Adding Spice and Thinking Twice

Teal Deer (TL; DR)

Adding Spice and Thinking Twice: Some Bollywood Confidences

A few years ago, I pulled my Bollywood Confidential books offline. Ostensibly because they weren’t selling. But there was another deep-seated reason—one that still plagues me today—which is that I kind of wish I’d never written them. (Not really a selling point, I know. I suck at marketing.)

Spice and Smoke, Spice and Secrets, and Bollywood and the Beast were some of my first published stories, when I was still watching a lot of Bollywood movies and gorging on Indian celebrity gossip. But guess what? I’d only been to Mumbai once, decades before. I understood Hindi better than I spoke it. And I knew very little about what actually happens on an Indian movie set—despite reading a ton of Stardust and Cineblitz magazines when I was a teenager. The three novellas were not “own voices” just because I’m South Asian. My own voice is inherently South Asian American. The books I write now, set in cities I’ve lived in or small towns like the one I grew up in, reflect who I am and what I actually have experience with. (Not that I know any werewolves or vampires. But I digress…) So, what the hell was I thinking trying to write about a world I only knew a fantasy version of? 

Well, I know what I was thinking—that Bollywood was something relatively familiar to a mostly American audience, that it could be a good hook. Books by and about POC were not nearly as visible in 2012—especially romances. But “Bollywood” was a recognizable buzzword. And movie stars with drama? Fairly universal, right? I’ve spoken often about how authors of color are supposed to be tour guides for our cultures. Publishers and readers alike seem to only want food and music and saris and big families, not the story of a brown girl who hates her parents and works a dead-end job in NYC. (Unless that story involves culture clash, identity angst, and maybe some hating on arranged marriage.) We have a niche that we’re supposed to stay in: “Write about your background, so we all can learn something!” The litficcier, the better.

This was even more evident 10-15 years ago. There was very little romance by South Asians, especially contemporary romances set in the U.S. I know other desi writers were out there but, in terms of Romancelandia, it was basically me and Alisha Rai in indie publishing and then Sonali Dev with A Bollywood Affair from Kensington in 2014. (They’ve both gone on to well-deserved success!) So, in my mind, maybe Bollywood could be an entry point because of the “exotic” appeal, because it was what I was expected to write. Maybe this trilogy would work in a way that my previous stories with small presses hadn’t. To an extent, the series did work. While the first two books barely made a ripple, BATB garnered a lot of positive reviews when it came out in 2014. It was absolutely a step forward in my career. It dropped my pin on the Romancelandia map. People loved Taj and Rocky, as well as Ashraf and Kamal. 

Would I write that book now? No. I don’t know. Maybe? Obviously, I was in a very different place in my life and in my writing journey. I haven’t reread it beyond doing surface edits, but I have no doubt that BATB is rife with ableist language. I wouldn’t depict Taj’s “beastly” injuries or Ashu’s struggle with depression the same way. I’d dial down the melodrama in Spice and Secrets and make Rahul less of a dickhead. I’d make Spice and Smoke more cohesive, instead of what’s clearly two stories tied together. Not to mention that all the non-English words in the series are italicized and it’s something that now drives me bananas. (Bengali and Hindi should be as normalized as English. No need to set them apart!)

I know it sounds like I hate these stories, but it’s more that I wish they were better. Perfect. As though perfect is something anyone can really achieve. And there is some great work in these books. I didn’t half-ass them. I swung for the fences with a lot of soapy ideas. I even incorporated the Indian independence movement?!?! You can see the writer I would eventually become. Spice and Smoke is almost polyamorous and clearly paved the way for relationships like those of Third Shift’s Grace/Finn/Nate and Lovely/Elliott/Johnny in She’s So Lovely.

So, here we are in 2025. I’m older and probably not wiser. I’ve re-released Bollywood Confidential with refreshed front and back matter but left the content in between alone. For better or worse, no matter how self-critical I am, I am proud of what I wrote. I may “kind of wish” I didn’t, but I did write them. A whole trilogy. Shabbash, Suleikha. Well done.