Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2017 - Literature Section

Emmy-nominated Padma Lakshmi is internationally known as an actress, food expert, model, and award-winning author, as well as the recipient of the 2016 NECO Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Lakshmi was nominated for an Emmy Award for her role as host and judge on Bravo’s Emmy award-winning Top Chef, where she also serves as an executive producer.  The show has just filmed its 14th season. Lakshmi has established herself as a food expert, hosting successful cooking shows and writing the best-selling cookbooks Easy Exotic and Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet. Her memoir, The New York Times best-selling Love, Loss and What We Ate, was released in March 2016. She released The Encyclopedia of Spices & Herbs in October of 2016. In addition, Lakshmi is a savvy businesswoman with multiple companies of her own, including her home décor line, The Padma Collection, and Padma’s Easy Exotic, a collection of frozen rices, lentils and other culinary products. She is also co-founder of the Endometriosis Foundation of America. The EFA has educated over 16,000 teens on this devastating illness.

Rashmi Uday Singh is a TV Host and the award winning author of 37 books. She has many firsts to her credit including India’s first ever city-restaurant guide in 1997, first ever “Nightlife guide to Mumbai” and the world’s first vegetarian guide to Paris. Having studied journalism, law and management, she worked with the prestigious Indian Revenue Service, which she quit after fifteen years as Deputy Commissioner to follow her creative muse in newsprint and television (her own food shows, also with Gordon Ramsay for Channel 4). Singh is the jury chairperson of the Indian subcontinent of the London based "Worlds 50 Best Restaurant Academies", and represents India in international forums. Her book “A Vegetarian in Paris” was recently awarded the “World Gourmand Cookbook Award” in Paris. She was recently conferred a knighthood by the French Government.

Bishakha Datta (@busydot) works on gender and sexuality in digital spaces, runs the non-profit Point of View in Mumbai, writes and films non-fiction, and is part of the wikipedia family. In all her work, Bishakha explores marginal, invisible, and silenced points of view - or those considered illegitimate. Bishakha's documentary work includes In The Flesh and Taza Khabar. Anthologies she edited include Nine Degrees of Justice and And Who Will Make the Chapatis? Bishakha recently launched the online imprint, Deep Dives, which publishes long-form journalism on ‘the way we live now’. She is currently writing #Selling Sex, a book on the lives of sex workers in India.

Paromita Vohra is a filmmaker and writer. She is known for her documentaries on subjects such as urban life, pop culture and gender.Her latest documentary is Partners in Crime. She has also written the screenplay of the award-winning feature film Khamosh Pani. Her film production company Parodevi Pictures is based in Mumbai. She also writes the column Paro-normal Activity for the Sunday Mid-day.

Chintan Girish Modi is a freelance writer, educator, researcher, teacher trainer and copy editor living in Mumbai. He is the founder of Friendships Across Borders: Aao Dosti Karein, an initiative to promote friendship between Indians and Pakistanis. He holds an M.Phil. in English Language Education, and has received fellowships from Commutiny – The Youth Collective, the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, and the Foundation for Universal Responsibility.

Dr. Tomer Persico is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and teaches at the Department for Comparative Religion in Tel-Aviv University. His dissertation, dealing with techniques of meditation in the Jewish tradition, and analyzing the cultural transformations leading to the observed  shifts in meditative emphasis through the generations, was recently punlished as a book by Tel Aviv University Press. His fields of study are contemporary spirituality, Jewish Renewal, Forms of secularization and trends of secularization and religiosity in Israel, and Jewish extremism. He is an activist for freedom of religion in Israel, writes the most popular blog in Hebrew on religion, and has written hundreds articles on these subjects for the popular media.

Dr. Ramiyar P. Karanjia is an M.A., Ph. D. in Avesta-Pahlavi (ancient Iranian languages) from University of Mumbai, India. He is the Principal of Dadar Athornan Institute, a religious training school in Mumbai. He was awarded the Wenner Gren Foundation Fellowship at Uppsala University, Sweden in 1999. He was invited by Heidelberg University, Germany in 2002-3. He was a Research Fellow of the Swiss National Fund to Zurich University, Switzerland in 2011. He is a teacher and Professor of religion, Iranian history and languages. He has given talks on religion and religious history all over India and the world at places like Canada, London, Dubai, Kuwait, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Zurich and Singapore. He has written and edited several books and collaborated with authors abroad. He has contributed papers to Journals on a range of subjects and has contributed entries to Encyclopedias (Iranica and Springer). He is the Director of Ahunavar Academy which conducts courses, classes and seminars and publishes books on Zoroastrian religion, Iranian history, Iranian languages and spirituality. He is a columnist in Jame Jamshed Weekly and also contributes to other newspapers and magazines. In his website  www.ramiyarkaranjia.wordpress.com he offers information about Iranian religion, history, languages and spirituality.

