The spark behind a story
Every thriller begins with a secret.
Sometimes, it’s buried in a character’s past. Sometimes, in a file that was never meant to be opened.
For me, the secret was this question: “Why don’t Indian thrillers feel like the India I live in?”
Growing up, reading a thriller would mean necessarily novels by western authors. Their stories had global stakes, political conspiracies, and shadowy masterminds. Look at the world and the times we live in. I see an India which has technologically advanced much more than our peer nations. We are writing the world’s tech. And we are building global services on that tech. We are the world’s tech services bro! Clearly, our thrillers didn’t need to borrow global settings. Data leaks, cybercrime, corruption, and ambition, all are intertwined in their own complex dance here itself. India is the perfect stage for tech driven thrillers in the Indian setting. I call them, the Indian thrillers.
The pulse of Indian thriller novels
We are a country of a billion and a half people. Two hundred years ago that might have been the global population. What does that mean? We are a world unto ourselves, with chaos and order colliding with each other in every aspect of our lives. There is enough and more happening to inspire hundreds of Indian thriller novels. A hacker in Bengaluru could be connected to a corporate scam in Mumbai, or a small-town journalist could uncover a truth that shakes a ministry in Delhi.
In Western thrillers, characters often chase secrets that could change the world.
In Indian thrillers, the world is already changing, too fast, too unpredictably, and our characters are trying to survive that change. That tension is what fuels my writing. I write at the crossroads of relationships, tech and moral dilemmas. In my novels human emotion meets technological penetration, and friendship, love, and betrayal all operate under the same flickering tube light.
Why I write Indian thrillers
I write because I want to decode the world I live in. Because in India, every breaking news headline already sounds like a plot twist. Because technology has turned privacy into an illusion, and ambition into a weapon.
As a storyteller, I see thrillers not just as entertainment, but as mirrors of our moral confusion. Who do we trust when everything is connected? How far will we go to protect the ones we love? What happens when power changes hands in seconds, with a single click?
Every time I build a story, I find myself returning to those questions. That’s what keeps me writing, and rewriting, the Indian thriller.
The future belongs to our stories
Indian thriller fiction is evolving fast. A new generation of readers wants pace, relevance, and emotional depth; stories that make them think and gasp at the same time. And as our world gets more digital, the thriller will only become more real.
For writers like me, that’s the challenge and the thrill: to capture an India that’s modern yet ancient, rational yet emotional, and constantly on the edge of revelation.
Because when it comes to Indian thriller novels, the biggest twist isn’t in the story.
It’s in how close to home it feels.
