Sudha Mahalingam juggles a full-time career in energy with extensive travel, travel-writing and photography. As an energy economist, she researches, consults and advises on energy security, and lectures at India’s premier institutions. Her work as full-time regulator of petroleum, energy member of the National Security Advisory Board, international trainer of regulators and visiting fellow in reputed international universities has taken her places and, sometimes, inveigled her off the map. Among other organizations, she has worked at the Centre for Policy Research and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, and has been senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.
Sudha has published extensively on energy and travel in leading publications, including The Hindu, Indian Express, National Geographic Traveller, Economic Times, Tribune and Frontline. She speaks frequently on exotic destinations at the India International Centre, Delhi, and has held three photo exhibitions in the national capital. Sudha chronicles her travel impressions on her website at www.footlooseindian.com.
Gautam Chintamani is a film historian and the author of the bestselling Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna (HarperCollins, 2014), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak: The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema (HarperCollins, 2016) and Pink The Inside Story (HarperCollins, 2017).
Hailing from a literary tradition that runs deep on both sides of his family, late poet laureate Arudra is his maternal grandfather and the liberal thinker Sir C.Y. Chintamani is his paternal great-grandfather. Gautam’s writing has appeared in India Today, Outlook, The Indian Express, The Indian Quarterly, The Pioneer, The Tribune, The Times of India, Deccan Chronicle, Scroll, First Post and Daily O amongst others. He also had a weekly film based column in The Hindustan Times Brunch and Dawn, Pakistan’s most-read English daily. In 2015, Gautam contributed an extensive essay on Majrooh Sultanpuri, the first lyricist to be honoured by the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Award for Legends of Indian Silver Screen, a compilation of Phalke Awardees published by the Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. In 2016, Gautam was on the National Film Awards jury for the Best Writing on Film. The British Film Institute included Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak: The Film That Revived Hindi Cinema in their library in 2016.
Gautam’s documentary film S.R.I. – Challenging Traditions, Transforming Lives explored the positive impact of System of Rice Intensification, an alternate method of rice cultivation, on Indian farmers. The film has traveled to over 20 film festivals across the globe and won the Best Documentary Award at the Asia Pacific Rice Film Festival, Malaysia. His trilogy Janam- Aagazh-Parvaaz – on the journey of children with special needs and their parents was screened at the 2011’s International Film Festival of India (IFFI). His notable television credits include Siddhanth, a law series, which garnered an Emmy Nomination in the International Drama category, a first for an Indian TV show, and Rihaee. Gautam is currently working on his new book that traces the life and struggle of Nouf Almarwaai, the first certified Yogacharini of Saudi Arabia, whose efforts over a decade helped in Yoga being recognised as a sport in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A cancer survivor, Nouf Almarwaai overcame insurmountable odds including persecution by the Saudi religious police and was awarded the Padma Shri by the government of India in January 2018.
Anuja Chandramouli is a bestselling Indian author and New Age Indian classicist. Her highly acclaimed debut novel, Arjuna: Saga of a Pandava Warrior-Prince, was named by Amazon India as one of the top five books in the Indian-writing category for 2013. Kamadeva: The God of Desire and Shakti: The Divine Feminine are her other highly successful books, and all three are being translated into Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali. She is currently hard at work on an awesome new adventure with Yama’s lieutenant.
Eunice de Souza taught English literature at St Xavier’s College, Bombay for over thirty years and retired as Head of the English Department. Her published works include four books of poems, four edited anthologies, and books for children. Her poems have been translated into Portuguese, Italian and Finnish. This is her second novel. Eunice de Souza lives in Bombay.
Anita Nair is a bestselling and widely acclaimed novelist. Among her several books, The Better Man, Ladies Coupé and Mistress have been translated into over thirty languages around the world. For her total contribution to children’s literature in English, she was awarded the Central Sahitya Akademi Award in 2013. She has also published Malabar Mind, a collection of poems, and Goodnight and God Bless, a collection of essays. A playwright, she has written the screenplay for the film adaptation of her novel Lessons in Forgetting, which won the 2012 National Film Award for the Best Feature Film in English.Anita conducts a creative-writing mentorship program in Bangalore called Anita’s Attic. To know more, visit her at www.anitanair.net and www.anitasattic.com or follow @anitanairauthor on Twitter and Instagram.
Manoj Joshi studied at St Stephen’s College, New Delhi, and Lucknow University. He received his PhD from the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. A professional journalist who has worked as a correspondent and columnist with The Hindu, the Times of India and the Economic Times, he was the Washington correspondent of the Financial Express in 1995-96. He was defence editor at India Today, editor (‘Views’) at Hindustan Times and the national affairs editor at Mail Today. Along with Robert Crunden and Chandrashekhar Rao he edited New Perspectives on America and South Asia (1984). He is the author of Kashmir 1947-1965: A Story Retold (2008). He has contributed chapters to several scholarly books on India’s defence and security, and lectured and written on the subject in professional institutions and journals in India and abroad. He has been a member of the National Security Council’s advisory board from 2004-07, and he was a member of the blue-ribbon National Security Task Force headed by Naresh Chandra from 2011-12. Joshi lives in New Delhi and is currently a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the acclaimed author of seventeen novels, which include The Mistress of Spices and, most recently, One Amazing Thing. Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages and two have been made into films. Divakaruni was born in Kolkata and moved to the United States for her graduate studies. She currently lives in Houston, Texas.
K.R. Meera started out as a journalist in 1998. She won a series of awards for her reportage till she quit to be a full-time writer of fiction in 2006. She has since published short stories, novels and essays, and has been recognized with some of the most prestigious prizes for literary writing in Malayalam including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and the Odakkuzhal Award. She lives in Kottayam with her husband Dileep and daughter Shruthi.
A bilingual feminist scholar, J. Devika has translated Malayali women authors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary writers like Sarah Joseph, Nalini Jameela, Anitha Thampi and V.M. Girija besides K.R. Meera.
Bipan Chandra, recipient of the Padma Bhushan, was born in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. He was educated at Forman Christian College, Lahore and at Stanford University, California. He was Professor of Modern History at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, where he is currently Professor Emeritus. He was honoured as National Professor and was also the Chairperson of the National Book Trust. Professor Chandra has authored several books on nationalism, colonialism and communalism in modern India.
Puja Mehra is a New Delhi-based journalist. In a reporting career of over seventeen years, she has covered government, especially the finance ministry and other economic ministries, Planning Commission, its successor NITI Aayog, Prime Minister’s Office and Parliament. She won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award in 2008 and 2009 for her stories on the impact of the Lehman Brothers’ collapse-triggered financial meltdown and the subsequent global economic downturn in India’s economy. She has been the economics editor of The Hindu. Puja received her MA in economics from Delhi School of Economics.
