Archives: Authors

While the original author of this book is Maharishi Valmiki, Aacharya Vishwa Prakash Dixit ‘Batuk’ has translated the epic in easy and simple Hindi for the reader. Aacharya Vishwa Prakash Dixit ‘Batuk’ is an author and scholar of Sanskrit and Hindi.

Abraham Eraly is the author of two critically acclaimed books on Indian history, The Last Spring: The Lives and Times of the Great Mughals (1997) and Gem in the Lotus: The Seeding of Indian Civilization (2000). His novel, Night of the Dark Trees, was published recently.
Born in Kerala, and educated there and in Chennai, Eraly has taught Indian history in colleges in India and the United States, and was the editor of a current affairs magazine for several years.
He now lives in Chennai, and is working on a study of classical Indian civilization. He can be contacted at abraham_eraly@yahoo.co.in

Srividya Natarajan, born in Chennai, now lives in Canada and teaches English at King’s University College, University of Western Ontario. At the University of Hyderabad she became interested in the caste politics that are central to No Onions, parented both her own son and the snakes her husband brought home, and earned a Ph.D. in English. After a year as an editor at Katha Publishers, she began to illustrate children’s books for Orient Longman, the Karaditales Company and Chatterbox. Her favourite projects were four books in Tulika’s Under the Banyan series, now translated into six Indian languages, and Kali and the Rat Snake. She co-authored Taking Charge of our Bodies, on women and health issues, with Veena Shatrughna and Gita Ramaswamy (Penguin India, 2004); and co-directed Silambakoodam (2002), a documentary on the hereditary dance teachers of south India. A student of the great dance master Kittappa Pillai, she has taught and performed classical dance for over twenty-two years in India and abroad. Her ambition is to combine writing her second novel with living in a tolerably clean house.

Kamala Das (1934-2009) was a major Indian English poet and an important Malayalam writer. She was born into a distinguished literary family. Her mother, Balamani Amma, was a well-known Malayalam poet and her grand-uncle Nalapat Narayana Menon was a renowned writer and translator. She grew up in Punnayurkulam, her ancestral village in Kerala, and in Calcutta where her parents lived. She was married off at the age of fifteen, and began writing and publishing while in her teens. With her taboo-breaking early poetry and her controversial autobiography, Kamala became an icon for Indian women. In English, she published six collections of poetry in her lifetime-Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), Collected Poems vol. I (1984), Only the Soul Knows How to Sing: Selections from Kamala Das (1996), Encountering Kamala (2007)-and her autobiography, My Story (1976). She was recognized with many literary prizes, including the Sahitya Akademi and the Vayalar awards.

Arundhati Roy is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017. Her non-fiction includes My Seditious Heart, Azadi and, most recently, her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. She lives in Delhi.

Joseph S. Alter is an anthropologist who earned his doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is Professor and Department Chair. He was born in Landour, Uttarakhand and divides his time between Pittsburgh and the Allegheny mountains of western Pennsylvania and Mussoorie in the Himalayas.

For thirty years he has been conducting research on various aspects of society and culture in South Asia with a particular focus on physical fitness, sport, and the culture and history of medicine. He has written five books, including The Wrestler s Body (University of California Press, 1992), Knowing Dil Das (Penguin India 2010), Gandhi s Body (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), Asian Medicine and Globalization (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) and Yoga in Modern India (Princeton University Press, 2004). He has also published extensively on a range of sports, including kabaddi and jori/mugdal, on the cultural history and philosophy of Ayurveda and Unani medicine, and on the impact of colonial and post colonial development on the political economy of Mussoorie.

Sara Suleri Goodyear (Author)
Sara Suleri Goodyear was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She is professor of English at Yale University and the author of Meatless Days, Rhetoric of English India and Boys Will Be Boys.

Azra Raza (Author)
Azra Raza was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She is a practising oncologist and research scientist by profession and lives in Manhattan with her daughter Sheherzad.

Azra Raza was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She is a practising oncologist and research scientist by profession and lives in Manhattan with her daughter Sheherzad.

Atul Magoon is an entrepreneur, management consultant, writer and motivational speaker. After graduating from
the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, he worked as a management consultant with a large multinational company for three years. Afterwards, he founded his own business consulting and personal development company to help clients transform business processes, manage change and develop leaders. Atul has written for many magazines; Extraordinary is his first book.

Shabnam Virmani is a film-maker.