Akshay Manwani turned to freelance writing in 2009. He has since written on Indian cinema and popular culture for a variety of publications such as The Caravan, The Indian Quarterly, Scroll.in, Mint, Business Standard and Mumbai Mirror.  He is also senior editor for nba.com. Akshay’s first book, Sahir Ludhianvi: The People's Poet, was published in December 2013 by HarperCollins Publishers India. In 2014, Akshay won the RedInk award for Best Lifestyle and Entertainment Story, given by the Press Club Mumbai, for his detailed feature on B.R. Chopra's Mahabharata television series. His second book - Music, Masti, Modernity: The Cinema of Nasir Husain – has been published by HarperCollins India in October 2016. Akshay lives with his daughter and wife in Mumbai.

Aseem Chhabra is a freelance writer based in New York City. Aseem has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Outlook, Mumbai Mirror, Rediff.com.  He has been a commentator on Indian popular culture on NPR, CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, Associated Press and Reuters. He is the festival director of the New York Indian Film Festival and the Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival. He is also the voice of Shadow Puppet #1 in director Nina Paley’s animated film, Sita Sings the Blues.He is the author of Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, the Star.

Meenakshi Shedde is currently is India/South Asia Consultant to the Berlin International Film Festival. She has diverse experience as an independent film curator, film festival consultant, film critic, journalist and script advisor, as well as in English sub-titling. She has been India/Asia Curator/Consultant to the Locarno, Toronto (TIFF Bell Light Box), Busan, Dubai, Kerala and Mumbai film festivals, and the International Film Festival of India (Goa). Winner of India’s National Award for Best Film Critic, Shedde has been on the jury of 20 international film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin and Venice. She is Script Advisor to the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and Mumbai Mantra Sundance Institute Screenwriters’ Lab. She has directed a film,Looking for Amitabh, and line-produced five international, feature-length documentaries shot in India, including Comrades in Dreams, directed by Uli Gaulke (Germany), which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival. She has 30 years’ experience in journalism, and freelances for Variety, Screen International, Cahiers du Cinema,Times of India,rouge.com.au, Forbes and Sunday Mid-day.

Zuni Chopra is a fifteen-year-old author who has published two books of poetry. The House That Spoke, 2016 is her first novel. She was the youngest author to feature at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year. 

Anusha Subramanian, became India’s youngest published author, at 12 years old in 2012. She has written Heirs of Catriona, 2012 and Never Gone, 2016. 

Lubaina Bandukwala is a Children’s Writer, Editor and Curator of Children’s Literature Festivals and Former journalist. Her books have been published by Pratham, Scholastic, FunokPlease. She also curates children’s literature sessions at the prestigious Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai and has founded her own Children’s Literature Festivals - Peek A Book and Fully Booked (with First Mum’s Club and Kids Club). This so that children and parents can explore the fabulous world of children’s books, especially those produced by Indian publishers – and discover the joys of reading.

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Julya Rabinowich, Melinda Nadj Abonji, Pascal Bruckner and Jean-Luc Benoziglio. She has been awarded translation grants from PEN USA and PEN UK, an NEA Translation Fellowship, a Max Geilinger Translation Grant for her translation of Philippe Jaccottet, the ACFNY Translation Prize for her translation of the novel Angel of Oblivion by the Austrian writer Maja Haderlap, and most recently a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowshiop to translate Notizen, the Swiss writer Ludwig Hohl’s magnum opus. She also serves as an Advisory Editor for The Hudson Review. Her essays and reviews have appeared a number of journals and newspapers including The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, World Literature Today, The Wall Street Journal, The American Scholar, and Bookforum.

Ranjit Hoskote is a cultural theorist, curator and poet. He is the author of more than 25 books, including Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006) and Central Time (Penguin/ Viking, 2014), and the monographs Zinny & Maidagan: Compartment/ Das Abteil (Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/ Walther König, 2010) and Atul Dodiya (Prestel, 2014). Hoskote has translated the poetry of the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic Lal Ded as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011). With Ilija Trojanow, he has co-authored Kampfabsage (Blessing, 2007; in English as Confluences: Forgotten Histories from East and West, Yoda, 2012). With Nancy Adajania, he is co-author of The Dialogues Series (Popular, 2011), an unfolding programme of conversations with artists. With Maria Hlavajova, he is editor of Future Publics: A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art (BAK, forthcoming). Since 1993, Hoskote has curated 30 exhibitions of contemporary art, including two monographic surveys of Atul Dodiya (Bombay: Labyrinth/ Laboratory, Japan Foundation, Tokyo, 2001; and Experiments with Truth: Atul Dodiya, Works 1981-2013, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 2013), a lifetime retrospective of Jehangir Sabavala (National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay and New Delhi, 2005-2006), a historical survey of Indian abstraction, Nothing is Absolute (with Mehlli Gobhai; CSMVS/ The Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, 2013), and a survey of 150 years of art by Parsi artists within the narrative of an emergent Indian modernism, No Parsi is an Island  (with Nancy Adajania; National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay, 2013-2014). Over 2000-2002, Hoskote co-curated the trans-Asian collaborative project, ‘Under Construction’ (Japan Foundation: Tokyo and other Asian centres). Hoskote co-curated the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008) He was curator of India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011). And a jury Member of the 56th Venice Biennale.

