Archives: Authors

Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 – 1920) was born in Ratnagiri district of the present day Maharashtra. After completing his BA degree in Mathematics from the Deccan College, he started teaching. Tilak soon started Kesari in Marathi and Maharatta in English which became leading newspapers of the Deccan and the mouthpiece of Indian Nationalist movements. He along with Ganesh Agarkar set up the Deccan Educational Society. He joined the Indian National Congress in 1880 and formed close relationships with Lala Lajpat Rai, and Bipin Chandra Pal. Tilak popularised the concepts of Swadeshi, Boycott and Swaraj much before Mahatma Gandhi. He was referred to as the ‘Father of Indian Unrest’ and was arrested multiple times on charges of sedition.

Philipp Humm is on a mission to help professionals worldwide reach their full potential through confident, authentic, impactful communication. He has helped thousands of sellers, leaders, and entrepreneurs at leading organizations across the world, including Google, Visa, Salesforce, Oracle, Metlife, Samsonite, E.ON, and many more. Before his speaking career took off, Philipp worked for nearly a decade in various roles at Uber, Bain & Company, and Blackstone. He discovered his love for performance arts (acting, improv, and storytelling) during his time in New York while completing his MBA at Columbia University. His TEDx talk, ‘The Secret to Building Confidence’, was selected as an Editor’s Pick by the global TED organization.

Zeenath Sajida (1924-2009) was an Urdu writer and professor of Urdu literature who lived and worked in Hyderabad. In her lifetime, she produced one volume of short stories titled Jal Tarang (1947) and made influential academic contributions to the literary history and culture of the Deccan. Usloob-e-Bayaan Aur (2009) – a second collection published posthumously through the efforts of her students and friends – offers more of her stories as well as compiles some of her most well-known and popular humorous essays.

Nazia Akhtar is an Assistant Professor in the Human Sciences Research Centre at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, where she teaches courses in Indian and Russian literatures. She is the author of Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and twentieth-century Urdu Prose (2022).

V. Iswarya is a freelance translator and critic based in Bengaluru. She teaches English at the Department of Liberal Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. She has written essays on Tamil film culture for popular publications as part of her social media campaign “Calling Out Stalking.” She was a South Asia Speaks Fellow for Translation in the Class of 2024, working under the mentorship of Arunava Sinha. Her non-fiction translations have previously appeared in the Frontline magazine.

Santosh K. Singh currently teaches sociology at the School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. He earned his master’s, MPhil and PhD degrees in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In his over two-decade-long teaching and research career, in academic spaces spread across Uttarakhand, Chandigarh and Delhi, his endeavour has been to build bridges between academia, the larger society and the public. Santosh regularly contributes to the Tribune, Indian Express and Deccan Herald, among others. His recent publications include an edited volume titled Remembering India’s Villages (2024) and a book of poetry in Hindi, Apne hi Gaon me Ajnabi (2023).