. They were fairy tales first, and horror stories next, and they listened raptly enough until they grew up and preferred cricket. When at sixteen, I won The Statesman National Playwriting contest, I knew there was something there.

Since then, I’ve published several books and had more than a dozen short stories published in various reputable literary magazines. I’m also a top fiction writer at Medium. Suspenseful fiction with killer twists is what I go for.

Next… came travelling. A well-meaning friend told me before I was embarking on a work trip to London , “Get a Schengen and travel around.”

“What? solo?!” I asked, my eyes popping. I was, after all, a regular-middle-class-small-town-shy-Indian-girl who grew up constrained by the usual social mores and rules about what can be or can’t be done. I never questioned them.

“Why not? Do it!” he persisted.

The power of words. The power of positive words. You never know whose life you transform. And mine was. Since then, I’ve travelled to most of Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and continue to discover new places every year. I haven’t found time to write about every place I’ve been to, but I intend to get there someday.

My travels feel more remarkable to me because not only do I travel as a solo female with its unique challenges but also that I have an Indian passport, which is one of the more restrictive in the world. Therefore, obtaining visas for each trip becomes an arduous task, not to mention the struggle with unfavourable currency conversion rates. Therefore, you’ll find that my itineraries are the cheapest and the most efficient they can be.

I also have a full-time, highly demanding job. Therefore, by writing, and travelling in between, I’m also trying to prove to the world, but mostly to myself, that you really can do all that you dream of. Really, you can. All you need to do is to dream. To show up. To stop self-limiting. It’s not always hunkey-dory, but when you wake up in the morning, to a throbbing heart, and a life of purpose, it all becomes worth it.

Why not? Do it!

What a wonderful thing a blog is, where I get to chronicle my experiences. And how wonderful you are, to be reading me.

Thank you.


Smita Bhattacharya books