After editing copy on current affairs and financial trends across newspapers for over 30 years, Shubha Khandekar, in 2012, enrolled herself into a certificate course in archaeology at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies at the Kalina campus of the University of Mumbai. She was 57.

The course was her way of connecting with an academic discipline that she hadn't found time to pursue when she left her doctorate mid-way in 1981. While she wanted to revive connections with colleagues teaching archaeology or conducting excavations, the course resulted in an unexpected outcome. It fashioned out a second career for her, as cartoonist. It also prompted her to work on a book of cartoons inspired by archaeology-history factoids. Titled ArchaeoGiri (Kaveri Books), the book holds 76 cartoons with explanatory text, and was recently released by noted historian-archaeologist Padmashree Dr MK Dhavalikar.