The Authors
In time-honoured fashion, our authors introduce themselves in the third person.
Janhavi Acharekar is a freelance writer who has worked variously as journalist, advertising copywriter, wine-seller and art researcher. Her short story A Good Riot was short-listed for The Little Magazine New Writing Award 2006 and appears in an anthology published by TLM. Her stories and articles have appeared in TLM, Biblio, The Statesman, The Times of India and other publications. Janhavi has recently completed a series of stories for children that is due to be published soon. She lives with her husband in Bombay and may be contacted at janvi_a@rediffmail.com.
Anoopa Anand is twenty-five years old. She did her schooling in Bishop Cotton Girls’ High School, Bangalore, and her B.A. (Communicative English) in Mount Carmel College, Bangalore. She lives in Bangalore with a roommate, two fictitious dogs and one fictitious baby. She is a Brand Consultant by profession, and a writer and singer by heart. Anoopa is currently on the verge of finishing her first collection of poems. One day, she will be thin, write for a living and sing for love. Till then, she will write blank verse and plump poetry. She can be contacted at anoopa.anand@gmail.com.
Amitabha Bagchi’s debut novel Above Average is being published by HarperCollins, India and is due out in February 2007. The book’s website address is www.aboveaveragebook.com. Amitabha teaches at IIT in New Delhi.
A professional economist, Tanmoy Chakrabarti was born in Kolkata. After his graduation from St.Xavier’s College, he moved to Delhi to do his post-graduation studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University. From his early school days, writing has always interested him; at the age of six, he had a collection of short stories published. He was associated with The Statesman’s ‘Voices’ initiative for school children and in his leisure time, continues to write in his blog http://tangrowsup.rediffblogs.com. He is awaiting the right opportunity to become a full-time writer. He lives in Delhi with his wife Madhumita, an architect. He is reachable at tanmoychak@gmail.com.
Arjun Chandramohan Bali is a writer and film director. He lives in a small village in Bombay and is the proud owner of two coconut trees.
Albert Barton is part of Indian advertising. His latest avatar is Creative Director – Network Advertising. A score of 37% in his SSC English paper drove him towards a career in computer programming. After re-beginning life as a copywriter, he has ‘felt much better.’ He, however, is apt to write the occasional long-winded piece of advertising, which is smiled at patronisingly before being consigned to the nearest rubbish bin. He dotes on heavyweight writers and styles espoused by Hemingway, Irvine Welsh, Bob Dylan and Rushdie, loves the satirical comedy of Dave Barry, Woody Allen, P G Wodehouse, Douglas Adams and Family Guy. He also dotes deeply on his wife Susan (motto: alchemy is easy compared to making something out of him), his daughters Naomi and Nikita, and his thoughtfully named dog, Kebabs. In the unlikely event of you ever wanting to contact him, dash off a funny, well-crafted message to albert@bartonfly.com.
Saugata Chatterjee was born in Kolkata in the last gasp of the sixties and grew up amidst its coffee houses and chinatowns, where some of his more enduring obsessions - music, literature, art - were born. He now stays at Bangalore, where he heads the marketing/presales function for a reputed software firm. In between work hours and traffic jams, he likes to discover life, people and more of his own self, and would welcome contact at saugata.chat@gmail.com.
Gouri Dange people-watches, writes and edits books in Pune and Mumbai. Her non-fiction work—humour, people-watching, animals, travel, counseling, Indian music, food—appears regularly in papers and magazines. She is currently cowering behind the first draft of a novel. The short story in this anthology is part of a set-of-12 that she plans to put together once the bills are paid, the dogs are fed, the hospitalised friends are visited, the garden is … some day. She loves draught beer; her other big fix is Indian classical music. She plays the sitar, but only for herself and a handful of tolerant friends. In keeping with Puneri tradition, she has a rude message on her front-door. It says: ‘The more people I meet, the more I like my dog.’ She can be reached at gouri.dange@gmail.com.
