Sahana Ahmed is the founder and CEO of Bare Bones Publishing. She has contributed the story ‘A Memsahib Learns to Cook’ to THE BARE BONES BOOK OF HUMOUR, for which she additionally handled the in-house editing and interior design. Ankit Raj Ojha, the curator of the volume, interviewed her for this website.

Tell us about your perspective on humour and its place in writing and in life.

Humour is the highest form of intelligence. I am naturally drawn to literature that plays with language—through pun, satire, and irony. Writers who can be funny on the page are often the most sensitive, with a heightened ability to read the room. They are, in their own way, survivors.

What are the things, works, and authors that have influenced your writing? 

P.G. Wodehouse, Goscinny and Uderzo, and Ajit Ninan are the first names that come to mind. More recently, I thoroughly enjoyed THE HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED by Jonas Jonasson.

Is there any image, phrase, idea, place, person, or memory that became the seed for ‘A Memsahib Learns to Cook’?

My mother was the original inspiration. YouTube and Pinterest are stand-ins for Good Housekeeping, Soviet Nari, Manorama, and Grihshobha. Ma had never learnt to cook, and now she’s a regular on Rojgere Ginni and Hangla Hneshel. She’s also obsessed with social media—unlike me—and has even (gasp) monetised her Meta account. Her defence? She’s raising funds for her charitable trust.