At the tender age of 12 she was thrown into the dark realities of the world from the cushions of her mother’s arms. She fought a two-year-long battle with her mother’s illness only to lose it in 2014. 

Now all of 14, Aadya Jha, has poured her emotional trauma into a 220-page book, Before the Sun, After the Moon, whose Kindle edition released on January 30 on Amazon. The paperback for $5.35 — which, however, is currently unavailable on the online shopping site — was published through Createspace, a self-publishing site of Amazon, on December 26, 2016.

The tragic saga of the Class VIII student of Guru Gobind Singh Public School, Bokaro, came before her friends and teachers on Monday when principal Subhodeep Dey opened her letter, informing him about the release of the novel’s e-edition.
Dey said he never became so emotional in his 21 years of teaching career when he went through her letter and later the e-version of the book.

“It’s an achievement for Aadya, her family, our school, and entire Bokaro that a novel, written by such a young girl has been released on an international platform,” said Dey.

The book covers an emotional journey of Aadya — only daughter of Shashidhar Jha, an area sales manager in a pharmaceutical company — from the cocoon of love and care of her mother Aradhana to the real world after her death through nine chapters. 

Aadya said her mother, who was a beautician, loved her the most. “My mother was  was diagnosed renal dysfunction in 2010. Her condition started deteriorating in 2012 and she lost the battle of her life in 2014,” said Aadya, who wanted to be a doctor despite her equal inclination for writing.

On Amazon, in ‘about the author’ section she has written: “I am a middle school girl...My qualifications are not much...I have written my first short story when I was six and poem when I was seven.” 

She started writing the book last September. “I managed time by not watching TV and waking up early in morning for two months and finished the book in November,” said Jha.