Deepa Agarwal

What were your initial thoughts on weaving history into the medium of a diary?
There are a lot of popular books written using the medium of a diary. Take, for instance, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Bridget Jones's Diary. It gives you a personal perspective. So, the reader immerses himself or herself into the narrative and identifies with the characters. It's fictional because we don't know much about her teenage life. Of course, we do know the dramatic incident of her birth, and that she was ambitious, creative and fond of embroidery. So, I tried to construct her personality.

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Was it a challenge to condense secondary information into fiction?
I took under a year to complete the book. I referred to the works of historians like Ruby Lal and Ellison Banks Findly and even Ira Mukhoty's Daughters of the Sun, which gives you a glimpse into the lives of Mughal women. I also read Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri and Ain-i-Akbari. So, I didn't really have to condense information, but being selective was a challenge.

What would you like readers to know about Nur Jahan?
I would like the reader to take away an image of a strong girl who despite all the restrictions Mughal women had at that time, didn't give up. She was ambitious — she didn't want to be behind the walls as a begum. She wanted to be in power, and we all know she eventually was.

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