Archives: Authors

“SARATCHANDRA CHATTOPADHYAY (1876–1938) was born in Devanandapur, an obscure village of Bengal. His childhood and youth were spent in dire poverty as his father, Matilal Chattopadhyay, was an idler and dreamer and gave little security to his five children. Saratchandra received very little formal education but inherited something valuable from his father—his imagination and love of literature. He started writing in his early teens and two stories written then have survived—‘Korel’ and ‘Kashinath’. Saratchandra came to maturity at a time when the national movement was gaining momentum together with an awakening of social consciousness. Much of his writing bears the mark of the resultant turbulence of society. A prolific writer, he found the novel an apt medium for depicting this and, in his hands, it became a powerful weapon of social and political reform. Sensitive and daring, his novels captivated the hearts and minds of thousands of readers not only in Bengal but all over India. Some of his best-known novels are Palli Samaj (1916), Charitraheen (1917), Devdas (1917), Nishkriti (1917), Srikanta in four parts (1917, 1918, 1927 and 1933), Griha Daha (1920) and Sesher Parichay published posthumously (1939).”

UMA DAS GUPTA did her postdoctoral research on Rabindranath Tagore and the history of the institutions he founded at Santiniketan and Sriniketan, 1940–41. Das Gupta was head of the United States Educational Foundation in India for the Eastern Region. Her recent publications include The Oxford India Tagore: Selected Writings on Education and Nationalism and Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography. Her forthcoming publications include a collection of Tagore’s writings on India’s history and culture.

William Radice is a poet and a scholar and translator of Bengali. He is well known for his translations of the poems, stories and plays of Tagore.

Sri Krṣṇadevarāya became king of the fractured South Indian empire of Vijayanagaram in 1509. During his reign he expanded his empire to more than double its original size and contributed, both as patron and poet, to a flourishing age of artistic and literary creativity. Known as sāhitī-samarāṅgaṇa-sārva-bhauma, emperor in the fields of war and literature, he is remembered as an iconic god-king.

SRINIVAS REDDY is a scholar, translator and musician. He trained in classical South Asian languages and literatures at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley. His previous translations include Krishnadevaraya’s Telugu epic Amuktamalyada: The Giver of the Worn Garland and Kalidasa’s play Malavikagnimitram: The Dancer and the King—both for Penguin Classics. Srinivas is also a concert sitarist and has given numerous recitals around the world. He now lives in Gujarat and teaches at IIT Gandhinagar.

Born in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance. He started writing at an early age and by the turn of the century had become a household name in Bengal as a poet, a songwriter, a playwright, an essayist, a short story writer and a novelist. In 1913 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and his verse collection Gitanjali came to be known internationally. At about the same time he founded Visva-Bharati, a university located in Santiniketan, near Kolkata. Called the ‘Great Sentinel’ of modern India by Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore steered clear of active politics but is famous for returning his knighthood as a gesture of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Tagore was a pioneering literary figure, renowned for his ceaseless innovations in poetry, prose, drama, music and painting, which he took up late in life. His works include novels; plays; essays on religious, social and literary topics; some sixty collections of verse; over a hundred short stories; and more than 2500 songs, including the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. Rabindranath Tagore died in 1941. His eminence as India’s greatest modern poet remains unchallenged to this day.

JAINENDRA KUMAR was born on 2 January 1905 in Kauriyaganj in Aligarh (Uttar Pradesh). He left college to join the Independence Movement in 1921, going to jail three times in the next few years. He started writing short stories around 1926 and published his fi rst novel Parakh in 1929. It was followed by classics like Sunita (1935), Tyagpatra (1937), Kalyani, Sukhda, Vyateet, Vivart, Muktibodh (1965), Anantar, Anamswami and Dashark (1985). He also published ten volumes of short stories and an equal number of volumes of philosophical essays, most noteworthy being ‘Samay aur Hum’ and ‘Prastut Prashna’. He was showered with awards and honours, including the Anuvrat Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and the Padma Bhushan. He also represented India at the United Nations in 1979

Bhagwan S. Gidwani was India’s additional director general of tourism
and director general of civil aviation till 1978. He served as India’s counsel
at the International Court of Justice at the Hague and as representative
of India on the council of International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO), United Nations from 1978 to 1981. Thereafter, he joined ICAO
as director, serving as adviser to foreign governments till 1985.
Gidwani is the author of the bestselling novel The Sword of Tipu Sultan
which was translated into many languages and also made into a major
TV series for which Gidwani wrote the script and screenplay. His previous
novel Return of the Aryans, published by Penguin Books India, was
also highly successful. March of the Aryans is adapted from that novel.
Bhagwan S. Gidwani is based in Montreal and divides his time between
international efforts to promote the safety and security of air transport
and tourism, and historical writing, research and teaching.

Resul Pookutty is a master sound designer, sound editor and mixer. The first Asian to win an Academy Award in a technical category for Slumdog Millionaire, Resul has carved a niche for himself in a little over a decade. Beginning his career with the 1997 film Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One, directed by Rajat Kapoor, he went on to do outstanding work in Bollywood films like Black, Musafir, Zinda, Traffic Signal, Gandhi, My Father, Saawariya, Dus Kahaniyaan, Ghajini, Blue, Ra.One and other language films like Endhiran (Robot), Nanban 3 and Pahazssi Raja, etc. His recent work in Hollywood includes John Madden’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. He is currently immersed in several projects in India and abroad, namely English Vinglish, Chittagong, Gandhi of the Month and European films like Voyage Sans Retour (France) and Liv & Ingmar (Sweden).

Resul was awarded the Padma Shri for his outstanding contribution to Indian cinema in 2009. In the same year, he also received an honorary DLitt from Kalady Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit.

Baiju Natarajan (N. Baiju) studied Malayalam language and literature at the Oriental Research Institute, University of Madras. He has published a volume of poetry in Malayalam, Akam: 49 Kavitakal (2001), and edited Cities of Kerala, Actually Small Towns (2008), a book on present-day life in nine major urban centres of Kerala. He also works as a consultant and researcher for generating autobiographical narratives for print. He lives in Bangalore and Kochi.

Baiju Natarajan (N. Baiju) studied Malayalam language and literature at the Oriental Research Institute, University of Madras. He has published a volume of poetry in Malayalam, Akam: 49 Kavitakal (2001), and edited Cities of Kerala, Actually Small Towns (2008), a book on present-day life in nine major urban centres of Kerala. He also works as a consultant and researcher for generating autobiographical narratives for print. He lives in Bangalore and Kochi.