17-year-old Jijnasa Sahani's first book 'Siya's Nightout' talks about friendship and adventure

When it's exam time, everyone is a voracious reader...reader of textbooks that is. But as soon as she said goodbye to tenth grade, Jijnasa Sahani continued to be the voracious reader that she truly is. In fact, she took it one step further and poured all her reading and thoughts onto paper, and the result —  her first book, Siya's Nightout — a story of magic, friendship and adventure.

Writing has always been a hobby that Sahani pursued regularly. She had written the first two chapters of her book in ninth grade, when she was in SAI International School

As someone who has been brought up on a healthy diet of adventure and fantasy books, Sahani knew where the story was headed. It begins with Siya, the protagonist, home alone and armed with her curiosity, which drives her to discover all the mysteries of her house that have been hidden till date. As cryptic as that sounds, we can't tell you anymore without giving away the plot. But Sahani is more than happy to tell us the message that the novel intends to convey which is, "that good always triumphs over evil and that everything sets itself right at the end," says the 17-year-old, who is studying in DAV Public School, Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneshwar. 

First glimpse: The book cover of Sahani's first book

Ask her what's the best part of her book and she answers, "The suspense!" and doesn't say anything beyond that. Oh, the suspense! But of course, writing it had its own challenges and only after about three drafts and some amount of editing did the book actually come together. Sahani believes that, "the characters are the ones who pull the reader into the story, so it is important to write characters who are engrossing." 

A frequenter of book fairs and libraries, the books she really likes are those from the Harry Potter series and the many characters that make its story memorable. When we ask her if she wants to be a writer, surprisingly, she says that she hasn't given it much thought, yet she adds in the same breath, "I would love to!" And having written her first book, along with a few poems and articles in the past, we can safely say that Sahani is on the right track. 

During summer vacation, there have been days where Sahani has spent the whole day writing. She dreams that her books will be bestsellers someday

But one thing she is glad about nowadays is that when she walks into a bookstore, she notices a number of books by Indian authors on the shelves, which is a refreshing change. This makes her heart truly very happy. "I feel great when I see the name of an Indian author on a book. They are so much more relatable," says the debutante, who loves the style of Ruskin Bond. We hope to see her name on the shelves soon too!