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 | Khushwant
Singh
Author
| | Book:Delhi:
A Novel,The Company of Women. | | |  |
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 | Farouque
Sheikh Actor, Scriptwriter
| Movies:Chashme
Baddoor.
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 | Ashok
Mahadevan
Editor
| Reader's
Digest.
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 | Ruskin
Bond
Author
| | Book:A
Season of Ghosts, Rain in The Mountains. | | | |
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 | Anita
Nair
Author.
| | Book:The
Better Man, Ladies Coupe. | | | |
| |
 | Sushila
Ravindranath
Editor
| | Sunday
Express | | | |
| |
 | Geetha
Doctor
Author
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| Khushwant
Singh
Author
Khushwant Singh was born in 1915
in Hadali, Punjab. He was educated at Government College, Lahore and
at King’s College and the Inner Temple in London. He began a distinguished
career as a journalist with All India Radio in 1951. Since then he
has been founder-editor of Yojna (1951-53), editor of the Illustrated
Weekly of India (1979-80), and the editor of the Hindustan
Times (1980-83). Today he is India’s best-known columnist and
journalist.
Khushwant Singh has also had an extremely successful
career as a writer. Among the works he has published are a classic
two-volume History of the Sikhs, several novels (the best-known
of which are Delhi, Train to Pakistan and The Company of
Women), and a number of translated works and non-fiction books
on Delhi, nature and current affairs.
Khushwant Singh was
Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. Among other honours he was
awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 by the President of India
(he returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union Government’s
siege of the Golden Temple in Amritsar). |
| Farouque
Sheikh
Actor, Scriptwriter
From Chashme
Baddoor years ago to Ji Mantriji now has been a long journey
for Farooque Sheikh.
Since 1971 this businessman-turned-actor
has been in films. Doing good roles is his forte, even though some
of them have been shorn of the commercial elements.
Comparing
the current television and film scenario to a business venture, Farooq
opines that good investment brings in good results. The pursuit
of excellence should be the main motto and not how much one is going
to earn out of a venture. Accordingly, directors wanting to make good
serials should not hesitate in spending money to get talented people
to back their venture, he points out.
Of course, Farooq
has dabbled in theatre as well and his Tumhari Amrita he did
with Shabana Azmi still runs to packed houses whenever and wherever
it is staged.
I am writing some scripts and, well, some
day I might make my own film, Farooq says. When creativity does
not stimulate his brain, he is back to his business. I was and
I am a small-time businessman, he smiles. |
| Ashok
Mahadevan
Editor
Whenever Ashok Mahadevan
is asked which part of the South he's from, he says, South Bombay.
That's literally true, he insists, since he was born on Marine Drive
during a major cyclone in 1948 and has been moving steadily south
ever since. He now lives near Navy Nagar, in the southernmost part
of the city.
The son of a Naval officer, Mahadevan attended
nearly a dozen schools, the final two being Mayo College, Ajmer, and
Tonbridge School, UK. He then went on to Columbia University, New
York, and barely managed to scrape through with a BA in sociology.
However, he made up for his mediocre academic performance by taking
part in numerous demonstrations against America's prosecution of the
war in Vietnam, including the famous March on the Pentagon in 1969.
The previous year, after camping for nearly a week in the office of
the president of Columbia University, Mahadevan, along with hundreds
of other Columbia students, had been arrested and briefly incarcerated.
After his BA, Mahadevan got an MA in journalism from Columbia
and worked for a year and a half on a small-town paper in the American
midwest. He then returned to Bombay and, after a couple of false starts
in public relations, joined the Indian edition of Reader's Digest
in December 1974 as deputy editor. He became editor in 1982.
Apart from articles for Reader's Digest, Mahadevan has written
for numerous other Indian publications. However, his dream-to write
a book-remains as elusive as ever. |
| Ruskin
Bond
Author
For almost half a century Ruskin
Bond has been writing stories, novellas, essays, poems and children's
books, many of which have been published by Penguin India. He has
also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared
in several magazines and anthologies. His first novel,The Room
on the Roof, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, awarded to
a Commonwealth writer under thirty for `a work of outstanding literary
merit'. He received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993, and the Padma
Shri in 1999. |
| Anita
Nair
Author
Anita Nair is the author of the
best-selling novels The Better Man and Ladies Coupe. Her books
have been translated into twenty-one languages around the world. This
is her first book for children and is part of a two-book series on
myths and legends.
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| Sushila
Ravindranath
Editor
Graduated from Madras University
with a Master's in Social Science.
Joined Business India,
the country's first business magazine in 1982. Two years later, she
moved to the fledgling Madras Bureau. Was made Chief of Bureau for
the South in 1991. Held editorial and administrative responsbilities
for the four offices in the South, which were set up. Was also in
charge of the group's TV channel in the Southern region.
In
2000, moved to R.K. Swamy BBDO, a large advertising agency, to set
up adn run an entertainment portal for them. Currently, Editor of
the New Sunday Express.
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| Geetha
Doctor
Author
Geetha Doctor is a freelance
journalist who lives in Chennai. She is an art critic and literary
reviewer who also writes on food and travel.
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