Archives: Authors

Tehmina Aziz Ayub from Pakistan is married to a former diplomat and studied at the Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad and Sussex University, UK.

Ankush Saikia was born in Tezpur, Assam, in 1975, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin; Assam; and Shillong, Meghalaya. He worked in journalism and publishing in New Delhi for over a decade and was shortlisted for the Outlook-Picador India non-fiction writing award (2005). He is the author of Dead Meat (2015), Remember Death (2016) and More Bodies Will Fall (2018), among others. Saikia is currently based in Shillong and Tezpur in North-east India.

Shivam Shankar Singh headed data analytics and campaigns for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the Manipur and Tripura Legislative Assembly elections under the guidance of the party’s National General Secretary, Ram Madhav. He was a Senior Research Fellow at India Foundation, and briefly worked with Prashant Kishor’s company, IPAC, during the Punjab Legislative Assembly campaign. He was a Legislative Assistant to a Member of Parliament (LAMP) Fellow and has graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a B.Sc. in Economics. His resignation from the BJP went viral on social media in June 2018 and was republished by various media platforms in multiple languages.

S.Y. QURAISHI joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1971 and rose to become the seventeenth chief election commissioner of India. He was featured in the Indian Express’ list of 100 Most Powerful Indians of 2011 and 2012. He introduced a number of electoral reforms, such as the creation of a voter education division, expenditure monitoring division, the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management, and launched the National Voters Day. In October 2017, he was appointed the ambassador of democracy by International IDEA (Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance), Stockholm, of which he is a board member. He is the author of An Undocumented Wonder: The Making of the Great Indian Election.

Payal Kapadia grew up being any sort of girl she wanted to be, reading everything she could get her hands on and following her imagination wherever it took her. She studied English literature at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and received an MSc degree in journalism from Northwestern University, Chicago. She worked with Outlook magazine in Mumbai and the Japan Times in Tokyo-and ended up interviewing teenage gangs in inner cities, an elephant who paints for Christie’s and Japanese soldiers who fought under Subhash Chandra Bose. Her critically acclaimed debut, Wisha Wozzariter, won the 2013 Crossword Book Award for Children’s Writing and is featured in the 101 Indian Children’s Books We Love! compilation. She went on to write the bestselling school adventure series Horrid High. Her first book for grown-ups, Maidless in Mumbai, was a top pick on Amazon. When Payal isn’t reading at festivals and schools, she loves singing karaoke and travelling to new and strange lands (not just the ones inside her head). She lives in Mumbai with her husband, two daughters who enjoy breaking the rules just as much as she does, more laptops than one family should own up to owning and no dogs. Yet.

Nilima Chitgopekar is an associate professor in the department of history at Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University. She has authored six books and several articles and essays on Hindu gods and other related matters. She has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, the Charles Wallace India Trust and USIS, and has lectured widely in India and overseas. Chitgopekar has also worked with the BBC and been featured in their documentaries and radio programmes. More recently, in her attempt to take Hindu mythology to a far larger audience, she has been involved in making several online films of her lectures, which have sold worldwide.

Raghunath Mashelkar, FRS, is one of India’s foremost science and innovation leaders. He gave transformative leadership to CSIR as its director general. He chaired the National Innovation Foundation and also several corporate innovation boards. His global recognitions include forty-one honorary doctorates, the prestigious TWAS-Lenovo Science Prize, the Star of Asia award and the Padma Vibhushan. He conceptualized ‘Gandhian engineering’, leading to the emergence of innovation’s holy grail of ‘more from less for more people’, which is now globally acknowledged.

Ravi Pandit is the co-founder and chairman of KPIT Technologies Ltd.

Roshen Dalal was born in Mussoorie, and lived in various places in India, including Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi, before settling in Dehradun, where she now resides along with several rescued cats and a dog. She has an MA and a PhD in ancient Indian history from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has taught both at school and university level and has been involved in research in the fields of history, religion, philosophy and education.
She is the author of the bestselling two-volume Puffin History of India; The Puffin History of the World, also in two volumes; The Religions of India: A Concise Guide to Nine Major Faiths; Hinduism: An Alphabetical Guide; The Vedas: An Introduction to Hinduism’s Sacred Texts; The
Compact Timeline History of the World and India at 70: Snapshots since Independence. Apart from books, she has written numerous articles and book reviews. Having been an editor for many years, she is now a full-time writer and is currently working on a book on the Upanishads.

Tanaz Bhathena writes books for young adults. Her fantasy novel Hunted by the Sky was named a Best Book of the Year by the CBC and USBBY, and is the first of a YA fantasy duology set in a world inspired by medieval India. Her novel The Beauty of the Moment won the Nautilus Gold Award for Young Adult Fiction and has also been nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s White Pine Award. Her acclaimed debut, A Girl Like That, was named a Best Book of the Year by numerous outlets including The Globe and Mail, Seventeen, and The Times of India. She lives in Missisauga, Ontario, with her family.