A NEW book by former Hereford Cathedral School student, Harriet Curtis-Lowe, is published today and would, she says, never have seen the light of day had it not been for an operation forcing her into inactivity.

"I couldn't do anything, but I'm not the kind of person to do nothing, so I decided to type up the diary I'd written in Afghanistan."

At the heart of Where the Streams Meet is a love story that ended, as the best love stories do, with a wedding. But it was no ordinary wedding and attracted the attention of the world's press as Harriet and her husband Kranthi were the only cross-cultural couple among more than 150 other couples getting married in a mass ceremony in Hyderabad.

In her book, Harriet, who is now a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF, tells the story of how she met and married an Indian man; and of how exposure to different cultures led her on a journey from ‘party girl’ to learning about, and being transformed by, Hinduism in India and Islam during her RAF service in Afghanistan.

When she split up with her long-term boyfriend, Harriet welcomed the offer from a colleague to keep her company as her flatmate for a few days. Kranthi Tadikonda was an Indian man recently arrived in Birmingham from Hyderabad. He had boyish good looks, wore gold linen trousers and matching shirt, called everyone (including the body-builders at the gym) ‘honey’ because he thought it was a standard English greeting, and didn’t really know how to talk to women. But as he moved more and more of his scruffy possessions into her pristine flat, the days turned into months, and Harriet and Kranthi became inseparable friends.

It was two years before their friendship turned to love: and they were to be parted almost immediately.

After a sensation-packed trip to India to meet Kranthi’s family, who she was eager to please - "including sleeping on a temple floor with my head on my future father-in-law's feet" - but who referred to her consistently just as ‘white girl’, Harriet had to leave Kranthi behind for a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

“Love can grow in so many ways, if the heart is willing to hear,” says Harriet in the book. “It was as though we were at the meeting point of two streams, West and East, the spirit and the mind. It would be the place where we would find each other again in difficult times, the point of compromise, of understanding.”

Although at heart a love story, Harriet's warm, funny and moving book is much more than that: as well as her Afghanistan diary, which tells how she came under fire as soon as her plane landed at Khandahar and how she was appointed ‘battle captain’ at the headquarters nicknamed the ‘Taliban Last Stand’, it relates her quest to live a more spiritual life. She describes how her experience of Hinduism in India and Islam in Afghanistan led her to embrace a spirituality that reached beyond her Christian upbringing and which has enriched and transformed her life.

"The majority of the book is about my time in India," says Harriet. "And about putting a military office into a situation where they have no control. When my mother-in-law told me to do something I did it."

The extreme contrast between her home and work life calls for a good deal of compromise, she says. "In our house it's always me ready and waiting before my husband. I have become a lot more laid back - outside the military world it doesn't matter if you're five minutes late.

"The person I am outside the military is vastly different - I couldn't stand on my head and do yoga for 10 minutes to calm myself before a meeting at work, but at home I do yoga all the time.!"

Harriet is donating her royalties from the book to two charities: Womankind Worldwide, an international human rights charity working to help women transform their lives in Africa, Asia and Latin America; and the Sufi Saint School in Ajmer, India, which brings together children from different communities, irrespective of their caste, colour, religion and gender.

Harriet is also a talented singer/songwriter and a music CD (sold separately) featuring 11 tracks forms what might be called a ‘soundtrack’ to the book - When Amanda at Chaplin Books asked if I wanted to make a CD I instantly said yes and it was recorded in Cornwall in 10 days against a backdrop of children (Harriet has two children, aged three and one ????) and colds."

Extracts from all the tracks on the CD can be heard at www.wherethestreamsmeet.co.uk.

Harriet Curtis-Lowe was born in 1982, grew up in Herefordshire where she attended Hereford Cathedral School, and was one of the first girl choristers – and the head chorister - at Wells Cathedral. After taking a university degree, she became a personal trainer at a health club in Birmingham, then joined the military in 2006. Harriet married Kranthi Tadikonda in October 2009 in a mass ceremony in Hyderabad which attracted major media coverage. The couple now have two children – Bethany and William. In 2010 she founded an RAF choir called The Spitfires, which supports charitable causes and has Sir John Major as its patron. Harriet has recently completed a Masters in Islamic Studies at the University of Wales.

Where the Streams Meet by Harriet Curtis-Lowe is published by Chaplin Books, and is also available as an ebook for all platforms.