At Caferati, we have been fortunate in our friends. Please meet some of them, folks who have helped smooth our path, who have encouraged and supported our efforts. Links to web pages, or email addresses, mean that the person in question doesn’t mind being visited or contacted; so do drop by.

Sarnath Banerjee wrote and illustrated the acclaimed graphic novel Corridor. He has been the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships and residencies. He has illustrated and written comic strips, columns and even film reviews in comic form, has had formal exhibitions of his art around the world, has made films from shorts and animation projects to full length features. He newest book, Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (Penuin), was launched in early 2007.
Mr Banerjee helped judge the first ever Graphic Flash Fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007.

Samit Basu is the author of The Simoqin Prophecies and The Manticore’s Secret (Penguin), and is in the middle of writing the third novel in the series, The Unwaba Revelations. He also writes comics, and has worked as a journalist and columnist.
Mr Basu helped judge Flash Fiction (2006) and Graphic Flash (2007) contests we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

Jane Bhandari, painter and poet, has lived in India for four decades . She is the author of two collections of poetry: Single Bed and Aquarius. She has also written two children’s books, The Round Square Chapatti and The Long Thin Jungle. A third collection of poems and a novel are in progress.
Ms Bhandari helped judge SMS poetry contests we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006 and 2007. She has also been a warm, encouraging presence at our read-meets, and has opened doors for us through her numerous contacts.

Shakti Bhatt was a writer, editor, poet, photographer and film-maker. Her award-winning short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in anthologies from the UK, India, and Italy. She was working on three novels when she died in March, 2007, at the age of 26.
Ms Bhatt led a session at a Caferati’s anniversary workhop in Delhi in 2006, and released our first book at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2007. She is the inspiration behind our annual writing workshop series named in her honour, the first of which was held in September 2007.

Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house and now Director of Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She has been active in the women’s movement in India for several years. She writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, and among her published books are the award-winning The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices from Kashmir (edited), Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays (edited) and several collections of short stories. She has also been on the juries of the Crossword Book Awards and on the Lettre Ulysses award.
Ms Butalia helped judge a flash fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007. She also led a session at the first Annual Celebrating Shakti Bhatt Workshop, and gave generously of her time and advice when we were setting up Caferati Creative.

Sampurna Chattarji is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and translator. Her books include The Greatest Stories Ever Told (fiction), and Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray (translation), both published by Penguin India. Her poetry has featured on Hong Kong Radio; in the international documentary Voices in Wartime and in First Proof: The Penguin Book of New Writing from India 2; Fulcrum Four: Fifty-six Indian Poets (1951-2005) and Imagining Ourselves, an anthology released by the International Museum of Women (IMOW) in San Francisco; as well as in Indian and international Journals such as Wasafiri, The Little Magazine and Chandrabhaga. Sampurna is an Executive Committee Member of the PEN All-India Centre, Mumbai, and on the Editorial Board of its Journal Penumbra. Her first book of poems, Sight May Strike You Blind, was published by the Sahitya Akademi in 2007. [More: poetry at Kritya and nth position; a review, translations of Joy Goswami’s poetry, a review, an essay.]
Ms Chattarji helped judge India’s first Poetry Slam, which we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007.

Devangshu Datta’s lifelong fondness for graphic stories started with him falling in love with the Goolie Goolie Witch who lived in the Misty Mountains of Denkali. When he was told to read the Gita, he chanted Green Lantern’s Mantra instead. As a result, he is educationally challenged and incapable of understanding anything more complicated than a thought bubble. And, he can’t draw for toffee either. His only attempt at a graphic novel was an involuntarily cubist, pornographic epic called “It Thing” set in Castle Grayskull.
Mr Datta helped judge the first Graphic Flash Fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2007.

Sonia Faleiro is a Mumbai-based writer and journalist. She is the author of The Girl (Viking, 2006), and the short stories Stupid (Penguin Anthology of New Writing 2, 2006) and Outkast D’Souza (Reflected in Water, Writings on Goa, Penguin, 2006). She is an awardee of the CNN Young Journalist of the Year 2006 award, and is currently writing her second book, a non-fiction account of the lives of Mumbai’s dance bar girls.
Ms Faleiro helped judge Flash Fiction contests we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006 and 2007.

Mahmood Farooqui is an actor and a writer based in Delhi. He contributes a weekly column to Mid-day, Mumbai and to a collaborative blog called Kafila and is currently working on his first book, on the Uprising of 1857, to be published by Penguin India. However, he is more known for reviving and popularising the lost art form of storytelling called Dastangoi.
Mr Farooqui conducted a story-telling workshop for Caferati Delhi in 2007.

