Dr Karan Singh was born heir apparent to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and served successively as regent, Sadar-i-Riyasat and governor. A Padma Vibhushan, Dr Singh has held the portfolios for tourism and civil aviation, health and family planning, and education and culture in the Indian government, and served as ambassador to the United States. He has been chairman of the Committee on Ethics of the Rajya Sabha. As chancellor, he has been associated with the Jammu and Kashmir University, the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Banaras Hindu University. He has chaired the Indian Board of Wildlife and the India International Centre. Presently, Dr Singh is chairman of the governing board of the Auroville Foundation and was India’s representative on the UNESCO executive board for many years. Associated with several cultural and academic institutions, he composes and recites devotional songs in Dogri and is a connoisseur of Indian classical music.
Dr Singh’s published works include his Autobiography, Essays on Hinduism, An Examined Life, A Treasury of Indian Wisdom, as well as his extensive correspondence with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in Jammu and Kashmir 1949-64.
Dr Jawaid Alam teaches modern and contemporary Indian history at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He was associated with the department of culture, Government of India, for ten years to edit the collected works of G.B. Pant and the selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru at the Teen Murti House. He worked as principal researcher and coordinator for collecting and scrutinizing relevant materials to create the high-profile museum at the Statue of Unity, Gujarat. He is the author of Government and Politics in Colonial Bihar 1921-1937 and Muslims in the Shaping of Modern India (forthcoming) and co-editor, with Mushirul Hasan, of Muslims and the Congress: Select Correspondence of Dr M.A. Ansari 1912-1936 (forthcoming).
Richard Rothman is the founder and MD of Open Mind Opportunity Consultancy, the world’s first and only opportunity consultancy. For over thirty-two years he has expanded business opportunities for hundreds of companies operating in sixty-seven sectors. His Indian clients have included Zee Entertainment, Onida, Aptech, Metro Shoes, Essel Propack, and K. Raheja Corp. His first book, Master Opportunity and Make It Big, won wide acclaim and was a national bestseller. Prior to starting his consultancy, Richard served as trade commissioner of the United States in India, Italy and Indonesia.
One of the most influential writers of our time, Paulo Coelho is the author of many international best sellers, including The Alchemist, Adultery and The Spy. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and has received the Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur. In 2007, he was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
Surender Mohan Pathak was born on 19 February 1940 in Khemkaran, Punjab. After graduating in Science, he began to work at the Indian Telephone Industries Ltd. By the time he grew up, he had already read many national and international writers and begun translating the novels of Ian Fleming, Mario Puzo and James Hadley Chase, after which he began his own writing.
His most popular novels were Asafal Abhiyaan and Khaali Vaar, which took Pathak to the very zenith of fame. Since then, he has never looked back. His novel, Painsath Lakh ki Dakaiti was also published in English and made news for selling hundreds of millions of copies.
Rajesh Srivastava is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Bangalore. He spent over three decades as a manager in various sectors like beverages, food, commodities, personal care and education. He was president of J.K. Helene Curtis Ltd (a Raymond Group Company). Rajesh then moved to education and became an adjunct faculty at IIM Indore and COO of SP Jain School of Global Management. He now works as a consultant and holds workshops for companies like Siemens, Mercedes Benz, Reliance and IE Business School (Spain) among others. Throughout his career, his writings have appeared in various publications including Outlook, Telegraph, Mid-Day, Business Standard and Mint.
This is his second book. His first, The New Rules of Business, published in 2019, has been a national bestseller. He lives in Mumbai with his wife, Shaily, and their son, Kautuk.
Kelly Dorji is a Bhutanese actor, artist, gallery owner and travel facilitator. He is most known for his roles as the main antagonist in Indian films. His images of the Buddha using the tsambakha meto (the flower of the Oroxylum indicum tree) are widely sought by art collectors. Besides his philanthropic work for various royal charitable foundations, he is also the co-director of the Mountain Echoes Literary Festival. Kelly is an avid hard enduro motorcyclist and rides for a charitable motorcycle club called the Tarayana Dragons. He also owns and runs a travel company called Terton Travel Bhutan in Thimphu.
Vandana Singh is a University of Oxford trained forester who has worked in the forests of central India in the spectacular shadow of dipterocarps and Maoists. She has also worked in the area of public policy and communication. She currently lives on the outskirts of Delhi.
Pankaj Dubey is a bilingual novelist and filmmaker. All his books, What A Loser!, Ishqiyapa: To Hell With Love, Love Curry and Trending In Love, published by Penguin Books India, have been written by him in Hindi as well. He accentuates the socio-political undercurrents with quirk and humour in his style of writing. He has been a journalist with the BBC World Service in London. He was also selected for the prestigious Writers’ Residency in the Seoul Art Space, Yeonhui, South Korea, among three novelists from Asia in 2016. He was also awarded ‘Global Innoventure Award’ for ‘Literature and Storytelling’ in the House of Lords, British Parliament, UK in 2018. Two of his novels, Trending In Love and Ishqiyapa, are set to appear in upcoming web series. He can be followed on @carryonpd . To know more about him, log on to www.pankajdubey.in.
Tripurdaman Singh is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Born in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, Tripurdaman read politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, and subsequently earned an MPhil in modern South Asian studies and a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. He has been a visiting fellow at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and an Indian Council of Historical Research Fellow in India.
A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Tripurdaman’s books include Imperial Sovereignty and Local Politics (Cambridge University Press) and Nehru (Harper Collins).
Rakesh K. Kaul, an IIT gold medallist, migrated to the US in 1972. He was a founding contributor to the first Chair of India Studies at University of California, Berkeley, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at University of Pennsylvania and the Mattoo Center for India Studies at the State University of New York. He is the author of the bestseller The Last Queen of Kashmir. Kaul has had a distinguished business career as CEO and held leadership positions of publicly traded companies in the US. He serves as the Vice Chair of the Indo-American Arts Council.
