Ahdaf Soueif is the author of the bestselling The Map of Love (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999 and translated into more than 30 languages), In the Eye of the Sun (1992), I Think of You and Cairo: a City Transformed, her account of the Egyptian revolution of 2011 (2014).She is also a political and cultural commentator. Her Mezzaterra (2004) has been influential and her articles for the Guardian are published in the European and American press. In 2007 Ms Soueif founded the Palestine Festival of Literature which takes place in the cities of occupied Palestine and Gaza.
Amit Madheshiya is a Cannes prize-winning filmmaker and World Press Photo-winning photographer. His debut film, The Cinema Travellers, premiered as an Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival 2016. It has since played 120 festivals and won 19 awards, including the National Film Award in India. His work is supported by the Sundance Institute, MacArthur Foundation, IDFA Bertha Fund, Bertha Foundation, Goethe-Institut, India Foundation for the Arts, National Foundation of India, Arts Council of England and the University of Heidelberg. Amit’s recent film Searching for Saraswati, is India’s first Op-Doc for the New York Times.
Amitabha Bagchi is a novelist. Since his bestselling debut, Above Average (2007), he has written three other novels, of which the most recent, entitled Half the Night is Gone was published in June 2018 to widespread critical acclaim. Bagchi lives in New Delhi with his wife and son.
Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He is the author of two books of non-fiction, a collection of essays and eight novels. His most recent book is The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016). His books have won prizes in India, Europe and Myanmar and he has been awarded honorary degrees by the Sorbonne, Paris, and by Queens College, New York. He is married to the writer Deborah Baker and divides his time between Brooklyn, Goa and Kolkata. Amitav Ghosh’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and he has served on the Jury of the Locarno Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest honours, by the President of India.
Anirban Ghosh is the Chief Sustainability Officer, Mahindra Group. He leads Sustainability at the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group. Under his leadership Mahindra has developed an award winning Sustainability framework, become a founding member of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition and the first to commit to doubling energy productivity. He has, in partnership with the World Bank, facilitated the creation of the Sustainable Housing Leadership Consortium to accelerate the spread of green buildings in India. Anirban has been an invited speaker at COP21, The Climate Week, World Circular Economy Forum, GRI Global, EE Global, etc., featured in The Climate Reality Project and acknowledged as a Distinguished Sustainability Officer.
Anjali Nayyar is Executive Vice President at Global Health Strategies (GHS). Her expertise lies in developing integrated advocacy and communications strategies aimed at impacting health policy and practice. She oversees GHS’ work in emerging markets and its programs in Africa. Prior to joining GHS, she served as Country Director for Program for Appropriate Technology on Health (PATH) in India. Anjali has also worked with the Population Council Regional Office, South and East Asia, as a Communications Specialist and Project Director. In these capacities, she oversaw focusing on advocacy for reproductive and sexual health issues in six countries in the region.
Ankur Tewari, who also moonlights as a singer-songwriter, is a well-known Bollywood lyricist and composer and is at the helm of the band's sound. His lyrics form an emotional connection with the audience, creating an overwhelming and immersive live set a factor that has played a prominent role in launching them to the top of the college & festivals circuit in the country. Ankur & The Ghalat Family comprises of Sidd Coutto, Johan Pais, Gaurav Gupta, & Vivaan Kapoor creating what they best describe as Urdu and Hindi easy acoustic ballads folk rock/rock n roll. The band is widely regarded as one of the most innovative bands in the hindi-rock space.
Not everyone takes risks in live painting, the caprice of the desert sand means that the sand throw is difficult to control.
Anne Loeper, a German artist born in Leipzig, manages it with mastery and a touch of kaleidoscopic madness.
As a sandpainter she graduated Illustration and Graphic Arts Studies at the Academy of Visual Arts.
Her work marked by a romantic intensity, also given the lyricism and the lightness of the technique.
She loves fusing her paintings through music and joins her performance in many live collaborations e.g. in theatres in Europe, in films and Scenic projects with musicians, dancers and orchestras - this time in a "Story of Water“.
Anthony Acciavatti is the author of the award-winning Ganges Water Machine, the first comprehensive visual survey and environmental history of the Ganga basin in half a century. He spent a decade crisscrossing the Ganga by foot, boat, and car to document conflicts over water for drinking and agriculture. With no access to maps or satellite imagery, he developed his own instruments to visualize the rhythms of the monsoons and the dynamism of Ganga. Trained as an architect, artist, and historian, he is a founding partner of Somatic Collaborative in New York and teaches at Yale University and Columbia University.
Anuvab Pal is an acclaimed playwright and screenplay writer. His screenplays include the award-winning The Loins of Punjab and The President is Coming. His plays, which have been performed at numerous festivals, include Chaos Theory, Fatwa, Paris and Life, Love, and ETIBDA. Anuvab has also written for the acclaimed sitcoms Frasier and Law and Order.
Aparna Jain is an internationally certified leadership coach and an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.She is the author of Like A Girl: Real Stories for Tough Kids, Own It: Leadership Lessons from Women Who Do, which was awarded a Laadli Prize and was shortlisted for the Tata Literature Live Business Book Award 2016. She is also the author of The Sood Family Cookbook (2013).
Armin has developed a great variety of playing techniques on the bass guitar which are prominent in his original songs. They range from virtuoso tapping and slapping styles to atmospheric groovy landscapes and live from shiny musicality. His voice blends together with rhythmical patterns and broad chord structures to create a worldmusicy singer-songwriter performance. Armin also uses self-programmed sound transformation tools to form synthetic sounds that origin from the bass guitar and the voice and still keep their sonic behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/user/arminmetz
Besides his solo performances Armin has worked with Imogen Heap, Talvin Sing, Sivamani, Nadishana, Camo&Krooked
Ashok Vajpeyi, a Hindi poet-critic and culture-activist, a major cultural figure of India. With more than 15 books of poetry, 10 of criticism in Hindi and 4 books on art in English to his credit, widely recognised as an outstanding promoter of culture and an innovative institution-builder. Has been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Dayawati Kavi Shekhar Samman, Kabir Samman and D.Lit. (honoris causa) by the Central University of Hyderabad and ITM University, Gwalior. Has been decorated by the President of Republic of Poland by the outstanding national award ‘The Officer’s Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland’ and the French Govt. by the award of ‘Officier De L’Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres’. Has been the founder of Bharat Bhavan multiarts complex Bhopal, first Vice Chancellor Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University and Chairman Lalit Kala Akademi. Presently, Managing Trustee, the Raza Foundation, New Delhi.