Vappala Balachandran is a columnist and author who was member of the 2 man High Level Committee appointed by the Government of Maharashtra to enquire into the police response during the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. His published works are "National Security & Intelligence Management-a new paradigm"( Indus Source Books- 2014) and " A life in shadow: The secret story of ACN Nambiar-A Forgotten Anti-Colonial Warrior" (Roli Books-2016).

Salil Tripathi is a contributing editor at Mint and at Caravan in India. He is currently Chair, PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. He has been a correspondent in India, Singapore, Hong Kong and London. Salil has written for various international publications like The Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Independent, among others. In India, he had been assistant editor at the Indian Post and senior correspondent at India Today. He has been a senior visiting fellow for business and human rights at the Kennedy School, Harvard University, and is also an adviser to several global initiatives involving business and human rights. Offence: The Hindu Case, about the rise of Hindu nationalism and its implications on free expression, was his first book. Recent books include Bangladesh War of Liberation, The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its Unquiet Legacy and Detours: Songs of the Open Road, a collection of travel writing. In 2015, he received the Red Ink Award from the Mumbai Press Club for human rights journalism. In 2011, he won the third prize at the Bastiat Awards for Journalism about free societies, in New York. In 1994 he received an award for economic journalism at the Citibank Pan Asia Journalism Awards, Hong Kong.

Vikram Paralkar was born and raised in Mumbai, where he did his medical schooling at Seth GS Medical College. He moved to the United States in 2005, and is currently a physician-scientist in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and treats leukemia. His medical writing has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and he is a recipient of the Scholar Award from the American Society of Hematology. His first novel, ‘The Afflictions’, was published in the United States, and has been translated into and published in Spanish (Argentina) and Italian (Italy). Ishrat Syed and Kalpana Swaminathan, both accomplished surgeons, write together as Kalpish Ratna - a near anagram of their names. The pseudonym translates, in a piquant meld of Persian and Sanskrit, as 'the pleasures of imagination'. They are the authors of titles such as Room 000 and Bombay's epidemics: Uncertain Life and Sure Death. Swaminathan won the 2009 Vodafone Crossword Book Award (Fiction) for Venus Crossing: Twelve Stories of Transit. Syed is also a photographer with several one-man shows to his credit, the most recent being The Persistence of Memory. He is currently working on a pictorial history Palimpsest: The Erasures that made Bombay.

Hemant Morparia is a practicing Radiologist who began cartooning while doing a residency in the KEM hospital- more than 25 years ago. His work has featured in many Indian publication as well as foreign ones including the New York Times, Al-jazeera, and Toronto Star. Over the years he has published more than 15,000 cartoons. He draws from a range of topic- politics, urban issues, science, medicine, sports, even spiritual cartoons. He was honoured to be a Judge at the World Press Cartoon contest-2008- Lisbon- the first and only time an Indian has been made one. He did a cartoon residency in La Rochelle, on an invitation from the city in France, drawing daily cartoons for a french newspaper, Sud Ouest -in Jan Feb 2010 exhibition. The cartoons and some sculptures were later exhibited for three months. He was included in the Hello! magazine list of 10 most powerful people in the Indian media- listed at No.9. for the year 2011. He has published a few books of cartoons and has had four cartoons exhibitions till date in Mumbai . at the National gallery of modern art 2002, mumbai, sakshi gallery,2004 and the alliance francaise 2009 and 2010.

Gayatri Pahlajani is Chief Sneeze at The Big Sneeze, which provides creative media services including writing, filmmaking, voice and sound services. She holds an MSc in Gender and the Media from the London School of Economics (LSE) and has worked for MTV, HIT 95 FM as well as hosted a show on All India Radio during her first job as a researcher at ACNielsen. She has ghostwritten five books published by HarperCollins including: A book on skin written for a doctor, which became a national bestseller and was nominated for the 2016 Raymond Crossword Book Award, and which is also pending translation in Hindi and Telugu. A book on nutrition which also became a national bestseller and has been translated into four languages and is in its third reprint. A book written for a Guinness-World-Record-holding surgeon, which combines surgery and management and the Times of India reported as the fastest-selling book in the motivational category. A book on child nutrition is under production. Having also finished a filmmaking stint at New York Film Academy (2013) coupled with her time working on promos at MTV, she also directs corporate films. Gayatri was additionally shortlisted for the prestigious national Film Fellowship under the aegis of the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) with a view to directing documentaries. 

V Sanjay Kumar has set up and managed businesses in investment banking, stockbroking, banking software, and contemporary art. He is a management graduate from IIM Ahmedabad and he began his writing career in 2010. His interest in the art world continues and he is a Director at Sakshi Gallery. (www.sakshigallery.com) He has curated shows and written articles for catalogs and magazines. His two previous novels--Artist, Undone and Virgin Gingelly--take place in the bustling cities of Mumbai and Chennai (where Kumar grew up), exploring the fringes of middle-class life there. The Third Squad is his most recent novel. Although he has spent most of his life in Chennai and Mumbai he resides currently in Bangalore.

