In today’s edition of Talk Time, we are honoured to host debut author Uma Lohray, whose evocative novel The One-Way Ships (Om Books) is fast emerging as one of the most powerful literary offerings of the season. Set in pre-independence India, the novel reclaims the voices of a largely forgotten group—young Indian ayahs who travelled across oceans to serve British families, only to be discarded and forgotten by history.
Through the journey of Asha, a spirited girl from the hills of Shimla, Uma crafts a deeply moving narrative of survival, dignity, and self-discovery. A lawyer by training and a storyteller by calling, Uma brings both emotional sensitivity and historical insight to her work. In this candid conversation, she opens up about her writing journey, her research process, and the enduring strength of women’s stories—both spoken and silent.
Welcome to this session of Talk Time. Uma Lohray mam, I request you to introduce yourself to my readers and share with us a bit about your background, family and education
I studied and practised as a lawyer before transitioning to writing. My parents were scientists. I’ve lived in Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and presently I live in Delhi with my husband and 5 year old.
What inspired you to writeThe One-Way Ships? Was there a specific story or archive that first sparked your curiosity about the Indian ayahs of the colonial era?
The first spark came from an article I happened to read about a campaign being undertaken to secure a Blue Plaque for the Ayah Home in Hackney, London. I’d never heard of it before, and the name itselfstopped me in my tracks. Who were these women? Why did they need a home in England? That small curiosity opened a door into a largely forgotten part of our history: Indian ayahs, often very young, who were taken across continents to care for British children and were sometimes left behind once their services were no longer required. The more I read, the more compelled I felt to tell their story
Asha is such a compelling protagonist. How did her character evolve in your imagination, and did she change during the writing process?
Asha started off as a shadow, a device to deliver the story I wanted to tell. But she had to be something more: a real human like you or me, someone human and true, who could transport us to a world that was alien but through familiar eyes. So she came alive as a young girl standing at the edge of something much larger than herself. Her story would begin in Shimla, in a moment of personal loss, and who she was became clearer as I began writing her voice. As I spent more time with her, she became clearer to me: she’s observant, strong-willed in quiet ways, and often braver than she realises.
The theme of abandonment runs deep through this story—personal, cultural, and historical. How did you navigate writing about such a sensitive subject while keeping the tone both powerful and empathetic?
It was definitely a balancing act. Abandonment isn’t just something that happens to Asha once, it’s something she learns to live with, reinterpret, and ultimately resist. I didn’t want the story to feel like a catalogue of suffering. These women were not only vulnerable. They were resilient, adaptive, and deeply human. So I wrote with that in mind. I tried to give Asha enough agency even when her choices were limited, and I focused on small moments of connection, dignity, and even humour. Empathy, for me, came from treating her life not as a tragedy, but as a full and complex experience.
How much of The One-Way Ships is drawn from real events or oral histories, and how did you strike a balance between fiction and fact?
The backdrop is very much real. The Ayahs’ Home existed, and the practice of transporting Indian ayahs across the seas was widespread during the colonial period. I consulted ship records, missionary reports, and existing academic work to build that framework. But Asha herself is a fictional creation. The balance came from grounding her experiences in what was historically plausible, while allowing her emotions, relationships, and voice to evolve organically. I didn’t want to overwrite history with fiction, but I also didn’t want to be confined by the gaps in the record. Fiction became a way to honour what we don’t know, without distorting what we do.
Could you tell us more about your research process? Were there any particular sources or archives that proved invaluable?
My research process was fairly simple- voraciously devouring every word I could find about Shimla and ayahs! I relied heavily on books about Shimla, books written during the Raj about British households and society in the hill stations during summers, resources on the various ships used by the P&O Steam Navigation Company, public articles about ayahs and the Ayah home, and scholarly works. The works of historians like Dr. Rozina Visram, and unlikely books such as Mrs. Beeton’s Book on Household Management proved invaluable.
The ayahs are rarely discussed in mainstream colonial history. Why do you think their stories have remained so obscured—and what do you hope this book will do to change that?