Assa Doron first arrived in India in 1992, arriving from Cairo to Mumbai. Since then he has been coming back for more. Assa is currently Head of the Anthropology Program at the College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University. He is author of Life on the Ganga (Cambridge, 2013) and co-author, with Robin Jeffrey of The Great Indian Phone Book (Harvard 2013); and most recently Waste of a Nation: garbage and growth in India (Harvard 2018).
Beau Taplin is an internationally recognised author and social media sensation. Following a formative education at Melbourne Rudolf Steiner, Beau found some success as a songwriter before turning his passions to poetry and prose. He has been warmly embraced for his heartfelt, relatable content which is now shared and read by millions worldwide. Beau’s philosophy on life is simple: make it meaningful. Soon enough, we will all be bones in the ground, the oceans will dry up, the sun will burn out and nobody will be around to remember we were here at all. So go, spend your time here with heart. Find what matters to you and manifest it while you can. Because while this universe we inhabit may be infinite and unfeeling, we are not, and that is our gift.
Bhanwari Devi, has been a precursor to the Violence against Women movement and has been one of the first who broke her silence on her own gang rape. She has challenged since 1992 the attitude of denial by the state system. Bhanwari has worked as a Sathin of the Women's Development of Rajastha in Bhateri village. After her rape, top levels of the GOR did not stand by her. The local police tried to show that she was lying, After years in courts her rapists were acquitted on the grounds of caste and age.This was challenged in the Rajasthan High court and to date it remains pending. Undeterred, Bhanwari continues working for womens development and working for social justice. She stands as a rock for women, children and dalits in that region.
Bhaswati Ghosh writes and translates fiction and non-fiction. She is currently writing a book on Delhi, India.
Bhaswati’s first work of translation from Bengali into English – My Days with Ramkinkar Baij – has been published by Delhi-based Niyogi Books in collaboration with National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. This work also won her the Charles Wallace (India) Trust Fellowship for translation in 2009.
Bhaswati’s writing has appeared in several literary journals, including Cargo Literary, Cafe Dissensus Everyday, Pithead Chapel, Warscapes, Earthen Lamp Journal, Stealing Time, Open Road review, Parabaas, Coldnoon, Stonecoast Review, and The Maynard.
She has a background in journalism and writes for The Wire. She has also written for The Indian Express, Daily News and Analysis, and The Times of India.
Bhaswati currently lives in Ontario, Canada.
Bikram Grewal grew up in the dense evergreen forests of India’s North-east where he first developed his love for natural history. He has written over thirty books on Indian Wildlife, travel and the environment.
He made publishing his career and worked in England, Hong Kong and Singapore before returning to Delhi. He now devotes his time to the conservation of Indian wildlife, especially working on rare birds.
When not travelling, he spends his time between his farm in Dehradun, where he grows rare plants and his boat in the Sundarbans.
Charles Assisi is co-author of “The Aadhaar Effect: Why the World’s largest Identity Project Matters” & a co-founder at Founding Fuel, a media and learning platform. He is a recipient of the Polestar & Madhu Valluri Awards for excellence in journalism. Charles was managing editor at Forbes India and National Business Editor at Times of India. He now contributes to Hindustan Times and used to be a columnist for the business daily Mint. Charles has worked across various newsrooms in Europe with media conglomerate Vogel Burda and set up the India edition of CHIP, the group's flagship technology magazine.
He graduated in the biosciences from St. Xavier’s in Mumbai and did his Masters in Economics from Mumbai University. His spare time is spent reading on science, psychology, history, and philosophy
Clare Shaw is a Bloodaxe poet from the North of the UK. She is also a mental health trainer, activist and author. Often addressing political and personal conflict, her poetry is fuelled by a strong conviction in the transformative and redemptive power of language. Her latest collection, Flood (2018) offers an eye-witness account of recent flooding which affected large areas of the UK, including her home town. Flooding also acts as a metaphor for personal and social experiences – this is an exploration of a life unravelled and rebuilt, written in a language as dangerous and sustaining as water.
Cyrus Broacha is a TV anchor, theatre personality, comedian, political satirist, columnist and author. He is also a prankster; best known for his show Bakra on MTV and his show The Week That Wasn't on CNN-IBN.
David Gilmour has written prize-winning biographies of Lord Curzon and Rudyard Kipling. He is also the author of The Ruling Caste, a study of district officers and political agents in Victorian India, and of several books on the history of Italy, Spain and the Middle East. He lives in Oxfordshire. His latest is The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience
Deborah Baker is the author of In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, which was shortlisted for the 1994 Pulitzer in Biography. A Blue Hand: The Beats in India appeared in India in 2008. Her last book The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism was shortlisted for the National Book Award in Non-fiction in 2011. Earlier this year Penguin Random House India published her most recent book, The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of Empire. She lives in Goa and Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Amitav Ghosh.
Website: www.deborahbaker.net
Devdutt Pattanaik is author and illustrator of 40 books and 800 columns , as well as lecturer and podcaster, with many TV shows like Business Sutra and Devlok to his credit, that have over past 20 years unravelled the wisdom of mythology to adults and children in India and around the world.
Middle Eastern Ethnic World Music from the Galilee.The Diwan Saz ensemble collects the sparks of traditional music from the past and transcribes it into sacred contemporary music. They believe in the power of music which can provoke a feeling of healing and liberation.