Arjun Gaind is the creator and author of the comic books, Project: Kalki and Blade of the Warrior: Kshatriya, published by Virgin Comics and the graphic novel, A Brief History of Death. Two new series, titled Reincarnation Man and The Mighty Yeti and a new graphic novel titled Empire of Blood, are forthcoming shortly from Graphic India. 

Piyush Jha is an acclaimed film director, ad filmmaker and the author of the bestselling novel, Mumbaistan and Compass Box Killer. A student political leader at university, he pursued a career in advertising management after acquiring an MBA degree. Later, he switched tracks, first to make commercials for some of the country’s largest brands, and then to write and direct feature films. His films include Chalo America, King of Bollywood and Sikandar.

Sumana Roy teaches at the Department of Humanities, Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College. An early draft of her first novel, Love in the Chicken's Neck, was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. Her poems, fiction and essays have appeared in 21 Under 40 (Zubaan), The New Anthem (Westland), Pratilipi, Caravan, Asia Writes, Himal Southasian, Biblio, OPEN, Tehelka, among other places.

Bittu Sahgal is an environmental activist and writer. He is the founding editor of Sanctuary Asia, a wildlife and ecology magazine based in India. He is a member of the National Board for Wildlife of the Ministry of Environment and Forests. He has been associated with Project Tiger from its inception and was greatly influenced by Dr Salim Ali the famous "Birdman of India", Kailash Sankhala, the first Director of Project Tiger and Fateh Singh Rathore, Field Director, Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, to propagate the concept of tiger protection in India. He founded Kids for Tigers, the Sanctuary Tiger Programme in the year 2000. A mass contact campaign, this reaches out to over 650 schools in 15 Indian cities and covers one million children. He has authored numerous book on wildlife including, most recently: India Naturally, The Bandhavgarh Inheritance, The Sundarbans Inheritance, The Bharatpur Inheritance, The Kaziranga Inheritance, The Corbett Inheritance and The Periyar Inheritance. He writes for both English and local language newspapers and magazines in India and has produced over 30 conservation-related documentaries.

Jay Mazoomdar is an independent journalist who writes extensively for publications in India and abroad. His investigative reports have influenced national policy making and brought a modicum of accountability and transparency in the functioning of different government agencies. During 1995-2007, Mazoomdaar has worked with Amrita Bazar Patrika, Sunday Observer, The Indian Express and NDTV. Now, as an independent journalist, he continues to pursue the issues close to his heart.

Bijal Vachharajani was the former editor of Time Out Bangalore and writes about education for sustainable development and sustainable livelihoods. She is now a consultant with Fairtrade Asia Pacific and writes about children’s literature and sustainable development as a freelance journalist. She earlier worked as a journalist at Time Out Mumbai, where she edited the Around Town city section and the Kids section. At the same time, she worked as the South Asia Co-ordinator for 350.org, an international movement that’s working on the climate crisis. Here, she helmed events such as 10/10/10, a global day of climate action and 350 Earth, a satellite art project and handled social media. She has a masters in Environment Security and Peace with a specialization in Climate Change and Security at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. Bijal was also part of the launch team of Disney Adventures, a children’s magazine where she wrote and worked closely with schools and has previously headed Kids for Tigers, a school contact programme on conservation.

Sidharth Bhatia is a Founding Editor of The Wire. He is a journalist and writer based in Mumbai. He was among the editors who launched DNA in 2005 and managed its editorial and opinion section. He writes on politics, society and culture. An Associate Press Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge University, Bhatia's last book was India Psychedelic, the story of a Rocking Generation. He recently edited Great Truth and Regard: the Story of the Typewriter in India.

Simon Mundy has been the Mumbai correspondent for the Financial Times since April 2016. He is responsible for covering a wide range of Indian business including finance, manufacturing and IT. He previously reported for the FT in Seoul, London and Johannesburg.

Malavika Sangghvi is a journalist, editor, author and columnist with three decades experience in media. She has edited newspapers like The Sunday Review - and written for respected international journals like the New York Times and the Sunday Times, (UK). She has been regarded as a pioneer in lifestyle journalism and content creation. She has also worked as a broadcaster for BBC Radio and a TV anchor on Star TV and is a published poet and author of two books. Sangghvi currently writes a popular daily city diary column 'Malavika's Mumbai' in Mid-day and 'Woman of Letters' in DNA. She has recently co-founded a luxury and lifestyle consultancy 'SANGUINE' which curates bespoke events and which will launch an upscale digital content and e-commerce platform shortly.

Dr. Annapurna Garimella is a Delhi-based designer and an art historian. Her research focuses on late medieval Indic architecture and the history and practices of vernacular art forms in India after Independence. She heads Jackfruit Research & Design, an organisation with a portfolio of design, research and curatorial projects for artists, museums, government and private institutions and non-profits. She is also the Founding and Managing Trustee of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, a not-for- profit organisation that runs a public art library, conducts independent research projects and does teaching and advisement for students and the general public. Her most recent curatorial projects include Vernacular, in the Contemporary (Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi) and Faith: Manu Parekh in Benaras 1980-2012 (Art Alive, New Delhi) and Drawing 2014 (Gallery Espace, New Delhi). She has been Research Editor, Marg Foundation, Getty Distinguished Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Lecturer for the American Institute of Archaeology Travel Program in South Asia. She is on the board of Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad and a trustee for Green the Blue Trust, Vadodara and Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bangalore. She has written and edited books on the impact of Mulk Raj Anand on Indian modernism, on Akbar Padamsee, the Bombay modernist and on the miniature artist Rakesh Vijay.

