Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari on her debut novel ‘Mapping Love’: “It's about love in its true essence”- EXCLUSIVE

Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari is all set to debut as a novelist too. Her debut novel Mapping Love is all set to hit the stands on 1^st August. As Ashwiny, who has directed films like anga, Bareily Ki Barfi and Neel Battey Sannata, adds another feather to her cap, we had the chance to have a chat with her about it. She reveals why she chose to write a novel and what Mapping Love is all about.

Talking about why she decided to write a novel, Ashwiny said, “As a storyteller, I feel that everyday there are stories around you and everything is an extension of how do you wanna tell that story and what you want to do with it. So for me, writing a novel was an extension of creating more and also never saying ‘no’ in terms of challenging yourself because the least you can do is that okay you may walk half path and maybe you realize that it’s not good for you or you didn’t accomplish what you intended out to do. But at the end of the day, you’ll not regret that you didn’t try and for most of us, including our parents’ generation, everyone regrets that they wish they could have tried something before it becomes too late so I don’t want to regret on the aspect of trying and doing things. And I may fail, maybe this book will not be as per the expectations of what people believe that I could tell through my movies but at least I tried, so that's what it is. That's what means more to me right now.”

Opening about Mapping Love, Ashwiy said, “Mapping Love is about finding love in every form of relationship. A  relationship with your past, a relationship with your family, with your roots. The word ‘map’ is about finding one destination. The maps of a river, of a land or of the sea always takes you to some route and you either go through that route and you come back or you stop in between but it always takes you in various directions and there are lots of stops out there. Here ‘Mapping Love’ is about love in all forms. It's about forgiveness. It's about love in its true essence. And it's just not the love between a girl and a boy. It's love between a parent-child relationship, love between a husband-wife, a love between your own self. Also, mapping love with your own self. So, yeah, it’s quite poetic in nature. I think at any point in our life had map love in various ways. Whether it is mapping love with your memories, whether it is mapping love with your past, whether it is mapping love with something which we’re very attached to and can’t let go. We’re all hoarders in nature. We hoard things. We hoard memories. We hoard relationships. We hoard conversations that we never let go and ‘Mapping Love' is all about that.”

We are excited about the book, are you?