Naresh Fernandes is Editor at Large, Time Out India, in charge of Time Out Mumbai, and Time Out Delhi. He’s the co-editor, with Jerry Pinto, of Bombay Meri Jaan, a collection of writing about India’s only real city. As a journalist, he’s written about socialism in Cuba, immigration in Belgium and low-rider jeans in Italy.
Mr Fernandes helped judge a Flash Fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007. He has also encouraged us to list our read-meets in Time Out, helping us attract new members.

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and independent curator. He is the author of ten books, including four collections of poetry, four studies of art and artists, an edited anthology and a translation. His most recent books are Baiju Parthan: A User’s Manual (Afterimage, 2006) and Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems, 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006). Hoskote was a Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (1995) and writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003). He has received the Sanskriti Award for Literature (1996) and also the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award (2004). As a literary organiser, Hoskote has been associated with the PEN All-India Centre and the Poetry Circle Bombay for two decades. He was President of the Poetry Circle (1992 -1997) and has been general secretary of the PEN All-India Centre since 1999. [More: poetry, essay (PDF), interview, a feature on Poetry International Web, and his book in German.]
Mr Hoskote helped judge India’s first Poetry Slam, which we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007.

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.
Mr Murthy has paid for our forum on Ryze since March 2005. He has also been an invaluable sounding board for our business ideas.

Megha Murthy is skittish about being featured on a page with a bunch of published writers, but she is happy she is here, nonetheless. She is a designer, developer, writer, photographer and singer and will gladly be many more things, as long as there is a promise of cash or junk food at the end of it. She is passionate about anything she writes — music, movies or poofy hair accessories of Hindi film heroines (circa 1989) — and expounds on these and other matters of national importance on her blog and elsewhere.
Ms Murthy designed and set up the Kala Ghoda Gazette and the Caferati site, and created the anonymous online submission and judging system that makes our lives so much easier.

Neeru Nanda has been in the field of writing and publishing for almost 15 years. She has attended various Fiction- and Literature-related courses in Columbia University and NYU, New York. She released her first collection of short stories titled If (Rupa & Co.) in 2006, and is working on her next novel. She also publishes children’s fiction. She has conducted the Kala Ghoda Fiction Workshop since 2005.
Ms Nanda helped judge the Flash Fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006.

Marilyn Noronha, born Bayros, lives in Mumbai. Teaching was her first love and she has returned to it, teaching Music and Creative Writing, after working for twenty-three years in a nationalised bank. A long standing Committee member of the Poetry Circle of Mumbai, Marilyn has read her poetry at several forums. Her work has been published in anthologies as well as national and international journals. Besides poems, Marilyn also writes short stories and plays for children. Several short stories have been published in magazines. Some of her plays have been performed on stage, radio and television. Her first collection of poems, Different Faces, was published by Allied Publishers Private Limited, Mumbai, India. Her writing has been included in Confronting Love, an anthology of love poems, published by Penguin Books, India. A few poems have also been selected by Sahitya Academy for their anthology of women’s poetry, to be published in the near future.
Ms Noronha helped judge the SMS Poetry contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007.

Manjula Padmanabhan is a writer and artist. Her books include Hot Death, Cold Soup (Kali for Women, 1996), Getting There (Picador UK, 1999) and Kleptomania(Penguin India, 2004). Her fifth play, Harvest (Kali for Women, 1998; three separate international anthologies), won the 1997 Onassis Award for Theatre. Her comic strips appeared weekly in the Sunday Observer (Bombay, 1982-86) and daily in the Pioneer (New Delhi, 1991-97). Manjula has illustrated twenty-four books for children including her own two novels for children, Mouse Attack and Mouse Invaders (Macmillan Children’s Books, UK, 2003, 2004). Her most recent published book is: I AM DIFFERENT!, published by Tulika, 2007.
Ms Padmanabhan helped judge India’s first Graphic Flash contest, which we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2007.

Jerry Pinto has published Asylum and Other Poems (Allied 2004). He is also co-editor, with Arundhathi Subramaniam, of Confronting Love (Penguin India, 2006), featuring 46 Indian poets writing in English. His poems have been included in various collections including Reasons For Belonging, Ninety-Nine and Fulcrum’s special volume on Indian poetry.
Mr Pinto helped judge the SMS Poetry contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006.

Anita Roy has been an editor for exactly half her life: the first ten in England (with Routledge and then Manchester University Press), and the last eleven in Delhi (with OUP, Dorling Kindersley and currently Zubaan). As an editor, she’s worked on a range of books—from academic monographs, travel guides, general non-fiction, and fiction, to children’s books. She is the editor of 21 Under 40: New Stories for a New Generation, and her work has appeared in Civil Lines 5, City Impossible (ed. Kushwant Singh), and Superhero! (Scholastic, 2007).
Ms Roy led a session at the first Annual Celebrating Shakti Bhatt Workshop in 2007. She gave us much warm encouragement when we were starting Caferati Creative.

