Nasera Sharma: The journalist who interviewed Khomeini and Khamenei, then found her voice in fiction

In the early 1980s, Iran was navigating an era of profound uncertainty. The monarchy had fallen, replaced by clerical rule under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the nation’s first Supreme Leader. The devastating war with Iraq had begun, and internal opposition to the new regime persisted. During this critical juncture, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who survived a 1981 assassination attempt and would serve as Supreme Leader from Khomeini’s death in 1989 until his own death following an Israel-US air strike in February 2026, granted an interview to writer, freelance journalist, and researcher Nasera Sharma.

Working as a journalist, Nasera interviewed both Iranian leaders: “Khomeini in Qom and Khamenei in Tehran.” Securing the conversation with Khomeini required assistance from Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then chairman of the Iranian parliament. “Before the interview, Khomeini asked one of his aides if I knew Persian and whether I was a Shia. When I replied in the affirmative, it created a connection,” she recalls.

While Nasera has spoken publicly about the Khomeini encounter, her interview with Khamenei remains lesser known, it was the first he granted after the bomb explosion that left his right hand paralyzed. “Those interviews created a sensation. In Iran, I was interviewed by many magazines and newspapers,” she says, referencing a 1982 issue of the London-based magazine The Middle East that featured the Khamenei piece. Breaking barriers across the region, she wrote extensively on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, noting, “I also interviewed Afghan mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”


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Over the past three decades, literature has become Nasera’s primary identity. Now 78, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2016 for Parijat, a detailed novel set in Allahabad (now Prayagraj) and Lucknow that explores three interconnected families and the region's syncretic Ganga-Jamuni culture.

Literature was a natural path for Nasera, who was raised in a literary home in Allahabad. Her father, Zamin Ali, taught Persian and founded the Urdu department at Allahabad University. Immersed in a well-stocked family library, she read Shakespeare and Bankimchandra from an early age.

She attended Hamidia Girls School, where early influences shaped her worldview: “A progressive Christian principal, Miss Mary, played a key role in shaping many of us.”

Her interest in geography led her to R C Sharma, a professor of the subject at Allahabad University who later became an eminent geographer. The two fell in love and married in 1967. “My parents were worried because I was marrying into a different culture. But there was no social uproar. Those were different times,” Nasera recalls.

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The couple subsequently spent three years in Edinburgh, where her husband pursued a doctorate on the Thar desert under J W Watson. Upon returning to India, Nasera enrolled in a five-year postgraduate Persian program at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), while her husband joined the School of International Studies, which was soon integrated into JNU, as an associate professor.

The sprawling, green JNU campus served as their home for over two decades. “I don’t miss the people. But I long for the trees. The JNU I grew up with is no longer the same,” she reflects.

Though she wrote little during her early years of marriage, Nasera’s literary voice flourished amid JNU’s landscape of bougainvillea, amaltas, gulmohar, and thorny keekar trees. Her debut short story, ‘Butkhana’, which depicts a small-town man’s dehumanization in Delhi, was published in 1976 in the literary magazine Sarika.

Like writer Shaani (Kala Jal), Nasera chose to write in Hindi, a decision rooted in her childhood. “The Hindi teachers were encouraging, but the Urdu teacher, a relative of poet Akbar Allahabadi, would taunt us. Which is why we gravitated towards Hindi,” she explains.

Her debut novel, Saat Nadiyan Ek Samandar, set against the backdrop of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, was published in 1984. “I have been to Iran five times and witnessed three eras: under the Shah, Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei. During Shah’s period, cities and towns were more developed. In recent decades, villages have prospered,” she notes.

Fluent in Pashto, Nasera also authored Afghanistan: Buzkashi Ka Maidan, a two-volume work chronicling the country's complex history. Her research took her to Kabul for roughly 20 days during the presidency of Najibullah, who received backing from India. She recalls how some locals resented India's political stance: while walking through Kabul, an Afghan woman selling bread threw crumbs at her, “making noises, as if she were feeding dogs. It was her way of expressing anger against an Indian for supporting Najib, who was backed by the Soviets.”

Throughout her bibliography, particularly in her short stories, Nasera’s writing is driven by deep empathy for ordinary people: “When I see an orchard full of mangoes, I also think about the lives of its caretakers.”

This eye for detail shines through in Parijat, where she captures the guavas of Allahabad, traditional feast plates, and the derewali tawaifs of Lucknow. Another notable work, Shalmali, which was adapted into a Doordarshan serial, addresses the daily struggles of an upright, working married woman.

Today, the author resides on the outskirts of South Delhi with her family and three dogs: Don (a Dogo Argentino), Dash (a Jack Russell Terrier), and Darius (a German Shepherd). “My son is a real dog lover,” she adds.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she authored the poem Kuttey bahut udaas hain (The dogs are very sad), alongside a reflective poem addressing the role of journalists: “Kahan toota hausla tumhara, jo sikhate tthey doosron ko roz jeena (Where did your courage break, you who used to teach others to live each day)?”