Easterine Kire is a poet and novelist and holds a Doctorate in English Literature from the University of Pune. Her first collection of poems, Kelhoukevira, and her first novel, A Naga Village Remembered, both written in English, were the first poetry collection and novel to be published by a writer from Nagaland. With the aim of preserving and enhancing her mother tongue, Tenyidie, she has collected 200 oral poems in the language in addition to producing a translation into English. In 2011 she was awarded the Governor’s Medal for excellence in Naga literature and in 2013, her novel, Bitter Wormwood was nominated for the Hindu Lit For Life Prize. Her novel, A Terrible Matriarchy "was also selected to be translated into UN languages and in 2015, her book When the River Sleeps was awarded The Hindu Prize. In 2017, her novel Son of the Tundercloud, won the Tata Literature Live- Book of the Year Award. Her new novel, A Respectable Woman, is forthcoming from Zubaan.
Dr. Farokh Udwadia is an MD (University of Mumbai) in Medicine. He has been awarded the Prince of Wales Gold Medal and Dr. C S Patel Gold Medal in the MD examinations. The book, TABIYAT: Medicine and Healing in India, contains nine essays on topics like medical ethics, Ayurveda, medical inventions during wars, nursing and the influence of Florence Nightingale, and importance of music in healing.
An exponent of the Wabi Sabi philosophy, Farzana Contractor derives joy from little things and has the ability to see beauty in brokenness. Today, she stands accomplished in many ways, a successful publisher, editor and chief photographer of UpperCrust (2000) and Dogs & More (2011), curator of India’s first and finest food exhibition, the UpperCrust Food & Wine Show (2003) and Dog A’Fair (2008) - India’s first pet event, a doggie carnival that captured the imagination of people.
Fatima Farheen Mirza was born and raised in California. Her parents are of Indian descent; her mother grew up in Birmingham, UK, her father in Hyderabad. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. She is 27 years old. A Place for Us is her first novel and the launch title of the SJP for Hogarth list.
Faye D’Souza is an award winning journalist and the Executive Editor of MIRROR NOW and hosts the flagship show, ‘The Urban Debate’. Faye has led the editorial team at Mirror Now, to break the conventions of news television and primetime viewing, to re-focus on issues that really matter to Indian citizens. Her focus on accountability of government, responsible taxation, safety of women and children, education, health and urban development has resulted in several policy changes and impact developments that have proven that journalists can bring about improvements in the status quo.
She has a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication and Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and English Literature.
Faye is the journalist for the millennials – young, fresh and brutally honest
Gauri Shinde is an award winning film director and writer. Her 2012 debut film, English Vinglish, took audiences by storm and catapulted her to instant success. In addition to the various awards the film received, Gauri was also awarded the Laadli National Media Awards for gender sensitivity. Her second feature, “Dear Zindagi” which came out in 2016, was a coming-of-age film of a young cinematographer's struggle to find happiness. Critics praised the film; the New York Times called it “insightful” and a “sharply observed drama.” In addition to writing and directing features, Gauri has been an ad film director, with more than 100 ad films as well as 2 shorts to her credit. After spending a number of years at some of the most prestigious global advertising firms in India, Lintas being one. Gauri went freelance and now runs Hope Productions, alongside her husband and fellow filmmaker R. Balki. She had been named in the Financial Times UK"s list of 25 Indians to Watch out for. Gauri studied Mass communication from symbiosis institute and has an MA in English Literature from the university of Pune.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney is founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has over 43,000 members in 119 countries. He is the author of the bestselling Cloudspotter's Guide and Cloud Collector's Handbook. His third book, The Wavewatcher's Companion, won the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. Gavin has presented television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, and is a Visiting Fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University. He co-founded the Idler, a magazine that argues for the importance of downtime in creative thinking.
Gayatri Rangachari Shah is an author and journalist. She is co-author of Changemakers: 20 Women Transforming Bollywood Behind the Scenes. Her work has appeared in both national and international publications like The New York Times. She has a fortnightly column, Flight of Fancy, in The Hindu. She is a contributing editor at Vogue and Architectural Digest and India Head at Tina Brown Live Media, which produces the globally renowned journalism summit Women in the World. She covers a variety of subjects, and has profiled leading personalities around the world.
Geeta Gopalakrishan is the Honorary Director - Donor Relationships at the Tata Medical Center, Kolkata from the past 8 years. With over 20 years of experience in advertising, she has been the ex- creative Director at Trikaya Grey and is also known for triggering Hinglish in advertising communication. Geeta has been recipient of many awards across product categories including the campaign of the year award for Aristocrat Suitcases. Throughout her professional life, which began at 19, she has worked for Sadhana School for Special Children in Mumbai as a labour of love.
She has very creatively used the power of advertising to raise the bar in fundraising for Sadhana School and now continues to do so for the treatment of underprivileged children with cancer at Tata Medical Center.
Gillian Wright is an author and translator based in New Delhi. She has worked with Mark Tully on all his books, and co-authoried with him 'India in Slow Motion'. Her translations include Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla, A Village Divided by Rahi Masoom Reza and Middle India by Bhisham Sahni. Among her other books are the 'The Darjeeling Tea Book' , 'The Presidential Retreats of India', and recently a book for all ages "Mishti the Mirzapuri Labrador'.
Govind Nihalani is an Indian film director, cinematographer, screenwriter and producer, known for his works in Hindi cinema. He has been the recipient of six National Film Awards, and five Bollywood Filmfare Awards. In 1996, his script for Drohkaal was adapted by Kamal Hassan for its Tamil remake, Kuruthipunal, which subsequently became India's official entry for the 68th Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film category.
His first directorial venture was Aakrosh, starring Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil and Amrish Puri. The film was scripted by noted Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar. The film shared the Golden Peacock for best film at the International Film Festival of India held in New Delhi in 1981
Poet, author, lyricist, film-maker, and screenplay and dialogue writer, Gulzar is one of the towering figures of Indian cinema, culture and literature. Born in Dina (now in Pakistan), his career in cinema took off as an assistant to film-maker Bimal Roy.
A stalwart of Indian literature and one of the finest poets in Urdu/Hindustani, he has a number of poetry and short-story collections to his credit. He has published two volumes of his translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s poems, Baaghbaan and Nindiya Chor. He is also one of the finest writers for children in the country. He is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Bhushan. In 2008, he was awarded an Oscar for his song ‘Jai ho’ in Slumdog Millionaire. He received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2014.
Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University. He was a member of the influential Subaltern Studies Collective until its dissolution in 2006, and has been a recipient of Guggenheim and the National Endowment of Humanities fellowships. He is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed Mumbai Fables (2010), which was adapted for the film Bombay Velvet (2015), and for which he wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay. His latest book, Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and Democracy’s Turning Point, will be published by Penguin in November 2018.
Hari Sankar is the Co-Founder and CEO of the up and coming start-up, Beatmap, and Director of Strategy at Kommune. A graduate in Bcom(H) from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, Hari was thrown into the world of performing arts at the age of 21. Though he kickstarted as an entrepreneur, he eventually started juggling that with his new found flair for storytelling. At 24, Hari is a TedX speaker, storyteller and corporate trainer, who has performed around the country, in addition to spearheading Beatmap. When not doing any of these, he can be found uploading a combination of lame jokes, and delicious recipes on Instagram
Hidayat Hussain Khan is a direct descendant of one of the most treasured lineages of sitar music. Son of the legendary sitar maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan, Hidayat has been globally acclaimed and, as The London Times aptly says, "the tradition carries on impeccably". Rolling Stones praises him and describes how his music is “Jazzing up the sitar." Hidayat Khan has managed to successfully travel between traditional classical music and innovative contemporary sounds.
Hrishikesh Kannan popularly known Hrishi K is producer & presenter on the nations biggest breakfast radio show on 94.3 RadioOne & www.1cast.in ! Podcast creater & anchor on the online platform ‘Book My Show Jukebox’. A Multiple RAPA & PROMAX award winning radio host & voice artiste, Hrishikay has just been felicitated with the “Afternoon Newsmakers Achievers Award” 2018
Jerry Pinto lives and works in Mumbai. He is now at work on a new novel, a new translation and a new anthology.
Juhi Chaturvedi is one of India’s most acclaimed screenwriters. Her story, screenplays and dialogues for films like Vicky Donor (2012) PIKU (2015) OCTOBER (2018) wowed audiences and earned her tremendous critical praise. Her writing has won two national awards, as well as several others, including from Filmfare, IIFA, TOIFA, Zee, Screen etc. She is currently working on finishing her next script. Juhi started her career as a freelance illustrator with The Times of India’s Lucknow edition before joining the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, where she worked on big accounts like Cadbury’s, Unilevers, Sprite, Fanta. She has a degree in fine arts from the College of Arts, Lucknow.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, an eminent lawyer and a senior politician, Kapil Sibal is presently a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. Previously, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1998 and for two consecutive terms to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and 2009.He has served as Union Cabinet Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Human Resource Development, Telecom & IT and Law & Justice. Sibal is known for his versatility. Apart from penning two emotive anthologies “I Witness” and “My World Within”, he also scripts lyrics for films. He is a prolific writer and his articles on topical issues in national dailies are widely read.
Karthika V.K is publisher and chief editor of HarperCollins Publishers India. She started her career in publishing at Penguin Books India in 1996 and moved to Harper in 2006 to head up the publishing programme in India. She has acquired and published several major writers of fiction and non-fiction including Anita Nair, Anuja Chauhan, Manu Joseph, Hartosh Singh Bal, Rana Dasgupta, S Hussain Zaidi, Sarnath Banerjee, Amruta Patil, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Karthika Nair and Booker-prize winner Aravind Adiga, among others.
Katherine Boo's documentary and investigative reporting from within unprivileged communities in the United States and India has been recognized with a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, a National Magazine Award, and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. Her nonfiction account of families in a Mumbai slum, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, received the 2012 National Book Award for Nonfiction, was adapted for stage by David Hare, and has been translated into 25 languages. Her current reporting project is based on years of reporting in low-income American communities.
Model and actor, Kubbra Sait, has starred in the Netflix television series "Sacred Games". She made her Bollywood debut with Salman Khan's "Ready" in 2011, followed by "Jodi Breakers" and "I Love New Year" in 2014. Winner of India's Best Female Emcee Award, Kubbra Sait has been master of ceremonies for such events as Filmfare, The IAA Crown Awards, IAA Indian Leadership and Adobe India among others. As a Kommune storyteller, Kubbra uses the stage and mic to share her own personal stories.
Kunal Vijaykar is an Indian film actor, director, and television personality who hosts the food show The Foodie on Times Now and comedy-spoof show The Week That Wasn't on CNN IBN with Cyrus Broacha
Lalita Iyer is a journalist, writer and blogger based in Mumbai, India. She is the author of two books, “I'm pregnant, not terminally ill, you idiot” and “The Boy Who Swallowed A Nail And Other Stories”, as well as writing
two blogs: Chickwit and Mommygolightly. Author, blogger, journalist, mother to one human and two feline children, Lalita Iyer wrote her first novel during her pregnancy, following her jobs on editorial boards of leading national newspapers and magazines of the country. The Mumbai-based author has experienced a plethora of changes throughout her life from shifting into a dozen different houses right from childhood to moving from one job to another.
Lincoln Paine is a maritime historian, editor, and curator whose books include the award-winning The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World and Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia. He is currently writing a book entitled Global America and How It Got That Way: A Maritime History of the United States.
He has published and lectured on a wide range of topics, including literature of the sea, exploration, seas in world culture, maritime law, naval history, rivers, decorative arts, and museum curatorship.
Professor Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow at Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex and a Visiting Professor at Noragric, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a PhD in Development Studies (University of Sussex). She uses the case of water and sanitation to focus on the politics of gender, scarcity, rights and access to resources, resource grabbing, power and policy processes. She has extensive research and field experience in India and southern Africa, and has engaged in advisory work with various UN agencies.
Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver, the daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada. Her most recent novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, about art, music and revolution in 20th century China, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Folio Prize. Her books and stories have been translated into 25 languages and her essays have appeared The Guardian, Granta, The New York Times and elsewhere. She is professor of English at Brooklyn College.
