Exploring the forbidden path

Debutante author Zaarra Khader has hosted radio shows, produced TV shows and even written jingles for advertising campaigns, but the 29-year-old engineer tells us that her main interest was always in writing. The Forbidden One is a compilation of short stories where the protagonists go on to explore the “forbidden path”.

Zaarra says, “If you go by the scriptures, imagine what would have happened if Eve never had the urge to have the forbidden fruit. Maybe you and I and everyone else wouldn’t be on this planet.”

The book narrates stories of ordinary people and the challenges they face in their daily routine. There is a story that focuses on a couple and their monotonous routine and a protagonist whose dreams in life are different from that of his family.

For Zaarra, the characters and their plots were crystal clear in her mind even before she could pen it down. She says, “I had visualised these stories as films in my mind. But it is only after I started writing it down that I began to discover their emotional turmoil, and add intricacies to the characters.”

The author tells us that writing is a process that comes naturally to her and there was no rigorous procedure that she had to put herself through for this book.

She observes,“When the writer starts writing to please the readers instead of being loyal to the characters or the basic plot of the story, I think that’s exactly when you hit the block. Every writer dreams of getting appreciation and acceptance from readers but then you do have to consciously train your mind that you can’t please everyone at any given point in time.”

Ask her about the challenges that she faced while writing and she says, “Short stories aren’t as commercially popular in the country. Hence, the responsibility was entirely on me to build interest in the minds of the readers so that they get hooked on to the characters of my book.”