Welcome  to my site

I am a muddled collection of multiple roles, the predominant ones currently being writer, consultant, spouse, mother, caregiver.

I write stories that insist on coming out, even if they get mangled in the process. I write serious stuff and fun stuff as part of my professional work. I write about personal things that touch me, and things that make me wonder. And when I am puzzled, I write to understand things.

Writing helps.

Speculative fiction fascinates me. I am currently enjoying the process of writing it and learning a lot in the process. I am using these pages to share resources with other writers.  Information about my creative work can be found here.

As part of my professional work (software consultant, trainer and author), I have written books on process and quality, and have recently published a business novel, Aligning Ferret: How an Organization Meets Extraordinary Challenges. The story uses a crisis in a fictional organization to explore concepts of strategy and performance management systems for organization-wide alignment. What made it fun to write was creating and depicting a very normal ‘hero’ who faces extraordinary challenges at work even as he struggles for that ever-problematic work-and-home-life balance. No stodgy, preachy stuff here. I’m thrilled to see the book getting good reviews.

My mother has dementia; caregiving work, worries, and insights form a major part of my mind-share and timeshare. For years, I handled this solo, but now I am part of support groups and communities, and I have set up some pages to share resources related this aspect of my life here. I also blog on Wordpress occasionally about this part of my life.

My occasionally-updated blogs are on aha! moments and serious thought and on the small and random of my life.

On the personal side, hmmm. I live in Bangalore, India, with my family. My son, Vipul Naik,  is currently enrolled in the graduate studies programme at The University of Chicago. Hubby Rajesh Naik is a consultant, juggles a lot, and barely has time to update his web site though he keeps saying he will do it.

And I love dark chocolate (you mean there are people who don’t?). I also love reading books and taking long walks when time permits. I am at my creative best while finding excuses, I mean reasons, to avoid socializing. My personality type is INFJ, which matches well with hubby (ENFP) and son (INFP).