Janaki Lenin started writing in 2004 after turning her back on film-making. Writing was the only choice she had, since she didn't know any other skill besides making movies. She discovered writing was just like producing movies -- same principles, different medium.
Janaki started out writing articles for wildlife magazines while also wrangling with wildlife management issues such as coexistence. In 2010, she began writing a popular column in The Hindu, one of India's largest English newspapers, called My Husband and Other Animals. The first volume of collected essays from the column was published in 2012 and the second volume was released in April 2018.