Seven months ago, I released my memoir, The Woman in Deed, into the world with no publisher, no marketing team, and no roadmap. A publisher had told me I would be a hard sell — a first‑time author at seventy‑five, with a headline from thirty years ago. I didn’t argue. I simply did what I have always done: build my own path.
Since then, the book has traveled farther than I expected. A Boston journalist told me she discovered it because it “popped up” on Amazon. I still don’t understand how algorithms work, but somehow the book reached her before I did. In San Francisco, at my second big book launch in Silicon Valley, the Consul General — my chief guest — read the book and summarized my story to the audience with care and precision. These gestures stay with me because they were not asked for. They were freely given. In Los Angeles, the Indian Consul General introduced himself to me twice, reminding me that he had been Deputy CG in San Francisco.
And then there was Boston itself.
Friends, a couple from an earlier chapter of my professional life invited me to stay with them for a week. He chose to interview me on stage. They arranged four events, activated every Indian media outlet in the city, and treated my book as if it mattered. Before I even arrived, they had both read all 170 pages of my memoir. That is not a casual gesture. It is hours of focused attention — the kind busy people rarely give.
I kept asking myself why.
Why would they invest that kind of time in me?
Why would they mobilize their networks, their home, their energy?
The answer unsettled me:
They saw value in my story before I allowed myself to see it.
What I Learned by Becoming My Own PR Agent
Writing a book is one thing.
Marketing is a different profession altogether.
I had to learn it from scratch — at seventy‑five.
Here is what the last seven months taught me:
- Visibility is responsibility — if you believe your story has value, you must help it find its readers.
- People want to help — but only if they sense you are serious, disciplined, and not looking for shortcuts.
- Rejection is data — not judgment. The publisher’s “hard sell” comment became my fuel, not my wound.
- You must ask — something I have never been comfortable with. But PR requires it. Asking is not taking; it is inviting others to participate.
- Consistency beats brilliance — one podcast, one talk, one interview at a time.
- Learning keeps you alive — I discovered that my hunger to learn is still intact. That surprised me more than anything else.
These lessons are not about selling a book.
They are about reinvention — something I have done many times, but never in such a public way.
The Engine That Never Lets Me Rest
I estimate that about two thousand people have read the book so far. My target is five thousand. The numbers don’t discourage me; they simply remind me of a truth I have lived with all my life: I am never enough for myself.
People call me a motivational speaker. I never know what to do with that label. I don’t feel motivational. What drives me is not confidence but a quiet, persistent restlessness — the sense that I am not yet who I could be. That gap between who I am and who I expect myself to be has shaped every chapter of my life: engineering, entrepreneurship, bridge, writing. It is not insecurity. It is discipline. It is the refusal to settle.
Boston didn’t close that gap.
But it did reveal something I often overlook.
People step forward for me long before I think I deserve it. They read my work before I arrive. They show up at events without being asked. They pull me forward when I am still measuring myself. They believe I am “enough” long before I ever do.
Maybe that is the real lesson of these seven months:
“Not enough,” I realize, has been a compass. It keeps me learning at seventy‑five, trying new things, and stepping into rooms I did not know existed. Boston reminded me that others walk beside me not because I have arrived, but because I am still moving.