Mallika Ahluwalia is the author of the book "Divided by Partition, United by Resilience: 21 Inspirational Stories from 1947", published in 2018 by Rupa Publications. She is also the CEO, Curator, and co-founder of the world's first Partition Museum, which opened at Town Hall, Amritsar in August 2017. The Museum has been getting a heart-warming response from all quarters and has been listed in the ‘Best of India: 18 Places to Visit in 2018’ list by National Geographic Traveller India. She was recently awarded an Excellence Award by Conde Nast Traveller and an ASEAN-India Youth Achiever Award for her work in honouring this history. Prior to this, Mallika worked in the field of health and education with some of the leading international development organizations, focusing on social policy that impacted the most marginalized households in India. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA/ID from Harvard Kennedy School and an A.B. cum laude from Princeton University in public policy. She lives in New Delhi. Three of her four grandparents were impacted by the Partition.
Manish Pushkale is an autodidact. He is amongst the highly regarded painters of India, He has significantly contributed to contemporary art through his extraordinary talent. Working from last 25 years, his paintings now has attained great maturity and significance through several shifts in experimentation and experience. They are a play of formal dichotomies like those of mark-erasure, form-formless, control-indulgence, restraint-excess, they have at present matured to a state that confronts and assimilates the contrasts to achieve a state of refined harmony. His works are deeply rooted in Indian aesthetics. He is a recipient of many awards, honors and residencies. He was the fellow at the Institute of Advance studies in Nantes, France in 2014. He is a trustee of The raza foundation and executive trustee of krishna sobti-shivnath foundation. He has written many books on arts and his latest work on a Hindi novel has been released last year. Now a days, he is translating the writings of KG Subramanyan in Hindi.
Manoranjan Bapari is often referred to as the pioneer of Dalit writing in West Bengal. He came into prominence with the publication of his essay ‘Is There Any Dalit Writing in Bangla?’, which was translated by Meenakshi Mukherjee, in Economic and Political Weekly. While working as a rickshaw puller in Kolkata, Bapari had a chance meeting with Mahasweta Devi, and she asked him to write for her journal Bartika. Since then he has published nine novels and over fifty stories. In 2014, he was given the Suprabha Majumdar Prize awarded by Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi. He also received the Sharmila Ghosh Smriti Literary Prize in 2015. Rajya Sabha TV has made a documentary on his life.
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar (2017), Manu S Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore (2015) and Rebel Sultans: The Deccan from Khilji to Shivaji (2018). Formerly Chief of Staff to Dr Shashi Tharoor MP, he has in the past worked at the House of Lords in Britain, and with the BBC on their Incarnations history series. Manu is also text contributor to Serena Chopra’s Bhutan Echoes, and writes a weekly column for Mint Lounge. His other writings have appeared in The Hindu, Open Magazine, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and other publications.
Maria Puri is from Poland but came to India as a teenager (with her family, as her father was posted with Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam, AP.) She did her high school there (St. Joseph’s Convent) and then went back to Poland, where she studied Indian languages at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland. She later studied in JNU (Hindi), DU (Urdu) and Jamia Millia Islamia (Islamic Studies). She lives in Delhi with her family. She has written a book on Delhi (in Polish), published in Poland in 2011.She is an independent scholar, editor and translator of literary texts.
Mark Tully is a journalist, author and broadcaster based in New Delhi. For over twenty years the BBC's Delhi correspondent, he still broadcasts a popular weekend programme on BBC Radio 4 called 'Something Understood'. His non-fiction books include "Amritsar: Mrst Gandhi's Last Battle', 'No Full Stopis in India', 'India in Slow Motion' and 'Non'Stop India'. He has written two collections of short stories, the lastest being 'Upcountry Tales'.
Maxwell Pereira, retired as the Joint Police Commissioner in Delhi, India. Called the "High Profile Cop" of the Delhi Police, Maxwell Pereira's thirty-five year career as a police officer has been highlighted with laurels. He has nine national and four regional award adorning the lapel of his uniform, making him one of the most highly decorated police officers in India. Also a thoroughbred field officer with a reputation for taking the bull by the horns, he has received the Indian Police Medal for Gallantry (1979), the Police Medal for Meritorious Services (1987) and the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Services (1995).
Maya Jasanoff is the Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University. She is the author of the prize-winning books Edge of Empire and Liberty’s Exiles, which received the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction and the George Washington Book Prize. Her 2017 book, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, has been hailed as “one of the most important books on colonialism to be written in our time.” A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Jasanoff won the 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction. She is a frequent contributor to publications including The New York Times, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books.
Meera Devidayal graduated with English Literature from Kolkata University, but has been a practicing artist, living and working in Mumbai for the last 40 years.
Her art is rooted in the urban context, and she uses painting, photographs, collage, and video to tell her story. The attempt is to turn the ‘found image’ into a visual metaphor, charged with new meaning. Her last body of work, “Water Has Memory”, recently shown in Mumbai, was about the clash of sea and sand, driven by man’s aspiration, greed, and arrogance in thinking he can conquer Nature.
Meghna Gulzar is an Indian director of Hindi films, and is the only daughter of lyricist and poet Gulzar and
actress Raakhee. She is also the author of a book about her father, titled Because He Is....
Meghna started her writing career as a freelance writer for The Times of India and the NFDC publication Cinema in India. Her poetry was published in anthologies of the Poetry Society of India. Meghna simultaneously began scripting her own film along with directing documentaries for Doordarshan and music videos for several music albums.
Dr. Mickey Mehta gas been a global leading holistic health guru and a corporate life coach for 36 years, to billionaires, Bollywood superstars, many miss Worlds and Miss Universes, and top politicians. He has also trained members of the police, army, navy and air force. He has a double honorary doctorate in holistic health and life sciences from the Open International University for Complementary Medicines and has been a pioneer in promoting holistic health in India through thousands of radio and TV shows.
Mikhail's been singing and playing the piano and guitar for the past decade. Music's always been a huge part of his life but he's only started performing at gigs in the city over the past year. Some of his biggest vocal influences have been Demi Lovato, Lady Gaga and Marko Saaresto. He's still trying to find his musical style, but lately has been gravitating a lot towards modern jazz like FKJ and Tom Misch. He's hoping he gets a break so he doesn't have to sell his soul to the technology industry!
