Kheyali Dastidar and Sunil Gangopadhyay at the launch. (Sanat Kumar Sinha)

Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer and John Grisham are the writers actress Kheyali Dastidar reads the most, so it was only natural that she chose to write a racy novel as her first book.

Launching Kheyali’s debut book, Sanjher Aalo, at Starmark, South City, on April 18, Sunil Gangopadhyay said that though he had not finished reading the novel published by Patra Bharati, he was convinced that “here was a writer who could perhaps take Bengali literature forward”.

Among those who had come to congratulate her on the occasion were actor (also her cousin) Sabyasachi Chakraborty, film director Raja Sen and actors Anasuya Majumdar, Aparajita Adhya, Kaushik Sen and Bhaswar Chatterjee. Husband Arindam Ganguly by her side, Kheyali said: “I was constantly worrying that my novel was becoming boring, that the pace was flagging. I consciously made my characters candid and bold, because in real life people always veil their real selves and stifle desires almost from the moment they are born.”

Though she graduated in English from Jadavpur University, writing in Bengali comes more naturally to Kheyali, who has adapted plays for theatre group Charbak and scripted serials.

Why did she make the heroine of her novel a writer and explore the publishing world? “This is not autobiographical. It would be too predictable for me to write about the film and theatre world, lots of people have done it already.”