Ashwin Sanghi ranks among India’s highest selling English fiction authors. ). Ashwin is a New York Times Best Selling Author.He has written several bestsellers (The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant, The Krishna Key and The Sialkot Saga). In addition he has co-authored a New York Times bestselling crime thriller with James Patterson called Private India (followed by another in the series called Private Delhi). Included by Forbes India in their Celebrity 100 and winner of the Crossword Popular Choice, Ashwin also co-writes the 13 Steps series of self-help books (13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck and 13 Steps to Bloody Good Wealth are to be followed by several other titles in the series.

Namita Devidayal is the author of two books, 'The Music Room' and 'Aftertaste'. She is a journalist with The Times of India. She graduated from Princeton. Namita is a trained Indian classical singer. She loves music

Amrita Chowdhury is the author of Faking It, an art crime thriller, and Breach, a cyber crime thriller, and a contributor to Chicken Soup for the IITian Soul. Amrita writes regularly for Founding Fuel and Huffington Post, and is a frequent commentator in mainstream media on business, technology, marketing, and lifestyle issues. She was the Country Head for Harlequin India. She is a business strategist and innovator, has done strategy consulting and Board advisory work in the US and Australia, and led early and growth stage businesses in South Asia in education, publishing and branding. Currently, she blends strategy and design thinking to craft solutions for business and government.

Farah Siddiqui is a specialist in contemporary art from Southeast Asia particularly India and Pakistan. With several years of experience as a consultant in modern and contemporary art, Farah Siddiqui has been advising collectors on all aspects on art from the subcontinent. In the last decade, Farah Siddiqui has been the curator of several successful exhibitions in traditional genres of painting and sculpture in addition to contemporary media of video and photography and has also been involved with fund raising activities for charity. Since 2009, Farah Siddiqui has been associated with global art firm – Artconsulting. In addition to working with private collectors, she has worked on unique projects with Forbes, India. Current projects include consulting Piramal Art Foundation, Mumbai and NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE. A contributor to art columns in several newspapers, travel and banking publications including Jet wings, DNA, India Today, Air India, 24k- Citibank magazine and BNP Paribas, Farah is also often invited for her specialist views on CNBC Asia, ET now and Bloomberg India to discuss the current state and outlook of the South Asian art Market.

Priya Khanna is an art restorer and the Founder Director of Art Life Restoration Trust in Delhi. She holds a Master's Degree in conservation of art from the National Museum Institute, Delhi, and specialised in oil painting restoration at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her CV boasts working with English Heritage and National Maritime Museum in England. Auction houses like Bowrings and Christie's have sought her services. She has restored some of the Paintings in the Taj Mahal Hotel that were damaged in the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

Rachel Lopez is currently Senior Assistant Editor at Hindustan Times. She has been a journalist for the last 12 years and has worked with eminent organisations like the Times of India (where she was the company’s youngest editor at their youth magazine JLT), Time Out, Vogue and the Hindustan Times. She has covered Mumbai, culture, news features, events and of course books. Rachel received acclaim for a cover story about the marketing strategies behind the success of Amish Tripathi’s books, and her reporting on the city’s history. She has interviewed Mindy Kaling, Madhuri Dixit and many eminent personalities. She is currently the Mumbai head for the Hindustan Times’s weekend magazine Brunch.

Maria Finitzo is a two-time Peabody Award-winning social issue documentary filmmaker. Over the last 26 years, Maria has directed and produced a body of work that has won every major broadcast award and has been screened in festivals and theaters around the world. Her films are novelistic in their structure, providing multiple points of connection for an audience. Maria’s films have tackled a variety of subjects from the controversial science of stem cell research and the complex questions surrounding the command and control of nuclear weapons to the psychology of adolescent girls, each film demonstrating a depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise. She is a long-time associate of the award-winning documentary company, Kartemquin Films, one of the oldest and most respected social issue documentary film companies in the country. Maria is also a screenwriter and fiction film director. Her interest in fiction filmmaking is a natural evolution of her commitment to exploring different realms of storytelling. In 2014, she founded FilmArts Productions, LLC, a Chicago-based production company dedicated to producing independent films. Her first feature, THOSE LEFT BEHIND, from her original screenplay is currently in distribution. FilmArts has in development THE PASSION OF GRACE, an adaptation of the award-winning story PASSION by the Nobel Prize award-winning author, Alice Munro.In June of 2008, Maria was awarded an MFA in Writing for the Screen and Stage from Northwestern University. Maria is also an adjunct member of the faculty in Northwestern’s School of Communication teaching in the MFA in Documentary Studies.