Born and brought up in a family with musical background, Milind Tulankar started learning music from a very tender age. His grandfather Late Pandit Shankar V Kanhere (Satara) influenced Milind in taking up this unusual dying instrument the JALTARANG. He also received guidance from Pt. Nayan Ghosh, Sitar maestro Padma Shri Ustad Shahid Parwez and Padma Shri Taalyogi Pandit Suresh Talwalkar. He is one of the topmost Jaltarang players of India. Baba Harivallabh Sangeet Sammelan at Jalandhar, Abhisheki Mahotsav at Goa, Haa Mela (Indian Military) Bhutan and FES Festival Morocco are some of the concerts where his art was acclaimed and appreciated a lot and this rare instrument has kept him busy in concerts in India as well as abroad. Malaysia, Singapore, Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany, USA and Canada, Dubai, Abu Dhabi Bhutan and Morocco are the countries where he has presented his art. He is been doing some interesting projects with Ustad Taufiq Qureshi. A BBC production film 'West is west' has background scores played on Jalatarang by him.
Website: www.jaltarang.com
Mitra Phukan is a writer, translator, columnist and a trained classical vocalist who lives in Guwahati, Assam. Her published literary works include four children’s books, a biography, two novels, The Collector’s Wife and A Monsoon of Music, both published by Penguin-Zubaan, and a collection of fifty of her columns, ‘Guwahati Gaze’. Her most recent works are a translation of Jyanpeeth Awardee Birendra Kumar Bhattacharjee’s novel, Kobor aru Phool, Blossoms in the Graveyard, and a collection of her own short stories, A Full Night’s Thievery both of which appeared in October 2016. Her short stories have appeared in various journals worldwide. Her works have been translated into many languages. As a translator herself, she has put across the works of some of the best-known contemporary writers of fiction in Asomiya into English. Her column ‘All Things Considered’ in The Assam Tribune is very widely read.
Mohammad Muneem Nazir, is a "poet singer-songwriter" and co-founder of the "poetry music performance" act "Alif" fusion of Urdu & Kashmiri poetry with contemporary music. He writes poetry and music which is relevant and bold.
Muneem’s powerful vocals both haunt and soothe.
Winner of "IRAA Award" for the single "Like a Sufi", and winner of "Dada Saheb Phalke award" for the single "lalnawath"
Mohammad Muneem teaches Urdu Poetry at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce. And conducts various poetry workshops
Mohammad muneem is also a story teller and part theatre group rangshila. An adept film-maker and scriptwriter, he conceptualizes and directs Alif’s videos. Alif is currently writing and composing songs for an upcoming film starring *"Sanjay Dutt"* called "Torbaaz" for which muneem has also been commissioned to write dialogues. Alif's work has also featured in Imtiyaz Ali's "Laila Majnu"
Moin Mir is the author of the non-fiction book titled: "SURAT. Fall of a Port. Rise of a Prince. Defeat of the East India Company in the House of Commons.” The book traces the annexation of Surat by the English East India Company and the subsequent campaign for justice led by Meer Jafar Ali Khan in Victorian England. A riveting story of an Indian Prince's question for justice who went onto become the only Indian to defeat the Company in the House of Commons Mir's interest in history and literature grew steadily under the influence of his grandfather who was one of the first to translate the poetry of Mirza Ghalib into English in "Ghalib Musavvar". He has also co-authored "Mirza Ghalib and the Mirs of Gujarat." A scholarly work that brought to light the unknown relationship between Ghalib and Gujarat. Mir is of Sufi descent. His ancestor being Hazrat Maudud Chishti one of the stalwart founders of the Chishti school of Sufism. He is also a member of the Nawab family of Surat. Mir lives in London and is currently working on his next book set between 18th century Europe and India.
Mridula Ramesh is the founder of the Sundaram Climate Institute, focussed on waste and water solutions and education, and an active angel investor in cleantech startups. A graduate with distinction of Cornell University, with an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Mridula worked at McKinsey in Silicon Valley before returning to India. Leveraging on her two decades of management experience, she teaches a postgraduate class on climate change and is a regular columnist for Firstpost and earlier, the Hindu. She is the Executive Director of Sundaram Textiles and lives and experiments in a net zero-waste house in Madurai with her husband and two children.
Mukul Rastogi is the Vice President of Social Investments for ITC Limited and is responsible for interventions pertaining to Women Empowerment, Health and Sanitation, Education and Skilling, pan India.
Mukul completed her Masters in Personnel Management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai in 1989 and joined ITC Limited from Campus in the Human Resources function. She has handled a gamut of HR responsibilities ranging from Industrial Relations to Talent Management across multiple businesses of ITC Limited including Packaging & Printing, FMCG businesses and Retail. In her last assignment prior to moving to Social Investments function, Mukul was the Vice- President – Human Resources and a member of the Management Committee of ITC’s Lifestyle Retailing Business.
During the course of her career, Mukul has been a member of the CII National Committee on Education, CII National Committee on Women Empowerment and the HR Committee of Retailers Association of India.
Naina Lal Kidwai is Chairman Altico Capital India Ltd and Chairman Advent Private Equity India Advisory board; a Non-Executive Director on the boards of Max Financial Services, CIPLA, Nayara Energy and Larsen and Toubro and Past President of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry). She retired on December 2015 as Executive Director on the board of HSBC Asia Pacific and Chairman HSBC India and in April 2018 from the global board of Nestle. An MBA from Harvard Business School, she is the recipient of awards and honours in India including the Padma Shri for her contribution to Trade and Industry. She has authored 3 books including the bestsellers “30 women in Power: Their Voices, Their Stories” and “Survive Or Sink : An Action Agenda for Sanitation, Water, Pollution, and Green Finance”.
Nandita Das has acted in more than 40 feature films in 10 different languages. She made her directorial debut with Firaaq, in 2008, that won many accolades and appreciation, both in India and abroad. She was on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival twice (2005 and 2013), among others. She has a Master’s degree in Social Work and is a strong advocate for issues of social justice and human rights. Nandita's second directorial venture, Manto, based on the life and works of Saadat Hasan Manto, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, and released in theatres in India on September 21, 2018.
Born in India, Nasreen Munni Kabir is a London-based filmmaker/author who has written several books on Hindi cinema, and made over 100 TV programmes for Channel 4 TV (UK), including Lata in her own voice (1991), Bismillah of Benaras and The Inner/Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan (2005, Channel 4/Red Chillies). Former governor on British Film Institute board, she continues to curate Channel 4 TV’s annual Indian film season. Her last book in ZAKIR HUSSAIN, a life in music, a book of conversations.
