 Research for her novel began at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi over one extended Diwali vacation, under the initial guidance of Prof. Kunal Chakraborty, of the Centre for Historical Studies at the JNU.She has said the work involved "intensive reading continued for over a year" before Kanekar began to write, "diffidently, not sure at all about how it was going to turn out".Her goal was "to produce something readable, especially about a period so long ago, especially for a modern television watching generation."