She wrote the book out in six months, starting with turning on her computer at her Parisienne apartment, the house emptied of her husband and daughter, and then doing everything else until the flow came. Sometimes, it only came as the apartment was filling back and then she would write through the night. The edit process, “because the literary world is so, I don’t know, diligent? slow?” took two years.

So though actor, TV show host and writer-producer Koël Purie Rinchet’s first work of fiction—Clearly Invisible in Paris (Rupa Publications)—was written in 2021, it launched last week for us to read. The book was born in the space of being an outsider in the City of lights for nearly five years. She is married to Frenchman Laurent Rinchet. “After the honeymoon period with the city is over, [you realise] there is a big difference between visiting a city and living in one,” says Purie. Her book is also about four outsiders, women from different social-cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. Which is also what the play she has written, produced, performed (Mummy’s Dead, Long Live Mummy!); and will be bringing to Delhi, Mumbai and one more Indian city, has in common. As does her first fiction writing—the Doordarshan show Aaj Ki Naari— had, minus one woman. For it, she would take an issue and weave it into a script that the three protagonists of the show—mother, daughter and grandmother—would bring their own perspective to.