Nazia Erum is the author of the critically acclaimed and hard-hitting book, 'Mothering a Muslim', which opened prime-time discussions on the telly and front page headlines in newspapers. Previously she has handled communications for the Global Fund in India and lead projects for development organizations including the UNDP. Presently she writes on the cross sections of gender, inter-faith and politics. Her work has found mentions in the Guardian, Washington Post, BBC, Le Monde, Voice of America among other Indian and international publications.
Neha Sinha is an award-winning wildlife conservationist and columnist. She works on species conservation and environmental policy. She has a forthcoming book contribution on wetland policy in India (Orient Blackswan, in press) and writes on wildlife for The Hindu, Economic and Political Weekly, DailyO and The Wire. She was awarded the 'Wildlife Service' Award by Sanctuary Asia in 2017. She was selected as a Legislative Fellow, sponsored by US Department of State in 2017, and as a LEAD-India Fellow in 2015. She is alumni of St. Stephen's College and Oxford University; and an INLAKS scholar. You can find her original writing at www.indienvironment.com .
Nidhi Razdan is an award winning journalist and author who has worked with NDTV for nearly 20 years. She is currently NDTV’s Executive Editor. Nidhi covers national politics and international relations. She has reported from Pakistan, POK, Afghanistan, Iran, China, Tibet, Africa, Israel and more countries. Nidhi was awarded the prestigious Ramnath Goenka award for her reporting from Jammu and Kashmir, while documentary she filmed in POK was a runner up at the Asian TV awards. Nidhi anchors a popular prime time news show called ‘Left, Right and Centre’. Her first book was published by Penguin in 2017
Nina started out as a feature writer at The Sunday Times of India in Mumbai and, a decade or so later, ended up as Books Editor and a Senior Editor in charge of the Feature section. She subsequently moved to the US, where she now reviews books for NPR and freelance for several publications including the New Yorker.com, Paris Review Daily, Harper's.com, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Economist.com, and The Guardian.
Air Commodore Nitin Sathe is a helicopter pilot of the Indian Air Force with 34 years of commissioned service to his credit. During his career, he has been a part of many a live threatening and life saving mission, both in India and abroad. When the tsunami of 2004 ravaged the islands of Car Nicobar islands, he volunteered to go there for the rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts and stayed there for a year battling against all odds to bring back the islands to normalcy. Long thereafter, he decided to pen down his experiences and came out with his first book titled ‘A Few Good Men and the Angry Sea’ released in 2014. Egged on with the success of his first effort, he went on to write a biography of his batch mate, Flying Officer MP Anil Kumar- A MiG-21 pilot who became a quadriplegic due to an accident at the age of 24. Defying all odds, Anil Kumar went on to live a meaningful life for 26 years after the tragedy and this biography takes you through his life and reads like a Stephen Hawking story. This motivational book titled ‘Born to Fly’ and released by the Defence Minister in Dec 2016, has been recommended by NCERT for additional reading by children. It also has very recently received an award for the best novel in the ‘non-fiction’ category for 2016-17.
His third book, a collection of short stories from real life titled 'Up In The Sky...Helicopter Stories' was released recently and is doing well.
Air Cmde Sathe is presently posted as the Senior Instructor at the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington (Nilgiris).
Ornit Shani is the author of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise (2018). Her previous book is Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat (2007). She is currently working on a history of India’s first elections. She is a Senior Lecturer in the politics and modern history of India at the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa.
Panchami Manoo Ukil is a Bhubaneswar based birdwatcher and educationist. She writes regularly on environment and wildlife for leading magazines and journals like Sanctuary Asia and Indian Birds. She is currently translating her grandmother, eminent odia writer and Sahitya Akademi awardee Nirmala Devi’s poems into english. She is the founder of The Bhubaneswar Bird Walks, Chairperson Ila Panda Centre for Arts, and Executive Trustee of The Wisdom Tree Global School.
Parismita Singh's work has appeared in various publications including Time Out, the Sarai Reader and Katha Prize Stories 13. She was shortlisted for The Little Magazine New Writing award, 2006. Her earlier publications include the graphic novels The Hotel at the End of the World and Mara and the Clay Cows. She helped conceptualise the Pao Anthology of Comics and has edited Centrepiece: New Writing and Art from Northeast India (2017). She has been working on a primary school education project in Assam with the NGO Pratham since 2009.
Pavan K. Varma is a writer-diplomat and now in politics, where he was till recently an MP in the Rajya Sabha, and earlier Advisor to the Chief Minister of Bihar, with rank of Cabinet Minister. Author of over a dozen best selling books he has been Ambassador in several countries, Director of The Nehru Centre in London, Official Spokesperson of the MEA, and Press Secretary to the President of India. He is currently the National General Secretary and National Spokesman of the Janata Dal (United).
Mr. Varma’s new book, ‘Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism’s Greatest Thinker’ (Westland-Amazon), was launched in April, 2018, with the presentation of the first copy to the Hon’ble President of India. The book has also been published in Hindi, and Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati translations will be out shortly.
Pooja Bhatt is an Indian film director, actress, voice over artist, model and film maker. The actor-filmmaker Pooja Bhatt co- authored a book with Roshmila Bhattacharya about her battle with alcohol. After writing her first book on her battle with alcohol addiction which awaits release, the actress-model- filmmaker and now an author, Pooja Bhatt has started working on her second book, which is based on her beloved father, Mahesh Bhatt, an Indian Director-producer.
Chef Pooja Dhingra spent four years in Switzerland at the Cesar Ritz College of Hospitality before moving to Paris to train in Patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu. She fell in love with the city and its rich traditions in culinary arts and dreamt of bringing a small piece of it back home to India. This dream turned to reality in 2010 when the first Le15 Patisserie opened. The brand now boasts a team of over 100 people, with multiple outlets across the city.
