The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. As the impending partition of India along religious lines becomes inevitable following independence, the household is forced to divide (Kazi is Muslim) while the rest of the family identifies as Hindu, although the twins' mother (who was Muslim) moved to Jodhpur. The Britishers were leaving and Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. July 1947 is just a month before independence from the British Raj, and Nisha also receives a diary from Kazi, the family's cook, as a birthday gift.

The story takes place in West Pakistan soon to become Pakistan after East Pakistan becomes independent and known as Bangladesh Aside from their father, a medical doctor, and the twins, the household includes their paternal grandmother, Dadi, and their cook, Kazi Syed they live together in a compound in Mirpur Khas. The day also marks the sad anniversary of their mother's death in childbirth.

The novel opens on Jit is the twins' twelfth birthday, and to celebrate, their father has gifted Nisha another piece of gold jewelry from her mother's collection and given her brother Amil an illustrated book of tales from the Mahabharata. The story is told through the eyes of a 12-year-old, Nisha, the protagonist of the story. The Night Diary is set around this time of partition and separated into two different countries. She now teaches creative writing at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York with her family. She has a Master's of Fine Arts in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and spent six years as a book editor.

Her mother is Jewish-American and her father comes from a Hindu family in India.

Veera Hiranandani was raised in a small town in Connecticut. It is set in 1947, during the months before and after the independence of India and subsequent division with Pakistan, and is written as diary entries from the perspective of Nisha, a girl who has just celebrated her twelfth birthday along with her twin brother, Amil. The Night Diary is a young adult novel written by American writer Veera Hiranandani and published by Penguin Random House in 2018.

Nisha the night diary