Archives: Authors

Kovid Gupta is pursuing an MBA from Cornell University. He holds a BBA, BS, and BA from the University of Texas at Austin. He has previously worked on Teach For India’s alumni impact team. As a screenwriter, he has written for popular television shows Balika Vadhu, Bade Achhe Lagte Hain, and Chhan Chhan.

Nirmal Verma (1929-2005) pioneered the Nayi Kahaani movement in Hindi literature in the late 1950s with his iconic story ‘Parinde’. He developed a characteristic style which used rich, realistic description as a mirror of the inner life. He wrote five novels, eight collections of short stories and nine volumes of essays and travelogues. Following his work at the Oriental Institute in Prague in the 1960s, he undertook direct translations of contemporary Czech writers such as Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal and Václav Havel into Hindi, much before their work became popular internationally.
A much-loved and well-decorated writer, his honours include India’s highest literary award, the Jnanpith (2000); India’s third-highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan (2003); and the Sahitya Akademi Award for lifetime achievement (1985).

B.N. Goswamy (1933-2023), distinguished art historian, was Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. His work covers a wide range and is regarded, especially in Indian painting, as having influenced much thinking. He has been the recipient of many honours, including the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, the Rietberg Award for Outstanding Research in Art History, the JDR III Fellowship, the Mellon Senior Fellowship and, from the President of India, the Padma Shri (1998) and the Padma Bhushan (2008). Apart from the Panjab University, Professor Goswamy has taught, as Visiting Professor, at major universities across the world, including Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, Austin and Zurich. He has been responsible for significant exhibitions of Indian art at international venues, including Paris, San Francisco, Zurich, New Delhi, San Diego and New York. He is the author of over 25 books on Indian art and culture, including: Pahari Painting: The Family as the Basis of Style (1968); Painters at the Sikh Court (1975); A Place Apart: Paintings from Kutch (with A.L. Dallapiccola; 1983); The Essence of Indian Art (1986); Wonders of a Golden Age: Painting at the Court of the Great Mughals (with E. Fischer; 1987); Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (with E. Fischer; 1992); Indian Costumes in the Calico Museum of Textiles (1993); Nainsukh of Guler: A Great Indian Painter from a Small Hill State (1997); and Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting (with C. Smith; 2005); and, more recently, The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works (2014 and 2016); Manaku of Guler: Another Great Indian painter from a Small Hill State (2017); Oxford Readings in Indian Art (2018); The Great Mysore Bhagavata (2019); Conversations: India’s Leading Art Histo: India’s Leading Art Historian Engages with 101 themes, and More (2022) and The Indian Cat: Stories, Paintings, Poetry, and Proverbs (2024).

Jagdish Khattar has had an astonishingly diverse career, a trained lawyer who became an IAS officer. He was an agent of change in Uttar Pradesh through his roles as district magistrate and head of the cement and transport corporations. He also helmed India’s Tea Board in London and played a key role in the steel ministry. Elevated to the post of MD with Maruti Udyog, a firm that was on the verge of a steep decline, Khattar braved labor unions, foreign competition and politicians as he led Maruti to a very successful IPO. Finally, at the age of sixty-five, Khattar turned entrepreneur with Carnation, India’s first multi-brand car sales and servicing network.

Bani Basu is arguably the most versatile contemporary writer in Bengali, the broad range of her fiction deals with gender, history, mythology, society, psychology, adolescence, music, sexual orientation, the supernatural, and more. Besides writing novels and short stories, she is also an essayist, critic and poet. She has won a number of literary awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award. She lives and writes in Calcutta.

Shereen Bhan is the managing editor of CNBC-TV18. She is the anchor-editor of Young Turks, one of India’s longest running shows on entrepreneurs that has successfully built a niche in business news programming. She has been producing and anchoring flagship news shows like India Business Hour and What’s Hot for over a decade. She is also the host of Overdrive, which has won the New Television Award for Best Auto Show for three consecutive years.

Shereen has been the recipient of the Best Business Talk Show award at the News Television Awards for two years consecutively. She also won the FICCI Woman of the Year award for her contribution to the Media in 2005, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Syna Dehnugara is a journalist and television producer based in Delhi. Associated with business news channels for eight years now, her area of work includes interpreting the impact of economic and social policies on business and, in turn, the impact on livelihood, education, healthcare and social progress. Her other big focus has been co-producing Young Turks, India’s longest running show on entrepreneurship on CNBC-TV18. The show keeps her optimistic and inspired.

She’s been planning a big year of travel for years now and hopes to make 2015 that year with her husband and very own Young Turk in tow.