Archives: Authors

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.

O.P. Manocha is a postgraduate in physics (electronics) and has thirty-five years of experience in DRDO, the research wing of the Ministry of Defence, where he executed various defence projects. He has six publications to his credit in various international and national journals and conferences, including the Defence Science Journal, the International Conference of Image Information Processing and the proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Sciences. He is a life fellow of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers and a life member of the Computer Society of India and the Indian Society of Remote Sensing. He is a former chairman of IETE, Dehradun Chapter. He retired from DRDO, where he was working as Scientist ‘G’, in 2018, to pursue his passion for travelling and writing. He is a runner, a cyclist, a nature lover, a yoga practitioner and a poet. He is an active blogger at the Times of India.

Siddarth Shrikanth grew up in India and studied conservation biology at Oxford. He then worked in corporate sustainability for McKinsey before moving to Hong Kong to be a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. He gained a joint MPA/MBA from the Harvard Kennedy School and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, during which he co-founded a natural carbon removal start-up and consulted for the World Bank on environmental policy. Siddarth lives in London and works in climate and nature investing.

Harsh Gupta ‘Madhusudan’ is an India-based public markets investor. He has written extensively on economics, finance and politics for Mint, Swarajya, The Wall Street Journal, The Hindu Business Line, The Indian Express and other publications.

Harsh enrolled to study at IIT Delhi, before dropping out. He graduated from Dartmouth College with an AB degree in economics. He also holds an MBA from INSEAD. He is on Twitter at @harshmadhusudan.

Rajeev Mantri is an India-based entrepreneur and investor, investing in public companies and early-stage technology ventures. He has contributed articles on political economy, technology, investing and entrepreneurship to Mint, Swarajya, India Today, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Indian Express and other publications.

Rajeev graduated with a BS in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University, and an MBA from Columbia University, specializing in private equity and value investing. He is on Twitter @RMantri.

Tenzin Dickie is a writer and a translator. She is editor of Old Demons, New Deities: Twenty One Short Stories from Tibet, the English language anthology of modern Tibetan fiction.