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Bishwanath Ghosh, born in Kanpur in 1970, is a journalist with 23 years of experience and is the author of three books: the bestselling travelogue, Chai, Chai: Travels in Places Where you Stop but Never Get Off (2009); Tamarind City: Where Modern India Began (2012), which is a portrait of present-day Chennai; and Longing, Belonging: An Outsider at Home in Calcutta (2014). At present he is an Associate Editor with The Hindu, serving as a writer-at-large for the paper. When not travelling, he spends time in Chennai.
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The greatest war any human being can fight is the war with oneself. In 2002, Diya Sethi went from being an anorexic bulimic to becoming a Chef. This is her story. Diya Sethi was born in New York City in 1974, into what may be described as a cocoon–adored and nurtured by two doting parents, and sheltered and protected by the umbrella of diplomatic life.
She had it all – effortlessly intelligent, attractive and expertly trained in the art of conversation in the drawing rooms and at the dining tables of the rich and famous, the powerful and the privileged – she travelled the globe winning admirers and accolades for being just who she was, tailor made and fine-tuned for different people on different occasions…but she was never who she was. She was an impersonator, on the run from herself. She was on the run from a child who had stumbled out of her cocoon and into a world where she had been cruelly rejected, ridiculed, hurt and humiliated; a world in which she found solace in addiction, primarily an addiction known as anorexia-bulimia.
Honest and gut-wrenching, yet ultimately heart-warming, this tale of fortitude and perseverance cannot but move and inspire you.’
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Githa Hariharan has written novels, short fiction and essays over the last three decades. Her highly acclaimed work includes The Thousand Faces of Night which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in 1993, the short story collection The Art of Dying, the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master, When Dreams Travel, In Times of Siege and Fugitive Histories, and her latest book, a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places. For more on this Delhi-based author and her work, visit www.githahariharan.com
In 1995, Hariharan challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs. Reserve Bank of India and Another, led to a Indian Supreme Court judgment in 1999 on guardianship.
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Pankaj Sekhsaria is a member of the environmental action group, Kalpavriksh where he works on issues of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and also edits the bi-monthly newsletter, the Protected Area Update. He is a freelance journalist, photographer and author, most recently, of The Last Wave – an island novel, a story based in the Andaman Islands. He has authored/edited three other, non-fiction books, two of which are based in the A&N Islands.
He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the Pune University in 1993 and followed this with a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication from the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, in 1998. His (about to finish) doctoral work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Maastricht University, Netherlands, investigates scientific research practices in five nanotechnology laboratories in India. Tentatively titled ‘Enculturing Innovation – Indian engagements with nanotechnology’, the thesis looks at the ideas and the practices of innovation within nanoscience and technology laboratories in India and explores the societal and cultural influences on research and on innovation inside the laboratory.
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Stephen Alter is the author of sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, and much of his writing focuses on the Himalayan region, where he continues to live and work. Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime (Aleph, 2014) is his most recent work of non-fiction. The Secret Sanctuary (Puffin, 2015) is his most recent book for younger readers. He has written extensively on natural history, folklore and mountain culture, particularly in his travel memoir Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage to the Many Sources of the Ganga, which describes a journey on foot along the pilgrim trails of the Uttarakhand Char Dham Yatra. Educated at Woodstock School and Wesleyan University, Stephen Alter has taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where he was director of the writing program for seven years. Following this, he was writer-in-residence at MIT for ten years, where he taught courses in fiction and non-fiction writing. Among the honors he has received are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the East West Centre in Hawaii, and the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture. Stephen Alter is founding director the Mussoorie Writers’ Mountain Festival, which has brought more than 150 authors, mountaineers, artists and musicians to Mussoorie since 2006.
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