Bilal Siddiqi is a novelist and screenwriter based in Mumbai. He is the author of The Stardust Affair, The Kiss of Life (co-written with actor Emraan Hashmi) and The Bard of Blood, a spy novel which he wrote when he was nineteen and which was adapted by Red Chillies Entertainment into a Netflix show. Siddiqi was also the creator of this show and worked on the screenplay. The Phoenix is his fourth book.
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R. Gopalakrishnan is corporate adviser, The Mindworks. He is the author of bestselling books such as The Case of the Bonsai Manager, When the Penny Drops: Learning What’s Not Taught and A Biography of Innovations: From Birth to Maturity. He studied physics at Kolkata University, engineering at IIT Kharagpur and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. He has served as the chairman of Unilever Arabia, MD of Brooke Bond Lipton, vice chairman of Hindustan Lever, and as the executive director of Tata Sons and several Tata companies. He also serves as an independent director of listed companies like Akzo Nobel India, Castrol India and Hemas Holdings PLC, Sri Lanka. Gopal mentors a start-up called Mapmygenome Private Limited, the board of which he chairs. He is actively engaged in both instructional and inspirational speaking.
R Gopalakrishnan (Gopal)served Unilever for 31 years, and then Tata Group for 18 years. During his ‘third career’ as an author, this book counts as his twentieth. He advocates for companies which are SHE–Sustainable, Humane, and Enlightened. This book concerns India’s leading SHE enterprise, which has remained in India’s list of top companies for 160 years. Gopal welcomes reader feedback on rgopal@themindworks.me
Born in 1922, Bhicoo Manekshaw grew up in Mumbai. Her fondness for good food and cooking began at the early age of five, in her grandmother’s kitchen. In 1963, she became the first Indian to gain admission to the Advanced Course at the famed Cordon Bleu School of Cookery in London. In a long career as expert chef and catering consultant, she has worked with the Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai and the Spencer Group of Hotels, the India International Centre in Delhi and the Delhi Golf Club. She was also the catering consultant at Raj Bhavan in Bangalore during the tenure of Governor Dharma Vira. For over a decade, she worked with Chef Air and Air India, where she was responsible for catering for all VIP flights, including those during the NAM and CHOGM conferences.
Bhicoo Manekshaw has also taught at the Delhi Polytechnic for Women and given numerous demonstrations of Indian and continental cuisine in India and abroad. She is the author of Traditional Recipes of India and has contributed recipes and articles to several books and magazines. She worked at the famous Delhi restaurant Basil & Thyme.
Bilkees I. Latif is a social activist who has received national and international awards, including the Padma Shri in 2008. She is the author of The Andhra Cookbook, The Fragrance of Forgotten Years and O Dharavi.
Sharda Pargal was born in Lahore in 1936. Her father, Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, was a leading lawyer of the Punjab High Court at the time, and she spent her early childhood in Lahore. Her formal education was in Delhi, where the family moved after Partition. In 1968, Sharda started her famous cookery classes in Mumbai, and over the years she has taught people from all walks of life: film stars and their wives, professionals and young housewives.She has been featured on television shows and in women’s magazines and has also worked for several social and charitable causes. She lives in Mumbai with her husband and two daughters.
Charmaine O’Brien cannot remember a time when she has not been interested in food. As a child, she delighted in poring over her mother’s cookbooks and her adult work life has been centred around food. She has trained as a chef, run her own catering business and developed cooking classes for an institution for adult education.
While taking a degree in psychology, she began travelling to India. It was the beginning of an irrepressible passion for the subcontinent, O’Brien lives in Melbourne, Australia, but she intends to be in India to begin research for a culinary travel book.
She is the author of World Food: New Orleans and was awarded a Harry A. Bell grant from the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 2001.
Shyam Ranganathan has an MA in South Asian Studies and an MA in philosophy from the University of Toronto, and wrote a PhD dissertation at York University in analytic philosophy on the topic of translating philosophical texts across languages. His areas of research include Indian philosophy, theoretical ethics and the philosophy of language. He is the author of Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy.
Vidya Mani is a children’s writer and editor, who wears many hats. She runs a content and design studio called Melting Pot that creates children’s books and magazines. She is one of the founders of Funky Rainbow, an independent bookshop and book consultancy that specialises in promoting Indian children’s books in interesting ways.
Vidya believes that reading is like biting into an eclair-it shows you there’s a whole world of chocolate out there waiting to be eaten!