Atreyee Day doodles and scribbles for a living (she needs proof yet!) from Poona after various short term(2 days) and long term(1 year 8 months) jobs as a visualiser, art gallery (mis)manager, once as an art teacher for a residential school and then for an alternate school till she discovered a book called Danger!School. She often loses her sense of humour explaining to neighbours whether she is Being or Doing most weekdays. The Statesman; Chicken Soup for the Dog Lovers’ Soul; Where the Child is Without Fear -Earthcare( Classic) Books, Calcutta; Touched By Truth (compiled by Sandy and Jael Bharat, Oxford, UK) has some of her words and pictures. Her website is composting as is James the Rock, a comic strip shared with many friends. Currently designing a book on natural farming she someday hopes to grow her food and eat it too. atreyee.day@gmail.com is home.
Minakshi Desai was born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1956. She lives in Juhu Scheme, Mumbai. Minakshi did her diploma in interior designing from the Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai.. She dabbled in a mixture of Interior designing, painting and pottery until 2002, when she did a course in writing through the Writer’s Bureau, Manchester. Her short stories and articles have appeared in various publications.
Salil Desai, 37, is an alumni of the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune and works as an independent producer, director and scriptwriter. He thinks he is probably the only person in India who makes docu-drama based management training videos. These videos are being used by over 600 companies and business schools all over India. In May 2005, he made his first short fiction film entitled Making Amends. He now has four short films and two documentaries to his credit and plans to make many more, as well as at least one feature film. He has had over 200 articles, features and short stories published in various magazines and newspapers, and hopes to get his novellas and short stories into print soon as well. He can be contacted at salil.des@gmail.com.
Ramgopal Divakar currently resides in the suburbs of Washington DC in the state of Virginia. He is an Electrical Engineer who writes as a pastime on weekends or boring evenings.
Vinod Ganesh is a software engineer by profession but loves writing, aspires to be a humour writer and has had a short humour story published by Penguin in a compliation. An avid quizzer, he has won quizzes all over the country and is also a semi-professional quizmaster whenever he can spare the time. Vinod is currently working with Infosys Technologies Limited.
Arjun Kolady is 27 years old, from Kerala, a mechanical engineer by tragedy, currently working with Google in Delhi. Blogging started him off on writing. He has been carrying a book in his head for the longest time, but it refuses to come out and play. Right now, it teases him by sending subliminal messages in his sleep that he groggily struggles to write down at unearthly hours. Like everything else in life, the notes too make no sense in the morning. He loves dogs, The Beatles, Kerala food, Pink Floyd, Douglas Adams, Amitabh Bachchan, Murakami, Mohan Lal, Saul Bellow, Bill Waterson, Bangalore, Kerala, and drinking in cheap bars with friends. He does not understand mathematics, European food and emotional outbursts, and hates shopping malls, the North-Indian-South-Indian disconnect, and religion.
Her story in this anthology is only Vineeta Malkani’s second published work – the first was at age 8. Putting her English teacher’s hopes of a scintillating career in literature far behind her, Vineeta has wandered many adventurous years through varied careers and countries: advertising, marriage, merchandising, administration, motherhood, head-hunting, editing, and even teaching. Currently a committed home-maker, world-traveler, tai-tai and dog-owner, she sometimes introduces herself to unsuspecting fellow party-goers as a ‘graduate student of human behaviour with a specialisation in child psychology.’ At most other times, she believes in telling it like it is, living for the day, and writing to remind herself that she still knows how to spell.
Anahita Mohile is a pseudonym. The author lives and works in Mumbai. She can be reached at anahita_mohile@rediffmail.com. She loves reading, eating, cooking, and writing, in that order. Her story in this anthology is her first published fiction. Of course, she desires to write many more.