Megha Ramaswamy is a Mumbai-based screenwriter, director and producer who has also been a beneficiary of the prestigious Chicken & Egg Fund in collaboration with IDF for the film and for her work with the support group Stop Acid Attacks. Her banner, Missfit Films, is dedicated to producing innovative films, which subscribe to being neither independent nor commercial. She co-hosts Cause Effect, a platform that produces cause related content & outreach programs. Her hybrid short documentary, Newborns, giving an inside look into the lives of acid-attack survivors, premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and was reviewed as the Best Film of Programme Four. Ramaswamy's second audio/visual project Bunny also premiered in North America at TIFF in 2015 & has since travelled to several acclaimed festivals post its release - including CORK, NIFF, IFFLA

Sanjukta Sharma has been Deputy National Features Editor at Mint - The Wall Street Journal. She writes on film, Indian art, books, the publishing industry and social trends. She was earlier a special correspondent with Indian Express

Amit Dasgupta is an Indian diplomat, who has served in various capacities in Cairo, Brussels, Kathmandu, Berlin, Sydney and New Delhi. He is presently posted in Manila. He has authored and edited a number of books, including Indian by Choice and India for a Billion Reasons.

Sandeep Unnithan is Executive Editor, India Today in New Delhi where he writes on security related issues. He is the author of 'Black Tornado: the 3 sieges of Mumbai 26/11'. He hails from Mumbai and has a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient Indian Culture from St Xavier's college.

Manjeet Kripalani is the co-founder and the executive director of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. Prior to the founding of Gateway House, Kripalani was India Bureau chief of Businessweek magazine, 1996 to 2009. During her extensive career in journalism (Businessweek, Worth and Forbes magazines, New York), she has won several awards, including the Gerald Loeb Award, the George Polk Award, Overseas Press Club and Daniel Pearl Awards. Kripalani was the 2006-07 Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, which inspired her to found Gateway House. Her political career spans being the deputy press secretary to Steve Forbes during his first run in 1995-96 as Republican candidate for U.S. President in New Jersey, to being press secretary for the Lok Sabha campaign for independent candidate Meera Sanyal in 2008 and 2014 in Mumbai. Kripalani holds two bachelor’s degrees from Bombay University (Bachelor of Law, Bachelor of Arts in English and History) and a master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York. She is a member of the Asian advisory board of the International Centre for Journalists and the Overseas Press Club, and sits on the executive board of Gateway House, the Indian Liberal Group and Emancipaction, all of which are non-profit organizations.

Amit Chaudhuri is a British Indian author and academic. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, Indian government's highest literary honour, in 2002 for his novel A New World. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. In 2012, he won the Infosys Prize for Humanities-Literary Studies for his literary criticism. He has written numerous novels, short stories, poems and critical essays in English. His novels have won several major awards and he has received international critical acclaim. His latest book is The Immortals, a novel about music in the modern world. 2008 saw the publication of Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture, bringing together his major work as a critic. A collection of poems entitled St. Cyril Road and Other Poems appeared in 2005, and in 2001 he edited the influential The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. His study of D.H. Lawrence's poetry was called 'truly groundbreaking' by Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books. In 2008, he was included in the panel for the Man Booker International Prize. Among the prizes he has won for his fiction are the Commonwealth Literature Prize, the Betty Trask award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Indian government’s Sahitya Akademi Award. In 2012, he was awarded the West Bengal government’s Rabindra Puraskar for his book On Tagore. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Gyan Prakash specializes in the history of modern India. His general field of research and teaching interests concerns urban modernity, the colonial genealogies of modernity, and problems of postcolonial thought and politics. He advises graduate students on modern South Asian history, colonialism and postcolonial theory, urban history, global history, and history of science. Gyan Prakash is the author of Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (1990), and Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (1999), and has co-authored a book on world history, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart (2002). He has also written several articles on South Asian colonial history and on the relationship between colonialism and history writing, and edited several volumes of essays, including After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements (1995) and The Spaces of the Modern City (2008). In addition to writing for scholarly journals, his reviews and essays also appear in general publications such as Times of India, Hindustan Times, Asian Age, Hindu, India Today, Timeout Mumbai, American Scholar, and The Nation. He has authored Mumbai Fables, Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City, and Utopia/Dystopia: Historical Conditions of Possibility. The Tower of Silence, a book based on a 1927 detective novel manuscript that he discovered and edited, was published in 2013. Mumbai Fables was adapted in 2015 for the film, Bombay Velvet, for which he wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay. 

Emma Bird is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2014-2017). Her work examines the contexts in which poetry was written and published in Bombay from 1947 onwards, paying particular attention to the city's little magazines and small press publishers, as well as its poetry groups, circles, and other cultural and print platforms. Drawing on archival research, this project maps the poetry 'scene' in Bombay, offering a new perspective on individual poets and writers, and also on the city itself - which has been so thoroughly mythologized in much critical and popular discourse Her Research interests include Postcolonial and world literature; post-independence Indian poetry in English, with a particular focus on the work of Dom Moraes, Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla, Gieve Patel, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Dilip Chitre and Eunice de Souza; literary representations of Bombay/Mumbai; the history of little literary magazines and small press publishers in India; representations of and contestations of literary modernity. Emma Bird currently teaches Modern World Literature at the University of Warwick.

