PVLF 2026

KILLING ME SOFTLY...With Her Dance

Killing Me Softly… With Her Dance is a layered romance shaped by childhood memories, family expectations, and emotional scars. Through Priti and Deep, the story explores attraction, resistance, and the quiet power of personal growth within love.
on Feb 16, 2026

Frontlist: Killing Me Softly… With Her Dance explores a love story shaped by childhood impressions, family dynamics, and strong personalities. What first inspired the relationship between Priti and Deep?

Vidya: As a child, sometimes there are some children one takes a liking to and some whom one takes an innate dislike to; sometimes with reason and sometimes without any reason whatsoever.

Priti being a free-spirited lady dislikes the bullying, domineering and overbearing attitude of Deep since childhood. And things do not change even between the grownup Priti and the NRI Deep when he returns to the motherland. He continues to instigate Priti and bring out the worst side of her initially, knowing full well that she would rise to his bait each time

Frontlist: Priti grows up in a wealthy joint family, yet carries emotional gaps from losing her mother. How did you approach shaping her emotional strength and vulnerabilities?

Vidya: I have observed children who grow up without mothers. They tend to be more independent than those with mothers; and yet they are in search of a mother figure sometime in their lives, a vulnerable side very few relatives or outsiders are witness to.

In Priti’s case, her grandmother fills this mother figure role to a great extent. That’s the reason Priti is reluctant to hurt her grandparents’ feelings and yet sometimes there comes a clash between the conservatism of the grandparents and the more modern world views of Priti.

Priti’s grandmother sends Priti to a boarding school unlike her other cousins because her grandmother does not want Priti to miss a mother when she sees her other cousins being mothered. But the grandmother has not foreseen that a boarding school may have its own ways of inculcating a child to be more independent than day scholars.

Frontlist: Deep Joshi enters the story with charm, confidence, and a complicated past with Priti. What makes him both appealing and problematic as a romantic lead?

Vidya: Deep is a typical NRI who does not think twice about criticizing or ridiculing India and situations within India. Also, coming from a broken home, he has been witness to constant bickering between his parents, which has disillusioned him about the institution of marriage.

Being handsome and attractive, he has become conceited thanks to his ease of charming members of the opposite sex, a trait that he thinks will work in all cases including Priti’s once he falls for her

Although Priti has always thought of Deep as being most pompous and hateful, she is very young and inexperienced vis-à-vis the more experienced man of the world Deep. And once Deep begins to get attracted to the hitherto resentful Priti, he does not hesitate to pull all stops to charm his way to her heart.

Frontlist: The joint family setting plays an important role in the narrative. How do family expectations and social structures influence romantic choices in your story?

Vidya: At a time when the political climate in Africa is not very congenial, Deep decides to return to India and to his native place which he has always visited during his vacations in childhood; where he was always welcomed with warm and open arms by the Oza household. Deep comes with a plan to set up business and buy himself a house in Kesad. However, he is not too aware of the social norms in this conservative town.

Priti’s grandmother knows that the charming, well-to-do Deep would be a good catch for any eligible lady. But, knowing full well that Deep does not believe in the institution of marriage, Priti’s grandmother does not even give a thought to getting any of her granddaughter’s alliance fixed with the eligible Deep.

Being deeply attached and respectful to the seniors in the trustful Oza family Deep feels in some way beholden to them for their warm hospitality since childhood. That’s the reason why he volunteers initially to keep an eye on Priti in their absence rather than have Priti’s grandparents cancel their Rajasthan trip for Priti’s sake.

Later when Shekhar, Priti’s father and Deep’s sleeping partner realizes Deep’s attraction and intentions as far as his young, vulnerable daughter Priti is concerned, the hitherto-nonchalant father tries his best to defeat Deep’s plans to win over Priti.

Frontlist: The title Killing Me Softly… Her Dance is poetic and dramatic. What does “dance” symbolise in the context of this love story: attraction, power, emotional rhythm, or something else?

Vidya: In my story, there is no symbolization of Dance. It is just that Priti is a natural as far as any dance in any form is concerned, be it Western (as her dancing in the disco) or traditional (as her dancing during the Navratri festival). It is her free spirit within that comes forth when she dances. She gives herself to the music, unconscious of the effect she has on her audience.

With all his experience with ladies in his past and in spite of his turbulent relationship with Priti otherwise, it is when Deep sees Priti dancing in the disco without any inhibitions and quite oblivious to her audience or her surroundings that Deep falls in love with her. All the while, one by one, he has already begun to discover the hitherto unravelled virtues in her that his constant resentment had been blind to in the past.

Frontlist: You have written across genres, from relationship fiction to children’s literature and nonfiction. How does your background in psychology shape the way you build emotional conflict in your characters?

Vidya: Well, psychology does consciously or unconsciously shape the way I deal with the characters in my stories, be it a children’s story, a relationship story, a romance or a nonfiction. I feel for my characters, which to me is a very important aspect of storytelling. When I write about children, a large part of my observation of children’s behaviors helps shape their characters.

When my second book Of Dreams and Destiny was released, a father came and asked me if it was a sentimental story because he found tears falling down his daughter’s cheeks when she was reading the book. And truly enough, I was very emotionally involved in the story as I wrote it.

Frontlist: With such a rich career spanning journalism, editing, film adaptations, and fiction writing, how has storytelling evolved for you over the years?

Vidya: I feel that more that storytelling or writing, it is my reading that has helped evolve my writing. I read much more than I write even today. And frankly, I prefer reading to writing.

I have always been an avid reader and movie goer. Can you believe it, after almost every story/book I read or movie I watched (I am a real movie buff) in my early years until college, I have narrated the story to my neighbourhood friends and even my college friends who would even drop in over the weekend to hear me complete the story I had started during a free period in college.

Frontlist: What do you hope readers feel when they close the book: belief in love, nostalgia for classic romance, or a deeper reflection on relationships and personal growth?

Vidya: I don’t really think on those lines. I just want my readers to enjoy reading my book as much as I enjoyed writing it. And to remember some part of the story at least for very long.

And believe me, people who read my book have called me and told me that they are unable to forget the characters I have created. I was even asked by a reader to introduce me to the person who inspired a particular character in my book, which obviously I could not as he had been a figment of my imagination. But, yes, I think some of my books do set minds thinking and introspecting, although that may not have been my intention while writing.