Pune-based author, playwright, actor and director Deepak Morris has been associated with Theatre and Communication all his life. A qualified M.Com, MDBA(IMDR), DCS, Deepak combines a passion for theatre with professional management techniques to deliver consistently well-staged theatrical performances. His one act plays, skits and short scenes have been performed in eight countries across four continents. A keen author as well, he has written over a dozen textbooks on various managerial subjects and has had several articles published in leading newspapers and magazines in India and Dubai. He now divides his time between writing textbooks, teaching drama & communication and writing and staging plays. His website is www.freewebs.com/deepakmorris, and he can be reached at rhapword@yahoo.com.
Despite living a mongrel life in Thailand, Iraq, New Zealand, Indonesia, Switzerland and the United States, Amitabha Mukerjee somehow discovered a pucca Indian in himself. He is the author of the unsevered tongue, (2005) a collection of translated Bangla women’s poetry. When not writing, he can be seen teaching Computer Science at IIT Kanpur.
Batul Mukhtiar is a film maker, an alumni of the Film & Television Institute of India, Pune. She writes her own scripts, and also work as a fixer, production co-ordinator and researcher, for international crews shooting in India. She has just completed a children’s feature film, Lilkee, for the Children’s Film Society, India. There’s more on the film at lilkee.blogspot.com. She also writes short stories and blogs regulalrly at bmukhtiar.blogspot.com.
Mahesh Murthy runs a search engine marketing firm, Pinstorm – and a couple of investment funds: Seedfund and Passionfund. His earlier stints included running a television channel, Channel [V] and heading marketing for a Seattle-based e-commerce startup. In a parallel career as a writer, Mahesh has been a columnist for BusinessWorld, BusinessToday and Bombay Times and a creative director at advertising agencies in India, Hong Kong and the US. Apart from typically hyperbolic copywriting claims, this is Mahesh’s first piece of fiction since he won a short story writing contest at an inter-college festival over 20 years ago. You can write him at mahesh.murthy@gmail.com.
Vikram Rajan, an engineer by training, writes fiction purely out of interest, and has previously been published in a British Council compilation of short stories. An enthusiastic quizzer, he approaches his love of cinema with something close to fanaticism, collecting and watching movies as if it were a profession. A fledgling playwright, he has also participated in amateur theatrical productions in Chennai. Vikram is currently midway through a PhD program in Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University in New York City.
J. Ramanand is a post-graduate student of IT at IIT Bombay and is a Punekar by residence. He can be found quizzing on weekends and thinks he used up five minutes of allotted fame by becoming the youngest winner of BBC’s Mastermind India. He belongs to the TV generation, watching movies, British TV series, and sports on the telly. Predictably, he also blogs about these and other things. He thinks his writing is intuitive and unfettered, and has the ambitious aim of writing one good piece in every possible literary genre. His cyber-dwelling is www.it.iitb.ac.in/~ramanand and can be reached at ramanand@gmail.com.
Riverwild is a pen name. The author lives in Pune. He oscillates between his love for technology and his love for fiction. When he is not reading or researching the semantic web, he tries to capture the world around him in fiction.
Namrata Sathe is 22 years old and lives in Pune, Maharashtra with her mother. She is currently pursuing her Masters in English Literature from the University of Pune and is in her second year. Writing for her is a hobby, which she is trying to hone into a skill. She has worked for a couple of newspapers while in college, writing mostly features and articles. She has also done some theatre, where she wrote a few short plays and monologues. She has never had her short stories published until now. She doesn’t know if she’s trying to say something through her stories. Future plans include wanting to become a successful, full-time writer and pursuing higher studies abroad. She can be reached at bookbug26@yahoo.co.in
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy is nearly 30 and lives in Bangalore, where he earns a living writing useful things that people don’t read. He is very handy to have around in case of a zombie holocaust, less so during air raids and bake-outs. You can read more of his stuff at www.criminalenglish.100hands.net or at his blog, www.criminalenglish.blogspot.com.
