CHENNAI: Roopa Unnikrishnan’s life has always moved between precision and imagination. Long before she became a Rhodes Scholar, an Arjuna Awardee, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist, and an international rifle shooter, she was a curious 12-year-old growing up in Chennai, unaware that a casual stop during her father’s workday would change her life.
Her father, a police officer, once took her along on an inspection round near Chengalpattu. “We stopped at a police shooting range where policemen were in the midst of a shooting competition. Someone handed me a rifle. For a 12-year-old girl, it felt like a game,” Roopa recalls. “They gave me some basic instructions on shooting and safety and set me up on the shooting range.”
She took five shots and all five landed at the centre! “That moment made me realise I had an instinct for the sport. After that, I kept pushing my father to take me back to the rifle range,” she says. What began as curiosity soon turned into discipline. Her father eventually enrolled her at the Madras Rifle Range, where her talent sharpened quickly. Within a few years, Roopa became a club champion, then a state champion, and soon a national champion. Before she knew it, she was representing India abroad.
Behind her rise was a quiet ecosystem of support. “My mother used to come with me for shooting competitions across the country, and my father was my first coach. They both sacrificed their time to invest in my success. My uncles banded together to buy me a German rifle, the best for competition shooting,” she remembers.
Coaches and mentors such as AJ Jalaludeen and Walter Devaram IPS played pivotal roles, offering encouragement during long training hours. “There were people who believed in me consistently. That matters more than people realise,” she smiles.
Her success in sports opened academic doors as well. Her shooting success taught her hard work, and she quickly climbed in her school rankings as well. Roopa went on to receive the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Oxford. Later, she moved to New York, building a career in global business strategy, advising companies on innovation and leadership. Over the years, she developed a reputation as a sharp strategist and thinker, with essays published.
But even as her professional life flourished, writing quietly ran alongside it. “I started writing when I was very young. I wrote poetry and my dad sent my poems to competitions and some of them got published in The American Anthology of Poetry.” Writing, like shooting, became a habit, something she kept returning to. When new media platforms emerged, she began blogging, using writing as a way to think through ideas and experiences. That turned into her first book, The Career Catapult, which guides people on using innovation methods to drive career evolution.
The turning point came during the first year of the Covid pandemic. “I started interviewing my parents during that time. Listening to their stories triggered memories of older stories I had grown up hearing,” she tells us. Those conversations stayed with her, and over the next four and a half years, they slowly transformed into a novel.
That novel became The Jasmine Murders, a mystery set in rural Tamil Nadu in the 1960s. “On the surface, the book is about a couple of murders. But underneath, it’s really about the secrets people keep within families and communities,” Roopa explains. The novel also examines how social structures shape lives, often placing a disproportionate burden on women. “It’s about the impact of society on families and how that impact is felt most deeply by women,” says the author.
At its heart, the story also traces the emotional journey of a young couple learning to understand and respect each other. “There is a formal investigation running through the book. But there is also a very human story unfolding alongside it.”
Writing fiction, she admits, demanded a different kind of discipline: one that echoed her years as an athlete. “I had to learn how to write fiction by writing the book itself. Every scene has to earn its place. Every moment has to exist for a reason,” Roopa narrates. Her return to storytelling felt natural. Even during her time at Oxford, Roopa was known for blending rigour with narrative flair. “My thesis was once described as ‘too entertaining,’” she laughs. The Jasmine Murders marks her joyful return to that instinct.
Her non-fiction debut, The Career Catapult, which won the Independent Press Award, had already established her as a thoughtful voice on careers and leadership. But fiction, she says, allows her to explore questions that don’t always have neat answers.
Today, Roopa Unnikrishnan stands at the intersection of many worlds: sport, scholarship, business and literature. Yet, the thread connecting them all is focus. Whether it was hitting the centre of a target as a teenager in Chennai or crafting layered narratives decades later, she has always trusted the process.