Archives: Authors

Amit Agarwal believes that we are on this earth to develop qualities—qualities that help us balance material success with spiritual growth.
Through deep reflection, personal experience and research, he identified the four essential life skills that drive this balance: Sales, Mindfulness, Personal Finance and Nutrition.
This book, The Four Life Skills, and his previous two—Small Is Big and The Ultimate Sales Accelerator—along with his public speaking and training sessions, are all steps in his journey of evangelizing the four life skills and balancing Spirit and Matter.

Chitra Soundar has written over forty books for children, published across Asia, Europe and North America. She is also an oral storyteller. Chitra writes picture books as well as fiction for young readers. Her stories are inspired by folktales from India, Hindu mythology and her travels around the world.
www.chitrasoundar.com

Ameya Narvankar is a multidisciplinary designer, visual artist and bookmaker from India. An alumnus of IIT-Bombay, Ameya believes in the power of design to bring about change, which he hopes to achieve through his foray into children’s literature. He loves, in no particular order, cats, bearded men and Beyoncé (who doesn’t?). Connect with him at ameyanarvankar.com and @ameyazing on Instagram.

Venkatesh Vedam hails from Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal, and cherishes fond memories of often jogging to the Taj on summer mornings. He was a normal kid till the age of five, when, during a train journey, a loose shutter banged on his head while he was enjoying the scenery glued to the window bars. He holds the incident responsible for the imbalance between his left and right brain, which eventually turned him into a writer. However, it was two decades after the big bang that he first wrote a story. In the interim, post his schooling, he graduated in chemical engineering from NITW, worked in a petrochemical company and jumped on to the software bandwagon by joining an Indian IT giant, where he continues till the present day.

Venkatesh has authored a fantasy thriller for preteens, A Leap in a Blue Moon, which has been well received by readers of all age groups. His short stories have appeared in print as well as online platforms, including Juggernaut.

Venkatesh resides in the silicon-garden city of Bengaluru with his wife and daughter. He loves curling up with a good book or watching television programmes on astronomy and wildlife when not writing or daydreaming. He also likes peering at the heavens through his 90 mm refractor telescope on cloudless and moonless nights. Venkatesh can be contacted at write2venkyvedam@gmail.com.

Geeta Ramanujam is a master storyteller, trainer, founder and executive director of Kathalaya’s International Academy of Storytelling and Kathalaya Trust. She is also an academician and administrator with twenty-three years of experience in storytelling. A pioneer of the storytelling movement in India, Geeta has defined and evolved the ancient art of storytelling through workshops and certified courses, covering over 93,491 adults and 5,00,000 children so far. Geeta has travelled to forty-three countries and twenty-seven states in India to groom professional tellers, all the while sowing seeds of storytelling around the world for the last forty years.

Kathalaya’s International Academy of Storytelling is the only globally recognized academy for storytelling in the world with accredited courses affiliated to USA, Scotland and Sweden. Geeta has trained and completed 172 batches of certified beginners and diploma courses as of December 2021. Geeta is an Ashoka Fellow and has won several accolades for storytelling, including the Best Story Narrator award from the Governor of Tamil Nadu and the Boca do Céu-Encontro Internacional de Contadores de Histórias Storyteller Award in Brazil. Kathalaya was also listed in the Limca Book of Records for having organized the first international storytelling festival in India in 2005.

Geeta has written The Wise Monkey and Other Animal Stories, which was published in 2002 by Puffin Books. Tales from the World is her second offering.

A banker by profession, Raghu Palat has been pursuing his passion for writing since 1982. He has over 45 published books on banking, finance and taxation to his credit and has penned innumerable articles for newspapers and periodicals. Though remaining active in his professional capacity as an independent director on the boards of Union Asset Management Company Private Ltd. and Pritish Nandy Ltd. and heading his own financial consultancy firm, Raghu’s fervor for writing continues unabated.

Pushpa Palat has been a writer for four decades having written for the Times of India, Economic Times, Destination Traveller, foreign travel trade newspapers and several online and print periodical and journals. Her writing has covered an eclectic and diverse range of subjects that vary from luxury and lifestyle to self-help and text books.

Born and raised in New Delhi, Ruchika did her undergraduate studies in History at Lady Shri Ram college and obtained her Bachelor’s of Law at Delhi University. She worked at the news magazine India Today before getting enticed into the world of art. Ruchika gained her qualifications in Art History at the British Museum, UK and the National Museum, New Delhi. After working at Bowring’s Fine Art Auctioneers, New Delhi, she went on to curate exhibitions in India and abroad to promote emerging artist. Over the years she contributed articles pertaining to art and culture in many travel magazines.

An avid reader, who also enjoys long walks on the beach, Ruchika is most in her element exploring rock-cut architecture in places that are off the beaten track.

Presently she can be found conducting tours at various museums in Delhi, happy to be sharing knowledge and ensuring her audience leaves with a piece of ‘Incredible India’ etched in their mind

Sibaji Bandyopadhyay writes poetry, plays, stories, novels, film-scripts in Bengali, and essays in Bengali and English. Some of his recent books include Three Essays on the Mahabharata: Exercises in Literary Hermeneutics; Sibaji Bandyopadhyay Rachanasamagra [Complete Works], volumes 1 and 2; Sibaji Bandyopadhyay Reader. He is the recipient of The Government of West Bengal ‘Vidyasagar Memorial Award’ 2010 for life-time-achievement in the sphere of Bengali prose, ‘Sisir Kumar Das Memorial Award’ 2010 for contributions to Bengali literature, ‘Buddhadeva Bose Memorial Award’ 2016 for contributions to the arena of Bengali and English essays.

Sibaji was formerly professor of Cultural Studies, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) and professor of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Vandana Saxena Poria, the co-author of Let Me Hijack Your Mind, is an OBE and top 100 UK-India influencer. She is known as the ‘Human Alarm Clock’, due to her disruptive thinking which ignites people into action. A UK chartered accountant, she has extensive experience in translating academic and industry texts into digestible stories and training exercises for corporates globally. Vandana spent three years collaborating with Alyque on this book prior to his death.