India, July 24 -- What was the role of personal, material, and historical memories in trying to tell the tale of Rani of Mandi?

Every piece of memory is a piece of the mosaic. We need to collect stories, and we need to share them. This is what storytellers are for.

The book engages with details that several authors wouldn't have considered exploring. You made connections between Albert Kahn and the rani's story, looked at Khushwant Singh's A History of the Sikhs, and stories regarding extraction of diamonds that several English people deemed fictional. How important was documenting each of these details?

When I started working on this book I understood that, while details about the life of the Rani of Mandi were scarce, something else ...