India, April 6 -- Dear Reader,

At 2pm on a Tuesday, as MBA students slump post-lunch, guest speaker and Bollywood scriptwriter Atika Chohan does the unexpected-she questions her own presence.

'Why invite a feminist writer like me,' she challenges, 'when you could have the Stree (horror film) screenwriter?'

The room snaps to attention. This is classic Atika: part provocateur, part psychologist, wholly persuasive.

With films like Margarita With a Straw, featuring a young woman with cerebral palsy and Guilty, which deals with a college rape, she's mastered the art of wrapping urgent social commentary in compelling narratives. Today, as she talks to the MBA students on persuasive storytelling, she shares how childhood trauma, her secret r...