Sunita Pant Bansal, born in 1960 in Delhi, India, has been a wordsmith since childhood. Apart from being a prolific reader, she started writing at the age of 8yrs, her first poem was published in her school magazine. Thereafter, she continued contributing to her school magazine and also edited her school Newsletter in High school.
She has been writing for nearly four decades. She has written numerous articles & stories, created jigsaw puzzles & board games, and produced multimedia CD-ROMs & short films. She has authored hundreds of books for children and young adults on folk literature and mythology. For adults, her genres cover body, mind and soul, her books being sold in multiple languages globally.
In her long and illustrious career, Sunita has also headed publishing houses, founded-edited newspapers and magazines for readers in India as well as in the US and UK. She has written for giants like Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Pearson Education, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and ABP Group of newspapers and magazines
1. When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?
> I had started writing in school itself, my first poem got published in the school magazine when I was 7 yrs old, thereafter I remained a regular contributor to the magazine. I loved our holiday assignments of making albums where I would write stories and poems; I even started a news tabloid in high school with some friends. Then I entered college to study Nutrition. I became a dietician and started writing health columns for newspapers to earn my pocket money. It was Manohar Shyam Joshi ji, for whose paper (Weekend Review, Hindustan Times), for whose paper I used to write regularly, who encouraged me to write on other subjects… and my journey as a writer began. That was when I realised that writing was my real passion. 2. As we know that you have written 1000 books for children. From where did you get the idea? Because understanding children is one of the hardest work. > I have written more than a thousand books for children of all ages till now. Writing for children is indeed not an easy task, but here again I was lucky to be encouraged by Rosalind Wilson, editor of Target (a children’s magazine of India Today group). I met Rosalind by chance when I was visiting a friend in their office. We got talking. Realising that we lived in the same area, we decided to share a three-wheeler. During that journey, when Rosalind came to know that I was a writer, she suggested that I should try my hand in writing for children, and literally gave me a tutorial on how to write for them! And that’s how I entered the field of children’s literature. Though challenging, writing for children is also extremely gratifying, especially when parents of children find me on social media and share pics of their children reading my books with me. 3. What do you want to say on victim card play of bookstores that they are facing problems because of Amazon and Flipkart monopoly. And on another hand they prefer to keep books of publishers which have monopoly in this market. > Bookstores definitely face competition from online portals like Flipkart and Amazon, as well as publishers selling online, so they have to find ways and means to survive in this business. I think they prefer to keep books of publishers from where they get a good credit deal and better discounts, and also where the publisher is making efforts to promote their books. 5. What are the major changes you have seen in this industry in your 40 years of experience in this industry ? > The number of independent bookstores has reduced, as has the number of public libraries. At the same time, I see popular cafes having reading corners. Online bookselling portals have increased. I also see more nuclear families where the parents are taking interest in buying good quality books for their children. Self-publishing has become popular, so more and more people are now trying their hand in writing. Overall, I see more writers, more number of books, and more variety of books to read for booklovers and readers like me. 6. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have ? > Fortunately, I don’t have any unpublished or half-finished books, though I have a bunch of ideas that I plan to develop into books in the coming years. 7. Which part of your book " EVERYDAY GITA: 365 DAYS OF WISDOM " is your personal favorite ? > Actually the entire process of writing Everyday Gita would remain special for me. I went to Gethia, in Uttarakhand, to do the major part of writing. Every chapter of the book is special, it’s difficult to identify a personal favorite. 8. In an interview with Ajitabha Bose, he said that, "Without a good budget you can't reach your audience, maybe your book is very good". Do you agree with this statement ? > No, I don’t. I believe that a book has its own destiny, it reaches where it has to reach sooner or later. With a good budget, maybe you can expedite the book’s movement, give it a better exposure, but if the book has little or no substance, it cannot survive for long.
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