This post was updated Oct. 6 at 7:37 p.m.

Arushi Avachat is bringing Bollywood extravagance to young adult romance.

The recent graduate and former Daily Bruin contributor published her debut novel, “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” earlier this year while completing her bachelor’s degrees in English and political science with a minor in South Asian studies. The rom-com follows high school senior Arya as she navigates the start of a new school year amid her sister’s lavish engagement plans. Avachat said the book is a culmination of nearly a decade of work rooted in a desire to produce the type of stories she loved to consume.

“The question I kept asking myself as I was outlining and drafting (was), ‘How can I make this the book that satisfies my deepest reader desires?’” Avachat said. “I just wanted to write the type of book that I felt such a longing to read.”

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Avachat said she came up with the idea for her novel during her freshman year of high school. The premise originated from a short story she wrote about the relationship between two sisters and their mother, Avachat added. After becoming familiar with the characters, Avachat said she decided to expand the story into a novel. Like the novel’s title suggests, “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment” was deeply inspired by a vital element of South Asian pop culture, Avachat said.

“I really wanted this novel to read like a Bollywood drama,” Avachat said. “It’s definitely a comfort genre – my favorite form of media – and I wanted something that captured the magic of those movies and the very big, dramatic emotions that are so fundamental to Hindi cinema.”

Her choice to frame the story around Arya’s sister’s shaadi traditions – South Asian wedding preparations – lends itself to the idea of weddings as a site for familial tension and romantic conflict, which are popular themes in Bollywood, Avachat said. In addition to the late ‘90s and early 2000s Bollywood romantic dramas that she grew up watching, Avachat said the classic comedy drama “Gilmore Girls” also influenced her novel with its small-town setting. Additionally, Avachat referenced the tropes commonly found in Jane Austen novels, such as the rivals-to-friends-to-lovers arc featured in “Pride and Prejudice.” Despite having never visited Boston at the time she wrote her book, Avachat said she chose to place her characters in the city to imbue the story with the rich, seasonal descriptions of fall in New England.

Looking beyond her inspirations, Avachat said she drew from years of writing practice and an extensive history of cultural traditions within her own family to craft a story that seamlessly weaves in references to her South Asian heritage while exploring the Indian-American teenage experience. Sana Sinha, a childhood friend of Avachat’s, said the author’s writing is especially captivating in how she contextualizes these cultural references without having to explicitly define them for Western audiences. Avachat’s early love for creative writing set her up with the knowledge of the young adult genre necessary to accomplish such a feat, Sinha added.

Avachat’s path to publication began with her childhood love of reading and storytelling, she said. From writing stories as a six-year-old to attempting her first novel drafts in the fifth grade, Avachat said she knew early on that she wanted to pursue a career in writing. She added that her strong desire to be an author empowered her to seek out writing opportunities as a high school student, such as joining teen writing communities and mentorship programs.

“Because I’ve been writing since I was so young, I had enough knowledge and confidence to really pursue (a writing career) for myself,” Avachat said. “I found a lot of comfort in thinking of my love for writing as very independent from my professional aspirations, even though, ultimately, my end goal is to be a writer as my primary income.”

Avachat said her genuine passion for writing is what kept her motivated during her writing journey. With an apt awareness of the possibility of rejection in the publishing industry, Avachat said it was important that she maintain faith in her identity as a writer, even if she hadn’t yet been published.

Avachat said she started drafting “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment” during her junior year of high school and finished the first manuscript during the winter quarter of her freshman year at UCLA. With the guidance of an author mentor through the program Author Mentor Match, Avachat said she then revised her manuscript and began to pursue the traditional publishing process. After signing with a literary agent during her second year of college, “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment” was accepted for publication in January 2024.

Though most of her writing journey took place outside of academics, Avachat attributed much of her growth as a writer to the creative writing courses offered by the English department at UCLA and the literary community of peers and faculty that she met along the way. Having completed the English department’s creative writing concentration, Avachat praised the workshops and guidance of mentors such as professors Justin Torres, Mona Simpson and Xuan Juliana Wang throughout her writing career.

When fleshing out the relationships between her characters, Avachat said her own sister was a source of motivation and inspiration for the dynamic between Arya and her sister Alina. Avachat’s sister, Aasna Avachat, spoke to the author’s authenticity in illustrating the niche references to their sibling relationship and their family’s culture.

“It was the first time I read a book that referenced so many cultural things that were personal to me,” Aasna Avachat said. “I think (Arushi’s) done such a wonderful job of capturing a very complex but still understandable family dynamic. All of the characters feel so complicated and real in their own ways.”

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Looking to the future of her career, Avachat said she is nearing the completion of her second novel, which is part of her initial two-book deal contract. Avachat said her next novel started as a loose re-imagining of Austen’s “Emma,” though the drafting process has led the author to deviate from her original idea. She said her goal is to have her manuscript finished by the end of August before she leaves to continue her graduate studies at the University of Oxford in the fall. To all her readers, Avachat said she hopes her stories will continue to serve as a beacon of positivity in the world of romance literature.

“What I love so much about romance is that guarantee of a happy ending,” Avachat said. “The guarantee that you can open our books and no matter what trials and tribulations the characters are going through, everything’s going to work out well for them in the end. I love the thought that my books could be comforting to a person. … I always want them to make people feel good. That’s a really special thing about writing to me.”