I think their invisibility comes down to a combination of race, class, and gender. These were poor women, often very young, and their labour took place in the most private, domestic corners of empire. They didn’t write diaries or leave behind formal records. Their value was seen as practical, not historical. Even after independence, our histories have often focused on political figures or movements, not the everyday lives of working women. With The One-Way Ships, I hope readers begin to question what else has been left out, and why. I hope the book opens a door to greater interest, empathy, and further inquiry.
The novel beautifully captures both the internal world of a young girl and the larger social and political forces at play in pre-independence India. How did you manage this delicate interweaving of the personal and the political?
For me, the political is always personal, especially in stories about marginalised lives. Asha’s world is shaped by larger forces: class divisions, colonial hierarchies, gender expectations. But she doesn’t name them that way. She feels them. She navigates them instinctively. So instead of making the politics overt, I tried to let it live in the details. It’s in what she’s allowed to ask for, and what she’s expected to endure. The goal was to show the world without needing long exposition.
How did your background in law inform your approach to writing this novel—if at all? Did your legal training influence the way you structured the story or approached justice and agency within the narrative?
If it had a role to play- perhaps it was that Law teaches you to pay close attention to what’s said and what isn’t. You learn to question the gaps, the omissions, the unspoken assumptions. It may have helped while researching, because so much of the ayahs’ story exists in fragments. It also shaped how I thought about agency in Asha’s character. She’s not someone who gets to define justice on her own terms, but she finds small ways to claim space, to push back quietly. And structurally, the novel has a certain logic of unfolding evidence- you piece together her life like a case file, moment by moment.
There’s a strong feminist thread in the story. Was that an intentional framing from the start, or did it emerge more organically as Asha’s story unfolded?
The deeper I went into Asha’s world, the more I realised how many layers of constraint she was living under- age, class, caste, colonialism, gender. And yet, she moves forward. Not always with defiance, but with this steady insistence on surviving, on thinking, on feeling. That felt quietly radical to me. So yes, by the time I was deep into the writing, I knew I was telling a feminist story. But not in the banner-waving sense, it’s more about who gets to be seen, and whose stories are allowed to matter.
The writing is richly atmospheric and lyrical. Who are some of your literary influences, and what kind of books shaped your style as a writer?
Thank you, that’s lovely to hear! I’ve always gravitated toward writers who are hold emotional depth and historical or social complexity in the same breath. Authors like Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh come to mind. I also love the quiet strength in the writing of Jhumpa Lahiri. I grew up reading a mix of Indian literature and English classics, but it’s the books that have an evocative, “lingering” tone and feeling that have stayed with me. I’ve always been drawn to writing that makes you slow down.
Did writing about a forgotten community of women bring about any personal transformations or realizations for you?
Absolutely. Writing this book made me realise how easily lives can disappear from history, not because they weren’t meaningful, but because no one thought they were worth recording. It made me think about my own grandmother, and how many women in our own families have stories that were never really told. This project also deepened my belief in fiction as a powerful form of recovery. Sometimes storytelling is the only way to honour what the archive leaves out.
What was the most challenging scene or part of the book for you to write—and why?
The scene where Asha loses her father was the hardest for me to write. It happens early in the book, but it sets the emotional tone for everything that follows. She’s young, the loss is sudden, and everything safe and familiar begins to unravel after that. I didn’t want to dramatise it too much. Grief at that age is confusing, often silent, and I wanted to honour that. It was emotionally heavy, and it felt important to get it right.
Do you see The One-Way Ships as a standalone novel, or are you open to exploring more stories around lesser-known histories of Indian women in future work?
I very much see it as a standalone novel, but I think the questions it raised for me will influence what I write next. And I’ll always remain deeply interested in personal, intimate histories that don’t sit neatly within grand historical timelines but bring them to life. So yes, while The One-Way Ships is complete in itself, I do hope to continue exploring lesser-known lives in future work.
Finally, what would you say to young women—especially in South Asia—who may feel unheard or invisible in today’s world, much like the ayahs of the past?
I think I’d say—if you feel unheard or invisible, you’re not imagining it. A lot of women before us lived full, complicated lives without much recognition. That can feel disheartening, but it can also be strangely comforting. You’re part of a longer story. And even if the world hasn’t asked for your voice, it doesn’t mean it isn’t needed. Whether you choose to speak out, create, or just hold on to what matters to you, they’re all valid choices. Sometimes the quietest stories stay with us the longest.
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