This Sunday millions of people around the world will celebrate the Indian holiday of Diwali. The “Festival Of Lights” has fascinated me for the longest time but to be honest I never really understood what it was all about, we always treated it like an “Indian Christmas”. So today I invited author Anju Gattani onto the podcast to walk me through the Diwali celebration; how it compares to western holidays, the preparations that go into it, and what Diwali's origins are. 

Along the way we discuss her incredible experiences growing up in a multicultural community in Hong Kong (1:47), how Diwali compares to the American holiday season (4:28), exactly how Diwali is celebrated (5:30), the unique Diwali celebrations she experienced growing up (12:12)--including diverse Diwali Balls she attended (13:25). Anju and I spoke about the Indian culture's love of celebrations (15:48), how she integrates Indian and Western traditions in her household (18:44), why she labors to keep up with both Indian and American holidays (21:09), how exposure to other culture's celebrations is teaching her children respect (22:23), and how she portrayed Diwali in her novel Duty and Desire (29:09).

Read Anju's blog and find more information about her books on her official website. Make sure to follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!

Subscribe to Southern Life Indian Wife where you listen to podcasts, including Apple  Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Tunein. Keep up to date with the podcast and my upcoming book news by following me on Facebook,  Instagram and Twitter!

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Today previous podcast guest Heather Dobson joins me once again; in our last conversation we discussed life, chasing ghosts, and some of her more astonishing experiences with Paranormal Georgia Investigators. This time around, Heather and I examine our writing processes; she poured a lot of herself into her book, Memoirs of a Future Ghost, we talk at length about the therapeutic process of spilling your guts out onto the page for both non-fiction and fiction stories.

Heather tells me how writing her memoir was therapeutic for her (2:05), we discuss how there's always some nugget of truth in every book--even fiction (4:37), why we both disguise some real life characters in our writing (11:49), how we're constantly learning--especially through bad experiences (17:05), why we both thrive on alone time as writers (19:55), how eating chocolate and watching 80s TV--especially TJ Hooker--helps Heather cope with writing about tough subjects (22:25), we discuss some of our favorite memoirs we read and why Heather is obsessed with British royals (23:20), and we offer up some advice for aspiring authors (31:54) including the reality that its perfectly ok to suck (34:33)!

Learn all about Heather Dobson and get your signed copy of Memoirs of a Future Ghost, find her here: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and her website and Paranormal Georgia Investigators.

Subscribe to Southern Life Indian Wife where you listen to podcasts, including Apple  Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Tunein. Keep up to date with the podcast and my upcoming book news by following me on Facebook,  Instagram and Twitter!

Support the show: https://sherylparbhoo.com/support/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.