As a young girl, whenever Diana R Chambers, a San Francisco-based scriptwriter and costume designer, spun the globe, it would land on the little patch of pink labelled India. Little did she know then that actress Nancy Valentine had the same experience as a child, while growing up during the Great Depression in the 1930s. While both of them travelled to the Subcontinent in their own lives, it was Valentine-s journey — from the sets of Hollywood to the palace of Cooch Behar as the Maharani of prince Jagaddipendra Narayan in pre-Independent India — that brought the scriptwriter back to the country again. The romance that caused a scandal in one of the leading royal families in India, stayed with Chambers for years, before she decided to pen it down as a book, The Star of India Penguin Random House India, which was released in May. Edited excerpts from an interview.

How did you meet Valentine?