Salil Desai is an Indian novelist who writes murder mysteries based in Pune, India. [1] [2] His debut novel, The Body in the Back Seat, which was published in May 2011, [2] was acclaimed as "the best murder mystery by an Indian author so far" by The Tribune. [3] An alumnus of FTII, and a former journalist, he has also produced films, held creative writing workshops and written a number of short stories. [4] [1]
His crime thriller ‘The Sane Psychopath’ was inspired by a real-life incident and the author created a narrative about how a soft-spoken and mild-mannered bus driver called Shankar Lande goes on an hour-long mindless rampage in Pune, killing ten people, injuring 70 and almost wrecking a hundred other vehicles. [5]
Chicken tikka masala is a dish consisting of roasted marinated chicken chunks in a spiced sauce. The sauce is usually creamy and orange-coloured. The dish was created by cooks from South Asia living in Great Britain and is offered at restaurants around the world.
Chicken Soup for the Soul, LLC is an American self-help and consumer goods company based in Cos Cob, Connecticut. It is known for the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. The first book, like most subsequent titles in the series, consisted of inspirational true stories about ordinary people's lives. The books are widely varied, each with a different theme.
Anita Desai, is an Indian novelist and Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature. She won the Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London. Since 2020 she has been a Companion of Literature.
Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai, Baron Desai is an Indian-born naturalised British economist and former Labour politician. He stood unsuccessfully for the position of Lord Speaker in the House of Lords in 2011. He has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, in 2008. He is a Professor Emeritus of the London School of Economics.
Mastani was the daughter of Chhatrasal and Ruhani Bai Begum. She was the second wife of the Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao I. Her relationship within the Maratha Brahmin family has been subject of both admiration and controversy and well adapted in Indian novels and cinema.
Kuldip Nayar was an Indian journalist, syndicated columnist, human rights activist, author and former High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom noted for his long career as a left-wing political commentator. He was also nominated as a member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament in 1997.
Shreekumar Varma is an Indian author, playwright, newspaper columnist and poet, known for the novels Lament of Mohini, Maria's Room and Kipling's Daughter, the children's books, Devil's Garden: Tales Of Pappudom, The Magic Store of Nu-Cham-Vu, Pazhassi Raja: The Royal Rebel, and his collected plays, Five & Other Plays and Midnight Hotel & Other Plays,.
Narendra Achyut Dabholkar was an Indian physician, social activist, rationalist and author from Maharashtra, India. In 1989 he founded and became president of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti. Triggered by his assassination in 2013, the pending Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordinance was promulgated in the state of Maharashtra, four days later. In 2014, he was posthumously awarded the Padma Shri for social work.
Devdutt Pattanaik is a mythologist and writer from Mumbai, India. He writes on mythology, the study of cultural truths revealed through stories, symbols and rituals. He lectures on the relevance of both Indian and Western myths in modern life. His work focuses largely on the areas of religion, mythology, and management. He has authored and illustrated over 50 books, including ABC Of Hinduism, Bahubali : 63 insights into Jainism, and Yoga Mythology: 64 Asanas and Their Stories.
Gulzar is an Indian Hindi-Urdu poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, and film director known for his works in Hindi cinema. He is regarded as one of greatest Urdu poets of this era. He started his career with music director S.D. Burman as a lyricist in the 1963 film Bandini and worked with many music directors including R. D. Burman, Salil Chowdhury, Vishal Bhardwaj and A. R. Rahman. Gulzar also writes poetry, dialogues and scripts. He directed films such as Aandhi and Mausam during the 1970s and the TV series Mirza Ghalib in the 1980s. He also directed Kirdaar in 1993.
Jaya Madhavan is an Indian author, poet, The New Indian Express columnist and comic creator. She is a winner of The Children's Book Trust All India Competition for Writers of Children's Books.
Kishwar Desai is an Indian author and columnist. Her first novel, Witness the Night, won the Costa Book Award in 2010 for Best First Novel and has been translated into over 25 languages. It was also shortlisted for the Author's Club First Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her novel Origins of Love, published in June 2012, was critically acclaimed. The Sea of Innocence, published in 2014 in India as well as in the UK and Australia, was widely discussed as it dealt with the issue of gang rape. Desai also has a biography, Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt, to her credit. She wrote her latest book in 2020, released on 28 December, titled, The Longest Kiss.
Adya Rangacharya, known as R.V. Jagirdar till 1948, later popularly known by his pen name Sriranga, was an Indian Kannada writer, actor and scholar, and a member of the Adya Jahagirdar family. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1967 and the Sahitya Akademi Award for literature in 1971 for Kalidasa, a literary criticism in Kannada.
Meghna Pant is an Indian author, journalist and speaker. She has won a variety of awards for her contribution to literature, gender issues and journalism. In 2012, she won the Muse India National Literary Awards Young Writer Award for her debut novel One-and-a-Half Wife. Her collection of short stories, Happy Birthday and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Award.
Saryu Vinod Doshi is an Indian art scholar, art historian, academic and curator, known for her erudition in Indian miniature paintings and Jain art. She is the founder director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and a former pro-tem chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. She is the author of several books including Masterpieces of Jain Painting, a monograph on selected Jain art pieces. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, in 1999.
The Bhat Peshwa family earlier known as Bhat family is a prominent Indian Chitpavan Brahmin family who dominated India for around 100 years in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Most of the members in this family were the Peshwas in the Peshwa Era of the Maratha Empire, and Peshwa later became their family name. During their regime, most of the Indian subcontinent was under their control. The last Peshwa, Baji Rao II, was defeated by the British East India Company in the Third Anglo-Maratha War in 1818. The territory was annexed to the British East India Company's Bombay Presidency, and he was pensioned.
Khyrunnisa A. is an Indian author of children's fiction, speaker, academic and columnist who also writes for adults. She created the comic book character 'Butterfingers'. The character first appeared in the Indian children's magazine Tinkle. Thirteen-year-old Amar Kishen, aka Butterfingers, now features in the eponymous Butterfingers series of novels and short story collections published by Puffin, the children's imprint of Penguin Random House India.
Kulpreet Yadav is an Indian novelist, screenwriter and actor. He has authored 13 books, including The Girl Who Loved a Pirate and The Girl Who Loved a Spy.
Sandhya Mendonca is an Indian writer, author, biographer, editor and publisher. Born in Bengaluru (Bangalore) in the state of Karnataka, India, she gained a BA in Economics, Political Science & Sociology from St. Joseph's College of Arts & Science and an MA in Political Science specialising in International Relations from Bangalore University. She has a Diploma in Public Relations from the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. She lives in Bengaluru.
Satyarth Nayak is an Indian author and screenwriter, known for his bestselling novel The Emperor's Riddles, authoring the biography of Sridevi and for scripting Sony's historical television epic Porus. The Emperor's Riddles turned out to be a bestselling thriller with the media calling it "a hit with young readers". Porus created by Swastik Productions was one of the most expensive and acclaimed shows on Indian television. Satyarth's biography of screen legend Sridevi titled Sridevi: The Eternal Screen Goddess published in 2019 by Penguin Random House also went on to win high praise. Satyarth has been named one of the Top 50 Indian authors to follow on social media.
The Body in the Back Seat By Salil Desai. Gyaana Books. Pages 254. Rs 250.