Bangalore, Feb. 25: The next autobiography from jail could be a tell-all by a lady who has just been through a roller-coaster ride.

AIADMK general secretary V.K. Sasikala, now in her first month of a four-year jail term at Parappana Agrahara Central Prison here, is said to be already jotting down notes for her memoirs.

Sasikala had taken over the reins of Tamil Nadu's ruling party within hours of chief minister Jayalalithaa's death on December 5 last year, but her ambitions of heading the government was cut short after the Supreme Court upheld her conviction in a corruption case earlier this month.

Party sources said her cellmate and sister-in-law, Ilavarasi, was helping Sasikala recall incidents, both political and personal, with the objective of completing the preliminary work within a few months.

Her writing tools: the old-fashioned pen and paper. Unlike Peter Mukerjea, an accused in the sensational Sheena Bora murder case, who had sought permission to use a laptop to write his autobiography.

Nalini Sriharan, the world's longest serving woman prisoner, has penned one - a 500-page book in Tamil. Sriharan, convicted for assassinating Rajiv Gandhi, has been in jail for more than 25 years.

Not known for any writing skills, Sasikala, 61, might use a professional writer to either serialise her biography in a Tamil magazine, or publish it as a book that could later be translated into other languages for those interested in Dravidian politics.

"Whether it should be published as an autobiography written by a ghost writer or a biography written by a good writer is a decision that will be taken later," said an AIADMK source.

Her loyalists see an autobiography - or a biography - as a smart way of making a splash despite her halted political career, and also remaining in the news from behind bars.

Jayalalithaa, Sasikala, her nephew V.N. Sudhakaran and Ilavarasi had been handed four-year jail terms by a special court after a protracted legal battle in a disproportionate assets case in September 2014. But Karnataka High Court had granted them bail after just 21 days.

The government of Karnataka, where the case had been shifted, had appealed against the decision before the apex court, which quashed the bail and sent three of them back to jail. Jayalalithaa's sentence had abated following her death.

Chinnamma, as Sasikala is called by her supporters, and the others then surrendered on February 15 to serve out their remaining sentence.

A source said Chinnamma had taken life in prison, where she is treated like any other convict, on the chin. "She rises early, goes for a short walk (on the prison premises), does some yoga and starts her day," said the source.

But she did meet a few of her trusted lieutenants from the party and is said to have passed on certain instructions on running the government by keeping the name of "Amma" (Jayalalithaa) alive in every project they announce.

The party's deputy general secretary, T.T.V. Dinakaran, her nephew handpicked to hold the fort, met Sasikala in jail on February 20, the day her nominee Edappadi K. Palaniswami was sworn in as chief minister of Tamil Nadu. The party's Karnataka secretary, Va Pughazhendi, accompanied Dinakaran.

But three ministers - D. Srinivasan, K.A. Sengottaiyan and Sellur Raju - were not so lucky as prison authorities refused to entertain their request to meet her citing the jail manual that doesn't allow more than two visitors a week.

Sources said Sasikala instructed Dinakaran and her lawyers to try for a transfer to a prison in Chennai.