For me writing has always been  a compulsion to tell. That’s why I became a newspaper reporter, first in India and then in America, where I worked for more than 15 years at the Wall Street Journal.

An honorable profession it is if you are so moved by things unjust, unfair, and plain wrong and you want to make a career out of telling the world what you unearth. Not all my telling was driven by that journalistic fervor though. Personal curiosity about things strange and quirky also provoked that urge as a journalist and author: my book “Peppers: A Story of Hot Pursuit” (published by Knopf/Random House) was the result of that self-indulgence.

I left journalism eventually, seeing a steady decline of the profession as I knew and cherished it. I joined a leading pharma company as a senior executive, and then moved on to establish my own medicine company. But writing has stayed in my veins.