ASHOK KHANNA is an alumnus of Mumbai University. A trained percussionist, he travelled to Europe and the Middle East with a band playing the drums. An actor and voice-over artist, he worked in many Hindi films as a character actor. With the help of his close friend Subhash Ghai, the legendary filmmaker, he made a few films with notable stars like Rajnikant, Jackie Shroff, Madhuri Dixit, Meenakshi Seshadri, Amrish Puri and others. Writing for Indian television and many blogs later, he was also responsible for translating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindi speeches into English in the book Turbulence and Triumph: The Modi Years. The lockdown prompted him to venture into English fiction. Unsure of what to do with it once completed, he approached 16leaves, and this is the result.