Nilanjana S Roy is a literary columnist. She is chief editor, Westland Books, part of the Landmark Group. Nilanjana lives in Delhi, with her husband and two cats.
Ms Roy helped judge a Flash Fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, lead a workshop at Caferati Delhi’s anniversary party, and wrote the foreword to our first book, Stories at the Coffee Table. She has encouraged us, been our sounding board, and best of all, kicked our butts when we needed them kicked.

H S Shivaprakash is Associate Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He published collections of poems, Malebidda Nadalli (1991) and Anukshna Charite (1991) and plays,  Sultan Tippu (1986), Mahachaitra (1990), Maranayakana Drishtanta (1991), and Manteswamy Katha Pasanga. As a playwright,  Shivaprakash has  received Satyakama Prashasti (2003).
Professor Shivaprakash conducted a session at the first Annual Celebrating Shakti Bhatt Workshop in 2007.

Menka Shivdasani, founder member of the Poetry Circle, Mumbai (1986), has published two volumes of poetry, Nirvana at Ten Rupees, (XAL-Praxis, 1990) and Stet (2001) and has co-translated an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry, Freedom and Fissures (Sahitya Akademi, 1998). Her poems have appeared in publications in India and abroad, and in anthologies including An Anthology of New Indian English Poetry (Rupa and Co.) and Confronting Love (Penguin India).
Ms Shivdasani helped judge poetry contests we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006. She has hosted meets, and been unstinting with her advice and friendship.

R Sriram’s passion for books was serendipitous and led him to establish various bookstores — starting with Landmark in Chennai, Walden in Hyderabad, and lastly Crossword. He co-founded Crossword with Ms K Anita in 1992 and helped build it into India’s leading bookstore chain. He helped create significant wealth for India Book House, the initial promoters of Crossword and arranged for the buyout of Crossword by the current promoters Shoppers’ Stop Ltd. in 2000. Sriram stepped down from Crossword in August 2006 to co-found Next Practice Retail, to innovate and incubate new retail businesses. He is a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Mumbai, and an Independent Director on the board of Gini & Jony Limited. Sriram is a visiting faculty at IIM A and a guest lecturer at IIM L and other business schools, and a speaker at seminars as it helps him keep learning. He remains a book evangelist.
Mr Sriram has been a sounding board for our publishing ideas, and given generously of his advice and time. He first gave us the opportunity to showcase talent from Caferati at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2005 (he has curated the Literature setion of the Festival since that year), and since then, has entrusted us with larger repsonsibilities at the Festival, including running the blog and several contests.

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of two books of poetry: On Cleaning Bookshelves (Allied, 2001) and Where I Live (Allied, 2005). She has also co-edited Confronting Love (Penguin, 2001), an anthology of contemporary Indian love poems in English, and written The Book of Buddha (Penguin India, 2005). Her poetry has been published in several anthologies, including Reasons for Belonging (Penguin India, 2002), translated into Italian and Spanish, and presented at national and international festivals. In 2002, she was the recipient of the Charles Wallace fellowship for a writing residency at the University of Stirling, Scotland. She is the Editor of the India Domain of the Poetry International Web and in charge of Chauraha, an arts forum at the National Centre for the Performing Arts
.
Ms Subramaniam helped judge poetry contests we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006 and 2007.

Hemant Suthar is a graduate of the National Institute of Design and runs his own design studio, 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, and he can be contacted at hsuthar@fractalink.com.
Mr Suthar designed Stories at the Coffee Table, our first book.

Kalapana Swaminathan’s new novel Bougainvillea House (Penguin Viking) is a psychological thriller. Her first novel featuring her detective Lalli, The Page Three Murders, is due shortly. Lalli has appeared before in a collection of short fiction, Cryptic Death. She has also published 6 books for children, the most recent of which is Jaldi’s Friends (Puffin). Writing with Ishrat Syed, as Kalpish Ratna, she has written columns and articles on science and literature in most national dailies.Their most recent book together is A Compendium of Family Health (Rupa).
Ms Swaminathan helped judge a Flash Fiction contest we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006.

Jeet Thayil was born in Kerala, India, and educated in Hong Kong, New York and Bombay. His poetry collections include English and Apocalypso. He is the editor of Give the Sea Change and It Shall Change: Fifty-Six Indian Poets (Fulcrum) and Divided Time: India and the End of Diaspora (Routledge). His new book of poems These Errors are Correct is forthcoming from East West. He lives in Bangalore.
Mr Thayil led a session at Caferati Delhi’s anniversary workshop in 2006.

Altaf Tyrewala is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel No God In Sight (Penguin).
Mr Tyrewala helped judge Flash Fiction contests we ran for the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in 2006 and 2007.