It was just a page with words, but my life hung upon it!

Hello! I am so glad we met, if only virtually, for now. I am Reethika Sunder. I have over a decade of experience in Business Development, Marketing, Partnerships, Management Consulting and Corporate Strategy. I am an alumna of IIM Ahmedabad and the co-author of the book Entrepreneur 5 pm to 9 am. I am a traveler, a wildlife and martial arts enthusiast, a nature-lover and a dabbler in arts.

I grew up as a single child with books as my favourite and perhaps only companions. Waking up to and falling asleep with a beautiful book every day, that is what my childhood was like, as far back as I can remember. My father would read out the books to me until I learnt to read them myself from the third grade. I spent most of my childhood day-dreaming, talking to plants and playing with pets that my uncle would bring home and my mother would keep sending away as she did not approve of keeping animals or birds as pets. These pets included among others red velvet mites, a dog, a rabbit and a parrot. Our neighbours had seven dogs and our home was the chosen abode of seven cats, who refused to leave our terrace and to a few sparrows and a Bulbul (bird) which, to our surprise, had built its nest over one of our curtain holders. It was a lively atmosphere to grow up in but also very idyllic so as I grew up to experience some of the dull and harsh realities of life, I began to look at them in a humourous way.

As I grew older, my curiosity led me to dabble in varied hobbies like martial arts, dancing, painting, racquet sports, writing, wildlife conservation, travel and adventure sports. I found myself taking up roles across different functions professionally as well, never being able to curb myself to a single area. The original phrase that would characterize this personality was “Jack of all trades and Master of none”. Fortunately for me, just when I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with being described thus, Elizabeth Gilbert gave it a redeeming name calling this type, a humming bird. I finally rejoiced that people like me would no longer be forced to prove that they lack passion or persistence and could continue to experience the joy of being explorers while contributing through their diverse skills and knowledge. If you have not heard this amazing talk by Elizabeth Gilbert yet and are beginning to be curious about it now, do watch it here.

As I went through life immersing myself in new experiences, reflecting, wondering where my passion lies and going through a bunch of workshops, books, courses on discovering my passion, I realized that some interests had stayed with me over time and continued to give me great joy and pleasure. Reading and writing were of course top-most among these. Moving from the fun phase of childhood to adulthood, I realized how our worlds change. The reality of life struck me as I moved away from the dreamy phase of childhood. Life in college where cultural biases ran strong, working as a professional and interacting with people in the corporate world mired in politics and the search for a life partner which was far from being as easy or exciting as the fairy-tales or the romantic movies of Bollywood/Hollywood made me realize how different the reality is. Perhaps it was just me, or perhaps we all go through these phases without acknowledging the striking change or just blindly accept it and learn to deal with it. I found a unique way to ease myself into this new world which was by adopting a humorous outlook to it. Most of these scenarios made funny dialogues pop in my head, sometimes it was just me laughing and sometimes I shared it with my friends. While I was on the search for my life partner, I realized that the entire journey was filled with such amusing incidents and epiphanies that it might be fun and exciting for me to write a book on this. Finally it was the perfect combination of my passion and experience that brought me to this point.

The idea behind this book is to share these experiences with Single Women who can relate to it, in a light-hearted, humorous way and know that they are not alone in this struggle. These stories are not just mine, they include those of many single women across India. It is also for the others to realize the tough journey that Indian Singles especially Millennials are going through, whether its men or women, as they are at the cusp of a big change. Read more about this in my book. I hope you enjoy this journey with me and it makes you laugh, reflect and adapt or be a change agent as the situation deems fit.