Sohaila's literary fiction is full of eccentric people — a psychiatric inmate obsessed with orchids, an immigrant paralyzed by choices in a grocery store — and landscapes crammed with life, rain, and seasonal upheaval. The Madwoman of Jogare pits conservationists and land developers against each other, while the monsoon comes and goes, and aboriginal villagers watch their way of life mutate into a twenty-first century hodgepodge.

Her short fiction is full of the pain of change and loss, the struggle and delight of finding one's place and making connections in the world. What happens when a repressed Englishman falls in love with a repressed Hindu girl? Who mourns an unknown corpse on a beach? Why is there sudden beauty in an abandoned village?

RangBibi and Langra, a colorful old woman and a crippled monkey. They travel around India, in the desert, deep in the forest, even in an urban slum. Their adventures involve children who are beset by displacement, isolation, abuse, and all the workings of a big and incomprehensible world. In four languages, and with fabulous, eye-catching illustrations, the old woman and the monkey help the children to solve their problems and have some fun along the way.

These books are available in English, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil. They were widely distributed to rural health and education groups, as well as in urban bookshops. They are in the libraries of several public and private schools in New York City, and the Oslo Public Library has copies in Tamil for the Indian immigrant population in Norway. They have been very popular and Sohaila and Shachi Kale, the illustrator, hope to do at least two more.

An aboriginal woman who has never left her valley, who laughs heartily at the idea that those machines in the sky actually hold people flying from place to place, who has no idea how old she is or what a city looks like. Bye Bye Mati: A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape is about this woman, and about Sohaila's family, who live in her valley. It brings together issues of family, livelihood, land use, forest and river development, power and corruption. It tells stories about a specific place and time, stories which hold universal truths and concerns. Sohaila used this book as her core material for a course she taught undergraduates at New York University.

Sohaila researched, wrote and supervised the design of a manual entitled, The Little Book of Tips & Tricks: A Guide for South Asian Immigrant Women (available for order or as a free PDF download). It was funded by CREA, a women's organization in Delhi and New York, and will be distributed nationally in India as well as the USA, in several languages. Sohaila traveled all over the USA and interviewed women's organizations, and then wrote the manual, which includes sections on immigration issues, domestic violence, work and family, and other issues. Both CREA and Sohaila hope to expand on this work, by producing regional manuals as well as working on an interactive web site.

Her journalism and essays range from humorous travel stories to a dissection of a Manhattan court case. Her world has two centers — America and Asia — and this keeps her writing interesting.