Whose story is it?

I’ve been asked a few times, “What made you write this story?”

The truth is, I’m not sure there was one single moment.

Sometimes a story arrives quietly. A thought becomes a question. A question becomes a character. And before you know it, those characters have begun living somewhere inside you.

Have You Seen the Sharmas? began with a curiosity about choice.

We live in a time when we have more choices than perhaps any generation before us — in the lives we build, the people we love, the paths we take, and the ones we choose not to take. And yet, life has a funny way of reminding us that some of the biggest things that happen to us are never really our choice at all.

That tension fascinated me.

What do we hold on to when life doesn’t go according to plan? What do we accept? What do we resist? And what happens to the people we thought we knew when circumstances force us to see them — and ourselves — differently?

And then came Shalini and Arjun.

Are they the story?

Perhaps.

But the more I wrote, the more I realized that a story is rarely just about the people who live inside it. It is also about the choices they make, the circumstances they cannot control, the people they encounter, and the moments that change them.

And somewhere in all of this is something I find particularly interesting about modern relationships: we may have more freedom to choose, but perhaps the harder question is learning to accept the choices — and the people — that life puts in front of us.

So whose story is it?

Maybe it begins with Shalini and Arjun.

Maybe it belongs to the characters who cross their path.

Maybe, by the end, it belongs to you.

As a playwright, I can decide where the story begins.

But once the curtain rises, the story becomes yours to experience.

I hope you laugh. I hope you hold your breath. I hope you find yourself wondering what comes next.

And perhaps, when the lights come back on, you’ll see a little of yourself in the choices, the surprises, and the unexpected turns along the way.

Welcome to the world of the Sharmas.

— Spandana Akella
     Playwright