Natasha Basu was born in Maryland, USA to Indian parents from Calcutta. From a young age, Natasha loved to tell stories and imagine different worlds. She took her ballet classes very seriously and dreamt of becoming a ballerina or a veterinarian.

In 1997, during a layover in London, Natasha and her mother went into the city to meet up with an aunt. They spent the next eight hours exploring the city, and while feeding the pigeons at Trafalgar Square, a nine-year-old Natasha declared to her mother that she was going to live and study there.

In 2009, Natasha graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a BA in Government and Politics, a double minor in English and Spanish, and a notation in creative writing from the Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House. She had done internships at the US State Department and with then Congressman Van Hollen and in 2010 was accepted into the Fulbright Program in Turkey.

In 2011, Natasha was set to fulfil her childhood dream of attending the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK. The plane ticket was booked, the dorm was selected and she had picked out her classes. A month before she was set to fly to London, however, Natasha was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in her proximal tibia. An avid gymgoer, she had started to feel a growing pain in her knee every time she ran on the treadmill. The pain became so severe that she could not bend her knee. She had to begin chemotherapy immediately. She spent the rest of the year stuck in her childhood bedroom in her parents’ house.

Natasha kept a blog about her experiences with chemotherapy—mostly the painful side effects and distress she felt, but also the newfound joy she experienced in the small moments of being alive. She realized that despite all of her hard work and the awards she had received throughout her academic career, the only thing that really mattered to her was love. She had never been in love, and it was the only thing that she regretted not experiencing. She had a deep knowing that she had to go to London to meet her person, and so after a year of chemo and radiation, she was cleared to begin her studies at LSE. There, she met a classmate that would eventually become her husband.