As a child, Aditi Mathur Kumar always wanted to write a book. A promising career in the advertising industry and marriage delayed her authorship plans. Today, it is a different story. She has finally achieved her goal with her book Soldier & Spice: An Army Wife’s Life.
She penned her debut book in the sixth month of her pregnancy. “Sitting at home gives you a lot of free time!” she jokes. “I wanted to engage myself in something intellectually stimulating, and thought to myself that this was the best time to finally write the book,” she explains.
The book deals with the journey of a regular girl Pia, who is married to an army man and the transition in her life. Asked about her reasons for writing about an army wife’s experiences, Aditi, who is an army wife herself, says, “It is a different world. An army wife’s life is unexplored or hardly spoken about,” she observes. “It may seem like a glamorous role. While soldiers go about with their jobs and postings, it is the army wife, who really nurtures the family. It’s quite often a solo show.”
Given that the protagonist is an army wife, we ask her if there are any similarities between the character that she has drawn and herself. “The character is a regular girl. She is a pleasant, easy-going person who doesn’t mind being invisible when the spotlight is on her at times!” she jokes. “There are so many experiences from my perspective. They make me who I am and I found them worth sharing. There are a few instances where I have taken inspiration from situations around me, but they have been worked upon,” she explains.
Aditi believes she has immortalised her husband and her best friend. All this, she maintains, was unintentional though. “When a friend read it, she smartly asked me if Arjun’s character (Pia’s husband) is based on my husband. Same goes for the best friend. One tends to write about people one has been influenced by,” she concludes.
The author, who is a book old, intends to write more books in the future.
