Cultural Capitals: Future Legacies of India's Cities - Pune

Meenakshi Alimchandani Toronto based literary consultant Meenakshi Alimchandani specialises in South Asian literature and authors. She has curated the South Asian Segment of the Toronto International Festival of Authors, The Toronto International Book Fair as well as the Tartan Turban Secret Summer Readings. Meenakshi consults for Canadian publishers and promotes well-known authors like William Dalrymple, Gurucharan Das, Amitava Ghosh, M.G Vassanji, Anar Ali, Lisa Ray and Ruby Lal to name a few. She has been a moderator at the JLF Toronto 2019 and 2021 as well as at the Author Evenings at the Aga Khan Museum and the Oakville Centre for the Arts. In addition, she has been a speaker at the Jaipur Bookmark (Jaipur Literature Festival), the Apeejay Kolkata Litfest as well as the Kerala Litfest. Meenakshi is the co-coordinator of a Book Club called Books that Bind which is focused on diverse and multicultural literature.

Janhavi Borawake - Janhavi, a Pune home towner with some travel experience, services “Come Home to Pune©”. This concept invites short essay contributions (text or visual) of public art appreciation from those who enjoy the diversities of Pune as their surroundings. Thanks to Pune’s antiquarian heritage of being a confluence for multiple global services sectors - ITES, Tourism, Agriculture, Health, Medical, Real and Intellectual Estates, to name a few - this region provides her foundational access to a variety of assignments in coaching, orientations, technical translations and management for multi-cultural folks, within initiatives that require language services professional interventions. Janhavi has a BA, Liberal Arts – in French and Psychology, with elective concentrations in Developmental Studies, Comparative Literatures, Communication and Culture. She completed her Advanced and Commercial French Diplomas and certificates for regulated industry services. Collating these experiences, she maintains an incubator for languages and letters, with special investments for consulting vernacular language projects, alongside routine communications services activities.

Sarah Melsens trained as an architect and urban designer at the University of Brussels and at the Architectural Association in London. For the last ten years she has been dividing her time between Brussels, her hometown in Belgium and the city of Pune, where she conducts historical research on the city’s built environment. Her work centres on the contributions of ‘forgotten' city builders such as Indian engineers in the British colonial service and architects engaged by Pune’s speculative developers. Sarah was a visiting lecturer at the BRICK School of architecture in Pune and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. For her research on Pune city building, she makes extensive use of interviews and material retrieved from unexplored private collections. This has proved a very effective method to reveal ‘history from below’ and ‘hidden histories’ of the built environment. Sarah is also Assistant Editor for the academic journal Architecture Beyond Europe.

Nishita Zachariah is an art educator, writer and creative busybody, whose pedagogy delves into the stories, ideology and processes behind works of art and their creators. As co-founder of Art Walks Mumbai, she conducts monthly gallery hops, special curated walks and studio visits, to introduce new audiences to the pleasure of art viewing. By sharing insights and specialist knowledge she hopes to encourage a deeper understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. She has taught at the Vishwakarma University and Symbiosis School of Photography, Pune. She has briefly worked with TIFA Working Studios (2017) and VHC Gallery (2021) in Pune in various capacities, and as Curatorial Associate for Education and Outreach with the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2012-2015), where she honed her skills and passion for creating accessible programming. She lives and works out of Pune.

Aparna Andhare is the Deputy Editor, Live History India, looking after programming for LHI Circle. She was, until recently, a curator at the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, the City Palace, Jaipur. Joining the Museum in 2017, she worked on developing a new gallery on transport, contributed to publications, had collection responsibilities, and handled outreach activities including social media. Specialising in art and architecture of early modern India, she has two master's degrees: Art in the Global Middle Ages (University of Edinburgh, 2017), and Arts and Aesthetics (Master's, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2012). In Bombay, she has worked on independent archiving projects, and taught and co-ordinated the Art Design History and Theory programme for the undergraduates at ISDI-Parson's Mumbai (2013-16). Aparna contributes to various publications on art and culture.