A design consultant by profession. An aesthete by obsession, 25 year old Kunal Shah digs complexity in everything. He teaches architecture on thursdays, though he swears he knows nothing about it. He paints to express himself because talking can be cumbersome. He writes short stories (especially 55 word stories) only when he is not consuming copious amounts of vodka (water is not as dry as he’d like it to be). He writes to kill time, though he’d prefer killing his neighbours. Art is his porn. He obsesses over Champa trees when he is not surviving bad haircuts (which is very rare). His friends are deeply embarrassed about his ways, but then, so is he. Kunal really believes Kundera knows of him. How else did he come up with something called The Unbearable Lightness of Being?
B K Sreedhar is a post graduate in Mechanical Engineering and works at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam in Tamilnadu. Although an engineer by vocation, he claims to be a writer by avocation. Most of what he writes, however, he rewrites to oblivion; and what little he dares to submit reminds him of the boomerang. He admires the prose of Naipaul and envies the poetry of Walcott. This is his first published story which he believes is proof that kileys (or boomerangs that don’t return) do exist after all!
Govindraj Umarji is a resident of Mumbai and is currently a Masters Student of Environmental Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He loves writing fictional short stories and humour articles (at least, he finds them funny!). He alternates between being a harassed student and a budding writer. On the internet, his musings are accessible at radgovin.blogspot.com. He can be contacted at gsumarji@yahoo.com.
Paritosh Uttam is 29 and leads a Dr Jekyll-and-Mr Hyde existence in Pune. During the day he is a regular software engineer and turns into a writer at late night or early morning. His short stories have been published in magazines and newspapers like Femina and The Statesman and several webzines. Currently he is busy working on his first novel. A techie by qualification (a graduate of IIT Madras and post-graduate of IISc Bangalore), he lists his primary interests as reading and writing and loves to theorize on Indian Writing in English. More on him at: www.paritoshuttam.com.
Vidhya Vaidhyanathan is a sort of hodge-podge contributor to various newspapers. A Mumbaikar for 35 years, she has now made Pune her home. Her regular 9-to-5 job is totally devoid of any literary character but she endeavours to let the passion to write override all obstacles. Educated at schools and colleges in Mumbai, she holds a Masters Degree in English Literature and a Diploma in Journalism. She can be contacted on muyali@gmail.com.
Anita Vasudeva, 46, is weaving her way back to her soul. An English Lit. major from Delhi University, post-graduation in Social Communications Media from Sophia, Mumbai, a few years in the docu-ad film industry, too many good years in the travel and tourism business; runs a management consulting firm focused on cohesive growth and organisation development, moderates an exchange for freelance writers, counsels young adults, hand-holds authors, would act in anything, reads indiscriminately, is an editor by birth, has loved too much and still trusts the universe. Lives in Delhi, left some of her spirit in Mumbai, wears her heart on her sleeve and a zillion words in her head. Active in writers’ forums, some work in magazines, journals, blogs. That one big book is emerging in strange fits and starts. Meanwhile you can catch some poetry at asudeva.blogspot.com and some musings at penmark.blogspot.com.
Mahendra Waghela has heard rumours that he has imagination and a minor talent for writing. He stays in Pune, works with Don Quixote, eats antacids, and indulges in corporate skulduggery under various job titles. He has done his share for the idiot box and riot victims. His work has appeared in obscure websites, mass circulation print magazines and ad-crazy newspapers. In what he claims are a series of accidents, he won prizes from at a World Wildlife Poster Competition when in school, for On-the-spot sketching at university, and for a 55-word crime story from suite101.com. Telepathy or waghela.mahendra@gmail.com will reach him.
Nilanjana S Roy is a literary columnist. She is starting a new imprint with Landmark Books. Nilanjana lives in Delhi, with her husband and three cats.
The Designer
Hemant Suthar is a graduate of the National Institute of Design and runs his own design studio called Fractal Ink. When he’s not creating logos and identities for products and companies, he will be found playing with his robot kit, doodling or taking pictures at Caferati read-meets. And oh, he enjoys writing flash fiction and poems. You can check out his design portfolio at his company site, www.fractalink.com, and he can be contacted for paid assignments (unlike this one) at hsuthar@fractalink.com.