Writer Reenita Hora Brings South Asian Storytelling from the Fringes to the Forefront.

Accomplished author and screenwriter Reenita Hora takes chances and challenges people with her work to look past the status quo. Born and raised in India, she strives to develop characters that more accurately represent South Asians as she pulls people in with creative stories that illustrate their daily lives and struggles. Most of Reenita’s storylines mirror similarities to her own life and paint a picture of what historical periods in India were like. Her latest work, Playtime at the Bagh and Ace of Blades, has modern-day insights that people can relate to while also giving a deeper look into India’s culture and history.

Tell me about your upbringing. Where did you grow up? 

I was born and raised in Mumbai, India. I grew up in a post-colonial India. 

India gained independence in 1947, and I say this because it’s relevant to my book. Many of the values I grew up with were the socio-political values endorsed by the India National Congress, the leading party at the time. My mom was very much a part of that thinking. And I was influenced by it – I mean, who is not influenced by their parents? On my dad’s side, I was born into a very, very, very conservative family, where it was a business family; it was kind of crass if you ask me. Very money values-oriented, no education for women, that kind of thing. So, there was not much scope to do beyond being raised to get married, which was not something I wanted to do. 

My mother’s side of the family was more educated. My grandfather, my mother’s father, would look to Indira Gandhi, who was the Prime Minister in the 1970s, and would say to me and my cousin to aspire to be like her. This was a man who loved writing and reading. He would make us read things like Socrates and Plato and discuss the excerpts with us. So, that was the environment that I was raised in. 

In school in Mumbai, I went to the Cathedral and John Connon School, which is very much a well-known educational institution that’s a Protestant Christian school. Part of what we studied was Indian civics. And the civics aspect of it was an exercise in how to be proud of your community and where you come from. We would learn about freedom fighters, what happened in the Indian Independence Movement, and how that aspect of recent modern Indian history is setting the foundation of what India is today. And it really stuck in my head. It was a contrast to what I was getting at home. At school, we would be taught to be part of our country and be part of the freedom fighters because they have sacrificed their lives to bring together this nation-state that we live in today. 

Childhood is not the best time for everyone, but you would hope it’s good for most people; it certainly was for me. I kind of had this crazy teenage life, where I was in love with George Michael. I thought he was the love of my life. I actually stalked him; it’s a funny story. I ended up in England over a summer, and there was no internet then, no cell phones, and I managed to find out where this guy would be, where he went to school, which town he grew up in, all of those things – met his mother, and met his father. I got a photograph with him, returned to India, and had it published in the tabloid paper. That was my first stint with the press. And that experience is an anecdote I have immortalized in my previous book, Operation Mom, where I plan to get my mom a man and a life, a rom-com. It has won many awards, and it’s about a 17-year-old girl who wants to get her annoying single mother off her back, so she decides to get her laid through dating apps.

How has your past influenced your writing career?

I can only write about what I have experienced or what has informed me of my experience. So, for example, with my books Operation Mom and Playtime at the Bagh. Although Operation Mom is set in contemporary Mumbai, the language, situations, anecdotes, characters, and scene settings were so influenced by teenage years. So, people who know me and read it are like, oh my gosh, this is a blast from the past; it's that sense of familiarity. Playtime at the Bagh is slightly different. It's historical fiction set a hundred years ago. However, it was set in Amritsar, North India, which is a city where this massacre happened. Even though the story is fictional, it's an inter-faith love story between an Anglo-Indian protagonist and her Muslim lover. So, that part is fictional. However, all the scenes, incidents, happenings, and people in the background are real people and events. So, I've placed my fictional characters in these real situations, and their story unfolds. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, which happened in 1919, is something I learned about in school, and I acted in a play in the eleventh grade based on this. My grandfather was from the city of Amritsar, and as a young boy, he saw these scenes outside the venue where the massacre took place, which left a profound impact on his life, and he carried those stories down to us. So, all of this comes from my upbringing. Where I was raised, how I was raised, and how I was taught to think or not to think. So, whether it's a book or screenplays in writing, much of that is informed by that experience and influenced by my teenage years.

You have had a very successful career. What made you decide to write full-time during the pandemic?

It wasn't until 2021 that I decided to quit my full-time job. The job was going just fine, and it got to a crazy state where we were all working out of homes—so you've got more flexibility. I can go hiking during the day on a weekday for a few hours, which is something I could never do before. And I love doing that because that's when my best thoughts occur. 

So, it started with, I'm bored, so I should change jobs. I decided that I was 50 and that I was not getting any younger. I have always been jealous of these authors who say all they do full-time is write because I've never had that luxury. I thought, if I am going to do it, now is the time. My father passed away, and I had him for 50 years of my life. And I thought if I lived to be 80 or 90 and looked back on my life and never actually tried, I would regret it. So, I might as well try. If I fail, I fail, but at least I can say I tried. So, I quit my job. 

I went into it and had serious heart palpitations and anxiety about quitting the job the next week. I'm blowing up my savings because there's no steady paycheck anymore. And you know it is not all smooth sailing and hunky dory. There are good days, not-so-good days, and then great days. Your emotions are rollercoaster-based on all of that. But that's what I did. I focused on developing my IP full-time. My IP is my books, my audio, and my screenplays.

