As a middle grader, Divya wrote her first book. And then she promptly forgot the password to the file. She has learnt better and has now written four books. Her most recent book, Misfit Madhu, won the Neev Book Award and was featured on the Parag Honour List in 2023. Her other books include Dare Eat That (winner of the Gourmand Award in 2019), I Hate My Curly Hair and Written in the Stars.
When she is not hanging upside down doing anti-gravity yoga or chasing after her four-year-old, she is trying not to eat too much chocolate.
Dr Kashyap Patel is a practising oncologist and has been working directly with cancer patients for the past twenty years. He is the CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates. A certified trainer for physicians with the Education in Palliative and End-of-Life Care programme, he has been a speaker at several Continuing Medical Education events. He is also vice president of the Community Oncology Alliance, medical director at the International Oncology Network and chairman of clinical affairs at the Association of Community Cancer Centers, all in the US.
Dr Patel has led committees in numerous South Carolina hospitals and has extensive research experience in the field of oncology. He has also published and presented several articles in medical journals.
Pandit Amarnath (1924-1996) was an Indian Classical Vocalist and composer
Taslima Nasrin is an eminent writer and secular humanist who has been subjected to forced banishment and multiple fatwas. Her writings have been deemed controversial time and again because of their unflinching preoccupation with gender and communal politics. She has been living in exile since 1994.
Tulsidas, the most important of the saint-poets of the medieval Bhakti movement in northern India, is best remembered for his magnum opus, The Ramcharitmanas, regarded as one of the greatest achievements of Hindi literature.
CHANDRASEKHAR KAMBAR is an award-winning playwright who was born in 1937 in Ghodgeri, north Karnataka. Kambar also writes poetry, fiction and literary and cultural criticism in Kannada. He is the recipient of the Jnanpith Award and the Padma Shri. He is the president of the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.
Kambar’s oeuvre of over twenty-five plays comprises many well-known works, including Jokumaraswami, Siri Sampige and Mahamayi, among others. He also has eleven poetry collections and six novels to his credit. A man of many interests, Kambar is also an illustrious scholar, film-maker and teacher. He has held the posts of vice chancellor, Kannada University (Hampi), and chairman, National School of Drama (New Delhi).
Tanweer Fazal is professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad. He has previously taught at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. As a political sociologist, he specializes in the sociology of nationalism(s), community formation and identifications with specific focus on their implications on discourse of rights and entitlements. He is the author of Nation-state’ and Minority Rights in India: Comparative Perspectives on Muslim and Sikh Identities (2015) and Minority Nationalisms in South Asia (ed.) (2012). His forthcoming book is tentatively titled ‘Muslims, Law and Violence: Reflections on the Practices of the State’ (Three Essays, 2020).
Cheiro was the great Irish astrologer. His original name was William John Warner. Cheiro was born in November 1866 in England named place of Bre. Cheiro reached Mumbai at the age of 17 and here met a famous astrologer Vednarayan Joshi and after consulting him, he went to the Himalyas, Kashmir, Laddakh, Varanasi and studied astrology and extensively.
Premchand is one of the greatest Hindi and Urdu authors in India. His name was originally Dhanpat Rai, but he came to be better-known by the name of Nawab Rai and Munshi Premchand. He was a sympathetic author, a conscious citizen of the country, a skilled orator and well-read editor. Premchand developed a tradition of Hindi story and novel so influential that it became the guide for the literature produced across the span of the century.
Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College (Columbia University). She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection. She is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland, which was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award in fiction. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole (In Other Words), Il Vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina and Racconti romani. She has translated three novels by Domenico Starnone and is the editor of The Penguin Classics Book of Italian Short Stories, which was published in Italy as Racconti Italiani. Lahiri received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 she was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella. Her most recent book in English is a collection of essays entitled Translating Myself and Others, published in Spring 2022 by Princeton University Press.