Simin Patel runs Bombaywalla, a platform that creates awareness about Bombay’s built environment and social history. Bombaywalla operates a blog and conducts historical walks of the city’s localities and celebrated structures. Simin completed her PhD in Modern South Asian History from Balliol College, University of Oxford in 2015.

Chirodeep Chaudhuri is the author of the critically feted book ‘A Village In Bengal: Photographs and an Essay”, a result of his 13-year long preoccupation with his ancestral village in West Bengal and his family’s nearly two century old tradition of the Durga Puja. His most recent book “With Great Truth & Regard" documents the history of the manual typewriter in India. Till recently he was heading the design and photography teams of Timeout magazines’ India editions. Chirodeep’s work documents the urban landscape and during his 2 decade-long career he has produced diverse documents of his home city in a range of projects like ‘Bombay Clocks’, ‘The One-Rupee Entrepreneur’ and ‘The Commuters’ among others. His work has been featured in some of the most important publications about Bombay. He has worked as the Editor of Photography of Timeout and National Geographic Traveler magazine’s India editions. He lives in Bombay dividing his time between his various projects and teaching assignments. 

Fawzan Husain is a photojournalist, a creative artist, teacher and an organic farmer. A self-taught photographer, Fawzan has spent 28 years as a photojournalist. His work has been published in prominent Indian and International publications and exhibited around the world. After completing a post-graduate degree in journalism from the Bombay School of Journalism, Fawzan joined the Mumbai-based newspaper Mid-Day. He later joined India Today and worked there for over a decade, travelling across India on assignments. Fawzan held his first solo show in 1992; and has had eight shows and 12 group exhibitions since. Fawzan has published two books `Between Bombay & Mumbai – 25 years in pictures through a changing city’ and `The Silver Screen & Beyond – Up close and personal with the Bombay Film Industry’. Fawzan is passionate about nurturing new talent, and divides his time teaching documentary photography at Shari Academy-Bombay and Bharti Vidyapeeth-Poona. He has also given a talk on `Re-discovering Photography’ at TEDx Ahmedabad

Sooni Taraporevala is an Indian photographer, screenwriter and filmmaker who is best known for her screenplays of Mississippi Masala, The Namesake and the Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay. She wrote and directed her first feature film, the National award winning Little Zizou in 2008. In 2000 & 2004 she authored and published a book of her photographs Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India; A Photographic Journey, which was a critical and popular success. In 2013 along with Meher Marfatia, she published the first volume of Parsi Bol, a compilation of quintessential Parsi phrases and insults. 2016 saw the second edition of the book. Sooni's photographs have been exhibited around the world and she has won numerous national and international awards for her screenplays and film. She was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2014.  

Karanjeet Kaur is the former deputy editor of National Geographic Magazine (India). She writes on art, culture and travel, and has reported for Mint Lounge, Time Out, Yahoo! India, Art India and Mail Today in the past.

Christine Ithurbide is post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, New Delhi, working as an expert with UNESCO in India. She is a Doctor in geography from Paris Diderot University/ CSRD Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has been based between France and India since 2008. With a background in urban geography and art history, her researches focus on contemporary Indian art territories, circulations and globalization. In her thesis on the Geography of contemporary art in Bombay she questioned the mapping of contemporary art spaces in India, integrating the social and spatial dimensions of artistic practices and exploring mental maps. Her current projects concerns art industries, labor and informal networks, and the production of knowledge in cultural metropolises. She received a Grant-in-Aid from the Rockefeller Archive Center in 2013 and was awarded the IRD Prize for Best Short-Film Screenplay in 2015 for her documentary film on the invisible workers of contemporary Indian art.

Ranjit Kandalgaonkar is an artist presently pursuing his interests in the visual arts and in documentation processes concerning the city. Kandalgaonkar’s art practice, based in Mumbai, focuses primarily on unseen or ignored processes of urbanization. In his work, he draws upon contemporary visual arts media, archival documentation and historical artifacts to document, represent and critique urban flows. He was awarded the Majlis Visual Arts Fellowship 2006-2007 along with Saurabh Vaidya & Aditya Potluri -Urban Geographies-Mapping personal histories of localities in Bombay. His other research-intensive projects include Gentricity, build/browse, 7 isles unclaimed, and Stories of Philanthropic Trusts, a collaboration with architects and public health officials to map locations of philanthropic trusts. His art practice seeks unique opportunities to rethink and challenge conventional modes of research to offer a possible new mode of dissemination. His current Project is Philanthropic Institutions/Trust Building study located in the inner city precincts of Bombay. He was the inaugural Visiting Artist as part of Harvard’s South Asian Institute’s Arts Program. 

