Here is how author Amulya Malladi beat her depressive malady 

For someone who has been writing since the age of 11, not writing can be depressing. And by depression we mean the actual mental health issue, not the word we’re all guilty of casually throwing around when we feel a tad blue. But author Amulya Malladi soon realised that if words had deserted her, sooner or later, they would be the ones to rescue her. And as a result came Malladi’s seventh book, The Copenhagen Affair through which she attempted to distract and reinvent herself. 

On your shelf: The cover of Amulya Malladi's latest

Unable to contain our curiosity, we ask the 43-year-old if she pursued the theme because of a…erm…mid-life crisis. She laughs and replies, "Maybe, but women and men have been writing about this topic forever." And to drive her point further, she mentions books like D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley's Lover, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and the works of Jane Austen, of course. 

Moving it: As a child, Malladi used to move around a lot as her father was in the army. Her sister, Aparna Malladi is a film director in the Telugu Industry

But going back to her writer’s block phase, Malladi, who was born in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, tells us how much it truly bothered her. "I started questioning my whole career," says the author, who is also a Marketing Executive for a global medical device company. "I just wanted to write something funny," says Malladi, who used to live in Copenhagen, 2016’s World's Happiest Country, but moved to California last August. 

And then it happened. She saw a sign. No, not the figurative one, literally a sign that read — Anders Ravn. She remembered Raavan, the antagonist with ten heads from the epic Ramayana. From there, a character named Sanya began to build in her head and that was how her affair with The Copenhagen Affair began. Our protagonist, Sanya goes to Copenhagen for a change of scene and to overcome her depression. But whom does she meet there? The devil himself, Raavan aka Anders Ravn. And that's where Sanya's affair begins. Or does it really? Well, that's for us readers to find out. 

I wanted to write just for the fun of it, without the reader on my shoulder. This is how The Copenhagen Affair happened

Amulya Malladi

But while writing, Malladi does not fret too much if her book will sell or not. "There is some level of cognition about the fact, yes, but that doesn't change what I write," she says. Her next, in fact, is quite an interesting book titled The Nearest Exit Maybe Behind You, which is a fictionalised version of one of her favourite books, Lean In by Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg. "It helped me a lot in my career," she says. 

Same to same: Malladi identifies a lot with the reinvented Sanya as she believes that they both, "speak their mind, have a dark sense of humour and don't care what people think"

The Copenhagen Affair was launched on September 26 and Malladi enjoyed it with a quiet dinner with friends, "besides, of course, rebooting Amazon every two minutes to check what others have written about it," she confesses and laughs nervously, while crossing her fingers and hoping, with all her heart, that people will like her book. 

Find out more abotu her at amulyamalladi.com