How is that going? 

It’s tough. I don’t know anyone who says it’s easy. But it is also good. I have the luxury of spending my day with the characters that float around in my head or my fictitious renditions of what happens around me. And that is more fun than in real life. 

You must keep at it daily, and I am very interested in my work. Do I have everything greenlit the way I want it? No. I do have a huge amount of interest in Operation Mom. The book is set in contemporary Mumbai, but the film is set here in the U.S. with an immigrant mother and a first-generation daughter and the comedic dysfunction that ensues as a result. 

What inspires the stories?

As much as I like hiking in groups, I prefer hiking alone because I can think, my thoughts flow, and ideas happen. I do need that alone time. If I’m hiking up in the Marin Headlands or Malibu Canyon, taking a walk on the beach, or even doing an urban walk in the city on my own, that inspires me because it gets me into that creative space. 

And you must live. The urban walks help a lot because I’ll stop at coffee shops, sit there, and eavesdrop on people’s conversations. Because invariably, it’s someone complaining to her friend about how to deal with her mother. It’s a very interesting way to get perspective on things I don’t know about or wasn’t exposed to. But it just makes for great nuggets of information to pick up and then develop a concept or dialogue. And it just sparks that creativity.

What type of experience do you hope your readers have with your work?

I am from India. What we used to call India is now South Asia. Here in America, I think we resort to stereotypes. I mean, just one stereotype after another. And even in reading my screenplay, people will say: “Really, but Indians don’t do that … they’re more like this.” And oh my gosh, it’s a one-size-fits-all approach. And nobody knows the diversity among the Indian people. This needs to come across because we can be proponents of diversity in storytelling and the entertainment industry. So, America and the rest of the world must understand our baggage, hypocrisies, and insecurities. And that’s what I strive to bring to the forefront of my storytelling. And I do it in comedy a lot, young adult comedy. 

I hope to bring South Asian storytelling from the fringes to the forefront. So, it’s much more than, oh, here’s some nice spicy Indian food and Bollywood weddings. By the way, I cannot stand the thought of Bollywood weddings. Not because I don’t like them, but because they’re so overdone. And we have so much more to offer than that. 

I just want to reference a show I wrote a spec on the week before last because it inspired me so much. It’s called We Are Lady Parts. It is a British young adult comedy show. It was written by a Muslim creator called Nida Manzoor. And it’s fantastic because it’s about a Muslim female in a punk rock band in London. It goes away from every type of stereotype we have. It shows the diversity of Muslims within the Muslim community. Something that I never knew, something that most of us are never exposed to at all. The authenticity is just outstanding. For example, there’s a character who’s gay, and she explains how it’s more comfortable to stay in the closet because of the other Muslim baggage she and her parents have to deal with. This is the real life. The baggage, the problems, and whatever we have to deal with from our South Asian communities are what I appreciate about that show.

What projects are you working on now that you would like to share?

I am going to mention two projects. One is Ace of Blades, which is my late father's memoir. It's non-fiction, but it reads like fiction. My father built India's razor blade industry for 60 years of his life. He was a Rupport Murdock-type character. Crazy, bipolar, pure genius, complete asshole, flawed, fought with his brothers, fought with his son. It's not a Cinderella story with a happy ending. He died because he thought that once his business was taken away from him, he would lose control. It's like Succession meets The Crown, but the Indian version. 

Secondly, I am working on a YA fantasy series of books called The Arya Chronicles. The first book is Shadow Realm. It's already out there as a narrative fiction podcast. The screenplay version of Shadow Realm, book one, has been optioned, and the graphic novel version was a finalist in the script comic contest. Nothing has been done with ancient Indian mythology, and there's just so much scope. These are not retellings; these are actual modern-day superheroes that draw their connection to and foundation from the stories we have in ancient Indian mythology. 

I also hope to get Operation Mom, the screenplay, into a greenlit phase.

Anything else you want to talk about? 

One thing I’d like to mention about my recent book, Vermilion Harvest Playtime at the Bagh. Even though this is a fictional love story behind a historical backdrop, all of the issues referenced in the story – things like freedom of speech and freedom of movement could not be more relevant here in the U.S. and worldwide. Like the Bangladesh student protests leading to curfews and imprisonment, protests outside the capital, and police pepper spraying. And that’s why I think, even though it’s a historical fiction book, it’s so timely, and it begs the question of what have we learned in a hundred years?

Also, I’d like to point out an article in the New York Times called Why We Are Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction. When you read the article, not a single piece of Indian historical fiction is mentioned. Not a single one. And if you do a Google search, the only ones mentioned are mostly written about British people. So, I am striving to change that.

Reenita has had a wildly successful career that has taken her around the world. Prior to becoming a full-time author and screenwriter, Reenita was a journalist, writer, and editor for outlets such as Bloomberg, Cartoon Network Asia, and The New York Times. Her awards and accolades include the Eric Hoffer Book Award, IndieReader Discovery Award, Santa Barbara International Screenplay Award, and Emerging Screenwriters awards.

For more information, please visit www.reenita.com