A lot of people from all corners of the world have asked me to write a book. I always politely tell them that to write a book, you need to read many books, and since I don’t get time to read or even remember and jot down my thoughts, I will never be able to write anytime soon. Having said that to many, I had started writing a storyline – timeline of events, small episodes from my life during my flight journeys (that increased for attending parliament session) and back to Headquarters and Constituency during weekends. Sometimes it was difficult to remember, sometimes the memories came in such effortless sequence that I kept writing the memoirs and sometimes I talked with Iti to get more details from the sequence.

The process was slow, yet rewarding. It allowed me to revisit, analyse, retrospect and plan for future. But I realised, my handwritten notes were difficult to be read, and short forms were so personal that it would be difficult to digitalize. My close team members suggested me to record. They even taught me to use this alien device and get the thoughts recorded. This change to advanced technology make my thoughts lucid, and work less cumbersome for me and my team members. All this while, neither me nor my team had any ideas of converting it into a book. It was all loose ends.

But then an unprecedented pandemic came. We were all at our homes. This was the time, I started concentrating on cerebral parts of book, stitching it into a nice story. I realised most of the parts related to my mother and thought that my first book could not be anything else but a story of my mother – my inspiration, my guide, my hero, my everything. And then, with direction, me and two of my team members started brainstorming and got the first draft ready. We named it All in a stride. It was my first book, dedicated to my mother and her unending struggles to bring us up and her selfless sacrifices for our native village. You are aware of my difficult life and that of my mother which was a hundred times more tough. Later in life, when I made my name and became something, she became instrumental in converting our remote native village into a smart village instead of thinking of her own comfort or amassing any wealth. Her influence on me was so immense that I wrote my first book on her.

We thought of reaching out to a publication house and a team member suggested Rupa Publications as a lot of books of Ruskin Bond, our old time wellwisher were published by Rupa. I agreed and we got on talks with the Publication. They were also excited about this project and then started a series of edits. That’s when I realised what goes into making of a book. Iti helped me through and through.

We changed the name to a simple and catchy title My Mother My Hero and the final copy of the book was ready. It read really well and the picture of villages and my circumstances came out accurately in the writings. And, during the budget session, when I was in Delhi, I read about Shri Venkaiah Naidu Ji going to Bhubaneswar for gracing an ocassion. It stuck to my mind, how I wish, I could get it launched by him. It was all destined, plans fell in place and on 2nd April 2021 the book was launched by Shri Venkaiah Naidu ji, Hon’ble Vice President of India and Prof Ganeshi Lal ji, Hon’ble Governor of India. We worked a bit on the cover page after that and the book was ready to hit Amazon sales when the second wave of Covid hit us.

Finally, today, it was launched on Amazon. It is available on :  https://bit.ly/asmymmh