Vrunda Pathare heads the Godrej Archives – a Business Archives of Godrej Group (India). She is currently a Secretary of Section of Business Archives (SBA) of International Council of Archives (ICA) and Vice President of Oral History Association of India (OHAI). In the past, she had served as a member of the Advisory Board of Rajbhavan Archives of Government of Maharashtra (India). Vrunda has been trained in the Records Management from National Archives of India and holds a postgraduate degree in History from University of Mumbai. She started her career as a Research Assistant to Mr. Sadashiv Gorakshkar (Former Director, CSMVS, Mumbai; Past President, Commonwealth Association of Museums) on following two projects: 1. ‘Rajbhavans in Maharashtra’ – A book on Comprehensive History of Rajbhavans in Maharashtra published in the year 2002 and 2. ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd.) Museum Project, Dehradun. Later, she worked as an Assistant Archivist at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Archives, Mumbai. She has been a resource person at many national workshops and have presented papers on aspects of archiving and on business archives, at both national as well as international conferences.

Dr. Ashwani Kumar has a career spanning over two and half decades teaching political science, governance, development and public policy. In recognition of his potential to excel further in academics, the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) has recently awarded him the prestigious ‘Senior Fellowship’ (2016-18). He is committed to institutional reforms in governance of welfare programs, and is proactively involved in monitoring & evaluation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) in various states & districts of India. He has obtained his PhD in Political Science from University of Oklahoma. He has authored the ‘Community Warriors: State, Peasants & Private Caste Armies in Bihar’ a significant contribution to exploring the paradoxes of democracy and governance in India.  He has lectured widely, nationally and internationally. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Kumar is also a much acclaimed Indian English poet and has recently published an anthology ‘At leisure, he writes articles and reviews for various publications including Financial Express, Business Standard, The Hindu, Indian Express, and DNA, among others.

Ritambhara Hebbar is Chairperson - Centre for Study of Developing Societies, School of Development Studies at TISS. Cultural Anthropology, Sociological Theory, Qualitative Social Research. She holds a Ph. D in Sociology, Delhi School of Economics.

Dibakar Banerjee is an Indian film director, screenwriter, producer and advertisement-filmmaker known for his work in Hindi films. Banerjee started his career in advertising, being a feature filmmaker, he still continues to be an ad-filmmaker. He also runs his own film production company, Dibakar Banerjee Productions, and is cited as one of the most influential filmmakers of Hindi cinema in recent times. As a film maker, he is known for Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006), Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008), both of which won National Film Awards. His next film was the experimental Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010). It was followed by the political drama Shanghai (2012) and Bombay Talkies (2013), which was made as a celebration of the centenary year of Indian cinema. In 2015, he directed Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, a film based on the fictional character Byomkesh Bakshi.

Bina Sarkar Ellias is the founder, editor, designer and publisher of International Gallerie, an award-winning arts and ideas publication encouraging critical awareness and understanding of cultural diversity through the arts. She is also a curator, poet and fiction writer and has been published in anthologies and online sites. Her book of poems FUSE will be taught at the Spring Semester, 2016, of Towson University, Maryland, USA. She received a Fellowship from the Asia Leadership Fellow Program and Japan Foundation, 2007,  towards research and development of the project, Unity in Diversity:  Envisioning Community Building in Asia and Beyond, the Times Group Yami Women Achievers’ award, 2008, and the FICCI/FLO 2013 award for excellence in her work.  

Mustansir Dalvi was born in Bombay. He teaches architecture in Mumbai. He has lectured, read and published several papers and books on architectural pedagody and architectural history. He is an editor, an anglophone poet and translator. Through his columns in The Hindu (and formerly Time Out Mumbai and FirstPost) he casts a critical eye on Mumbai in its current post-planning avatar.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is an Indian film actor who works in Hindi cinema. After a period of less significant performances in his early career, he received the Special Jury Award at the 2012 National Film Awards and Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2013.

Sharmistha Ray is an international visual artist with numerous solo shows and high profile projects under her belt. The recipient of notable awards including a TED Fellowship (2009) and Montblanc Young Artist World Patronage (2012), Ray has also worked on special art projects with leading institutions and corporates like Berklee College of Music, The Godrej Group, JSW and Mahindra & Mahindra. She is an occasional art writer and founder of Bellevue Brunches & Salons, a mobile cross-cultural salon that aims to augment participatory modes of engagement with contemporary art in surprising new ways. Ray splits her time between Mumbai and New York.

Hemant Divate has published six poetry collections in Marathi. Divate’s poems have been translated into French, Italian, Slovak, Japanese, Persian, Maltese, Serbian, Slovenian, Greek, Hindi and many Indian languages. His publishing house, Paperwall Media & Publishing, has published, under its imprint Poetrywala, more than 100 poetry collections. Hemant lives and works in Mumbai.

Kalpish Ratna - a near anagram of their names. The pseudonym translates, in a piquant meld of Persian and Sanskrit, as 'the pleasures of imagination'. They are the authors of titles such as Room 000 and Bombay's epidemics: Uncertain Life and Sure Death. Swaminathan won the 2009 Vodafone Crossword Book Award (Fiction) for Venus Crossing: Twelve Stories of Transit. Syed is also a photographer with several one-man shows to his credit, the most recent being The Persistence of Memory. He is currently working on a pictorial history Palimpsest: The Erasures that made Bombay.