Archives: Authors

Surg. Lt Cdr (Dr) Hitesh Mahato is a pathologist in the Indian Navy with a penchant for trivia. When not hunting for clues under the microscope, he loves finding them in quiz questions. Often distracted by cute dogs and kitties, his interests constitute history, basketball, writing and travel. Contact him at hitessh24x7@gmail.com.

Dr Anmol Dhawan is a radiologist practising in Pune. An avid quizzer since his college days, he finished his college quizzing stint in 2017 as the international winner of the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz, beating over 7000 teams. Passionate about history, culture and writing, he maintains a blog where he writes about his interests. Contact him at anmoldhawan@gmail.com.

Dr Sagnik Sarkar is an AFMC MBBS graduate, and currently one of the ‘Healing Rhinos’ in the Northeast. An accomplished quizzer since his school days, his varied passions include history, fauj, geopolitics, Russian literature, cinema and Hindustani classical music. When not obsessing over his kitty muse ‘Celine’, he can be found faithfully singing ‘Glory Glory Man United’ each season, often in vain. Contact him at sagniksarkar33@gmail.com.

MANASI has been one of Malayalam’s finest anti-patriarchal voices, reaching back to the 1960s. Her short stories have won her a very wide readership and her short story collections have won several literary prizes, including the prestigious Kerala Sahitya Akademi award. She regularly contributes short stories, articles and poems to mainstream periodicals as well as critically acclaimed literary journals in Malayalam. The feature film Punaradhivasam, based on one of her short stories, won the state award for best story. Her stories have been translated into several languages such as Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, English and Hindi. She has also translated plays written by Shanta Gokhale and Ramu Ramanathan. She lives in Mumbai and works as a freelance copywriter for ad agencies. Manasi is actively involved with Asha for Education, a non-profit organization which promotes the education of underprivileged children.

SEEMA ALAVI is a professor of history at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana.

She earned her PhD from Cambridge University, England, and has twice been a Fulbright Scholar and a Smuts Visiting Research Fellow at Cambridge. In 2010, she was at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard as the William Bentinck-Smith Fellow.

Dr Alavi specializes in early modern and modern South Asia, with an interest in the transformation of the region’s legacy from Indo-Persian to one heavily affected by British colonial rule. She has written books on the military, medical and religious histories of India. Her most recent book is the Albert Hourani Award (Honorable Mention) winner Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire from Harvard University Press, USA.

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Pujari is one of the most popular writers in Assam today. She is the author of ten novels, including Mereng (a biographical novel about the Indian education activist Indira Miri), Hriday Ek Bigyapan, Neel Prajapati (Blue Butterflies), and most recently Iyat Ekhon Aranya Asil (There Used to be a Forest Here). Pujaree is also the author of four short story collections and five collections of essays. An editor of the largest Assamese weekly newspaper Sadin and the monthly literary magazine Satsori, she has won the Kumar Kishore Memorial Literary Award from Asom Sahitya Sabha (2003). As a journalist in a profession dominated by men in Assam, she is one of the most successful. The author maintains a direct relationship with her readers through a wide range of literary events.

Arupjyoti Saikia is a professor of history at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He held the Agrarian Studies Programme Fellowship at Yale University and visiting fellow positions at Cambridge University and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Saikia is the author of Forests and Ecological History of Assam, 1826-2000 (OUP, 2011), A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam since 1900 (Rutledge, 2014) and The Unquiet River: A Biography of the Brahmaputra (OUP, 2019). His A Century of Protests won the Srikant Dutt book prize awarded by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi in 2015. The Unquiet River was short-listed for Kamala Devi Chattopadhayay Book Award in 2020 and long listed for Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize in 2020 and got ‘Honorable Mention’ for Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize in 2021 given by the Association of Asian Studies.

A journalist and poet, Yishey Doma has written several books on Sikkim, including Sikkim: A Hidden Fruitful Valley, Faith Healers of Sikkim: Traditions, Legends and Rituals, and The Splendour of Sikkim: Cultures and Traditions of the Ethnic Communities. Her articles on the life and culture in the Sikkim Himalayas have appeared in several newspapers and magazines, as well as in her book Sikkim: A Travel Companion.

A student of Sikkimese Buddhist philosophy, she has contributed to the award-winning documentary, Lama Dances of Sikkim, and also created a book database on the monasteries and temples of Sikkim.

Yishey’s short story ‘Mantras of Love’ won the MSN-Random House short story contest in 2012, and was published in the anthology She Writes. She is a recipient of the Sikkim Sahitya Samman, one of Sikkim’s top civilian awards, and the first North Eastern Poetry Award from the Poetry Society (India). She was also one of the first writers-in-residence at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.

Ashok Kumar completed his BTech and MTech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. He joined the IPS in 1989 and has served in various challenging assignments in UP and Uttarakhand. He has also served in the CRPF and the BSF on a deputation basis. Presently, he is posted as director general of police (DGP), Uttarakhand. Before this assignment, he worked as chief of intelligence and security and also director general (DG) law and order, Uttarakhand. He received the UN Medal for serving in strife-torn Kosovo in 2001. He was awarded the Indian Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 2006 and the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service in 2013. He has authored a path-breaking book, Human in Khaki (Khaki Mein Insaan), which received the G.B. Pant Award from BPR&D and the Ministry of Home Affairs. He has also authored another consistent bestseller, Challenges to Internal Security of India.