The inspiring journey of Debleena Majumdar to become a bestselling author

Growing up, Debleena Majumdar loved both numbers and stories.

Her grandfather’s library was her favourite hiding place. She was mesmerized by the power of stories and the ability brilliant authors had in imagining characters and situations that transported her into worlds she had never experienced before.

But then, she also loved the logic and the preciseness of numbers. The fact that thing added up, just the way they were supposed to and that there was never any ambiguity about the answers. Stories shaped her questions while Math gave her answers, to the solvable ones.

She thought that the two parts of her life were never destined to meet.

She chose a career with numbers and for the first twelve years of her professional life, she worked in Investment Banking, Investment Management and Venture Capital across multiple global firms.

At this point, the only writing she did was to write bullet points in powerpoint slides or scribble limericks disguised as copious meeting notes. But she reserved her weekends for singing and reading, every minute that she could. Authors whose works kept her company through the highs and lows of life were her heroes. She never thought that she could also be part of that hallowed club.

Sometime after her daughter was born, she found herself drawn more towards storytelling. Her daughter, an avid reader, was running out of books her age. And she found herself concocting stories to keep her daughter’s curious mind occupied. Meanwhile, her husband gifted her a copy of the book, Lead with a Story. That inspired to think more deeply about what she loved and wanted to do and be.

And then, like a double dose of mid-life crisis, she packed up her well-worn corporate boots and took the uncertain jump twice over, to entrepreneurship and freelancing and to writing.

Combining her love for data and stories, she co-founded Kahaniyah, to help craft data-driven narratives for change and impact. Over the last four years, she got a chance to work on multiple projects to shape narratives in areas such as Fintech, Education and for Social Impact.

As if entrepreneurship and freelancing were not big enough risks on their own, she also decided to plunge into writing. Tentatively at first, with short posts on her blog, then penning down short stories and writing plays with a couple of friends, she tried to learn the art and the craft of writing.

In between, some of her articles on business got published in leading business dailies from Economic Times to Business Insider, Huffington Post and more.

Crime, history and finance always fascinated her and she knew these would flow into what she wrote. The idea of a story where murder meant not just murder of a human body but even murder of an identity was something that had been stuck on her mind for some time. That resulted in her first book, A Marketplace for Murder, published by Vishwakarma Publications and represented by Suhail Mathur at Bookbakers.

In fact, her journey from writing short posts and poems to being an author who wrote books, would not have been even possible without the support, guidance and constant encouragement of Suhail Mathur. He believed in her work when even she did not.

After her first book was published and started she getting good reviews, she got the confidence to write more. She started contributing articles for Economic Times Prime.

And given her love for research, she delved into more non-fiction writing, with guidance from her literary agent. This shaped into the next book, Sabu, the story of India’s first Hollywood star which told the inspiring journey of a young boy who went from the stables of Mysore to the echelons of Hollywood and all the dramatic events that shaped his life, in the background of the World War II. The book was published by Locksley Hall Publishing and would not have materialized without their infinite care and patience to develop the manuscript into a beautiful book.

What’s next? Writing is now a compulsive need for her. And she expects to keep writing more, on business, on history, on finance and on crime. More on that, coming soon.

Disclaimer: No Deccan Chronicle journalist was involved in creating this content. The group also takes no responsibility for this content.