Archives: Authors

PANKAJ SAPRU, the current OSS® Vice President, passionately began work in curating this epic collection in September 2020, setting a target of collecting 175 tales. His endeavor in right earnest received an overwhelming response from all members of the OSS® proving to be more rewarding and gratifying than he could possibly have imagined.

Nadeem Khan has been a teacher of English since 1973. He was the founder-director of the Western Regional Centre of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, an autonomous institute run by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, from 2011 to 2018. He has translated well over a dozen books-mainly from Marathi into English-including Vishwas Patil’s celebrated Marathi novel Panipat and Avadhoot Dongare’s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel Swatahala Phaltu Samajnyaachi Gosht. He is the winner of the Valley of Words award for the best-translated book for the year 2020.

Nadeem Khan has been a teacher of English since 1973. He was the founder-director of the Western Regional Centre of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, an autonomous institute run by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, from 2011 to 2018. He has translated well over a dozen books-mainly from Marathi into English-including Vishwas Patil’s celebrated Marathi novel Panipat and Avadhoot Dongare’s Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel Swatahala Phaltu Samajnyaachi Gosht. He is the winner of the Valley of Words award for the best-translated book for the year 2020.

UNNI R. writes short stories and screenplays in Malayalam. He is the author of six collections of short
stories. He is known for his distinct idiom and black humour, sparse style and incisive social criticism.
Unni has received numerous honours for his writing, including the prestigious Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for the short story collection Vaanku (Call for Prayer). A film based on the titular story in the collection received a special jury mention at the 68th National Film Awards, while a film adapted from the short story ‘Ozhivudivasathe Kali’ (Holiday Fun) won the 46th Kerala State Film Award for Best Film in 2015. Unni won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Screenplay for Charlie in the same year.

J DEVIKA is a feminist historian, social researcher and translator, currently with the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. She translates literary writing from
Malayalam to English and social science writing from English to Malayalam. She has translated the literary writings of K.R. Meera, Sarah Joseph, Unni R., Ambikasuthan Mangad and Lalithambika Antharjanam, among others. Her website, www. swatantryavaadini.in, is a collection of translations of the writings of early twentieth-century feminists in Malayalam-speaking regions.

History is the past. Surely, it’s irrelevant today?Is it, though? What if history could be made to work for us in very real ways?In Leadership Shastra, Pradeep Chakravarthy does just that. He studies the lives of well-known historical figures like Shivaji, Babur, Ahilyabai Holkar, Sankaradeva and many others with a view to understanding their motivations, actions and legacies. The book examines how developing a comprehension of our past could be the key to understanding our own selves, our actions, motivations and of those around us. This view of history as both useful and inspirational is unconventional: it is revealed here as a discipline that can be used for self-assessment and self-motivation.Engaging and enthralling, this is a book that will leave history buffs with much to think about, as much as it will serve as an introduction to the newbie.

Sanjay Gubbi is a scientist, conservationist and writer. His work integrates science, contemplative studies of the natural world and society. His conservation work has been consistently of the highest quality and exhibits an infectious enthusiasm that few in the country have been able to match.
Working on leopards has been central to his research work. The complex and ambivalent world of leopards is sometimes marked by horrifying tension between humankind and the natural world. This, he writes about in a sharply observant style, lucidly and at times wittily.
Gubbi holds a doctorate in leopard ecology and conservation. Along with his scholarly research, Gubbi has also written extensively in the popular press. A self-taught conservationist, he was the winner of the Whitley Award (popularly known as the Green Oscars) in 2017. He was listed as one of ‘Tomorrow’s 25 Leaders’ by the Times of India and is the recipient of the Co-existence Award, the Carl Zeiss Conservation Award and various others.

Dr Tarana Husain Khan is a writer and cultural historian. Her writings on the oral history, culture and the famed cuisine of the erstwhile princely state of Rampur have appeared in prominent publications such as Al Jazeera, Eaten Magazine, Scroll.in and in the anthologies Desi Delicacies (Pan Macmillan, India) and Dastarkhwan: Food Writing from South Asia and Diaspora (Beacon Books, UK). She is the author of historical fiction The Begum and the Dastan, which won the Kalinga Literary Award for fiction and was shortlisted for Women Writer’s Award by She The People and longlisted for AutHER Award.

She is currently working on a Research Fellowship at the University of Sheffield for an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Forgotten Food: Culinary Memory, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India’.

Vineet Gill is a writer and works as a senior copy editor at Penguin Random House India. His essays, often literary-critical in nature and occasionally personal, have appeared in various Indian and international publications. He has spent the better part of the previous decade trying to read and write, and trying to build a life around those two interrelated pursuits. This is his first book.