As an entrepreneur and businesswoman, Pooja’s work has been selected by Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ achievers list (2014); the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list; and the INK Fellow 2017 program. She has authored 2 books, with a third launching in January 2019. The Le15 brand has also recently introduced All-India macaron delivery, to over 10 cities (and counting) across India.
Prabodh Parikh is a poet/fiction writer who mostly ends up writing letters to friends in Gujarati/English. He studied philosophy in the US in seventies and retired as a teacher of Philosophy in 2005. At present he is Faculty In-charge of Art Literature and Culture, Whistling Woods International. His lifelong love for Jazz (Village Vanguard, New York), Beer (pubs everywhere) and Sada Dosa (Tiffin services in the streets of Thiruvananthapuram), takes him to different cities of the world, where he also lectures on contemporary Indian Literature, Arts and Cinema. Gandhi and Tagore continue to engage him, as much as, Buddhist monasteries. He was Charles’ Wallace fellow at the University of Liverpool, and as a visiting Fellow, University of Sorbonne, Paris, he conducted seminar on Aspects of Indian Literature, Cinema and Paintings. In 2016 he completed a documentary film on fellow Gujarati poet Labhshanker Thaker and presently he in to completing a documentary film on the poet Sitanshu Yashashchandra. Fall 2019 he will be showing his new drawings and paintings in Mumbai/Ahmedeabad.
Prayaag Akbar is the author of a critically-acclaimed work of fiction, Leila. His novel won the Tata Lit Live! First Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Edinburgh International Bookfest first book award, the Hindu Prize for Best Fiction and the Shakti Bhatt Award. It is being turned into a TV series by Netflix.
Priya Seth is a celebrated cinematographer with almost two decades of experience in Indian films. After studying a short course in filmmaking at New York University, Priya returned to Mumbai and started out as a camera assistant with notable cinematographers in the Hindi Film Industry. She assisted on films like Deepa Mehta’s Earth and Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke. In 2003, she helmed her first feature as Director of Photography -- the much acclaimed indie Barah Aana, and more than a decade later, did her first big budget film, Airlift, for which she received much critical acclaim. She was the DoP on the 2017 feature 'Chef.' Priya has shot thousands commercials. She is the leading underwater cinematographer in India for Hindi movies and commercials. In her spare time, Priya helps run Ellora Studios, a highly successful, 4.5 acre multi set studio where many TV shows, films and ads are shot.
Priyanka Setia is a Mumbai-based actor and singer. Her acting portfolio includes both films and plays she has starred in. They range from Haseena Parkar, a crime biopic based on Mumbai’s most wanted criminal, Dawood Ibrahim’s sister to Begum Jaan, which is set in a brothel during pre-independent India. Priyanka is a very versatile performer and has been a part of diverse projects, including performing the internationally acclaimed play, Vagina Monologues for Indian audiences. She has also been a part of other theatre productions like Sunil Shanbag’s Blank Page, which uses theatre to interpret 17 poems, Ishq Aaha, which has been inspired by Heer-Ranjha’s legendary love story and other dramatic readings.
Radhika Vaz is a comedian and writer. Her one-woman shows have found audiences in New York, London and all across India. Her web-series ‘Shugs & Fats’won the prestigious Gotham Award and was featured at the Tribeca Film Festival, Miami Film Festival and Tacoma Film Festival and she was named one of Filmmaker Magazines ’25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her book ‘Unladylike, A Memoir’ is available on Amazon and she writes a bi-monthly column for the Times of India.
Rajendra Singh is India's 'Waterman', a sobriquet earned for the 35 painstaking years spent on rejuvenating 11 rivers, on climate change adaptation and mitigation, and most visibly in bringing rainfall to the Thar as well as tempering the desert's cruel temperatures. His awards include the Stockholm Prize considered the 'Water Nobel' in 2015 and the Magsaysay in 2001. In 2008, the Guardian listed him among the 50 saviours of the planet, and earlier this year, he was chosen for the Commonwealth's International Peace Award.
Rajvi H Mehta has been a student of Yogacharya BKS Iyengar for 4 decades.
She has been regularly teaching public classes in Mumbai for the Light on Yoga Research Trust since 1986. She has been invited as the lead teacher for the International Iyengar Yoga Conventions in UK, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, China, Israel and conducted workshops in Poland, Philippines, Jordan, Dubai and USA
She is the advisor to the Ministry of AYUSH for their various programmes.
She is a scientist – a reproductive biologist working in the field of infertility and human in vitro fertilization having attained her doctorate from the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute for Research in Reproduction. And, currently is the academic Consultant to Origio, India and scientific consultant to Trivector Biomed.
A BPO professional and a Hindi Spoken word artist, Rakesh juggles between the lives of necessity and opportunity, between answering calls and posting rhymes, finding solace in the arms of poetic verses. Performing on stage for the past 4 years, he pens down the emotions of everyday life.
From windows and homes that we live in, to forgotten hometowns and villages to our inner selves that have long been ignored. Writing poems is his meditation, his way of connecting with universe.
Ram Ganesh Kamatham is a researcher and playwright. His play Ultimate Kurukshetra won the 2011 Sultan Padamsee Award and recently premiered in Bangalore. His research on pre-modern rocketry pulls together ethnographic and archival research to re-examine the relevance of the Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780-1784) towards the development of strategic thought in India. His other work for the stage includes the smash hit comedies Dancing on Glass (2004), Project S.T.R.I.P. (2009) and the cult classic Crab (2006).
Ranjit Hoskote is the author of five major books of poems, including, most recently, Central Time, Vanishing Acts and eighteen works of cultural criticism. He is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems. His translations include I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded.
Ratish Nanda, Conservation Architect, is India CEO for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Following his architectural studies from the TVB School of Habitat Studies, Delhi he has completed an MA in Conservation Studies from the University of York, UK. He heads the multi-disciplinary AKTC teams presently undertaking the two major urban conservation projects in India: the Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative, Delhi and the Qutb Shahi Heritage Park Conservation in Hyderabad. He has earlier worked for Historic Scotland in Edinburgh and also been responsible for several successful projects for INTACH Delhi Chapter such as the conservation of St James Church, ruins adjacent Sultan Garhi, monuments in the Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Awards received by him include the Chishti India Harmony Award, the Eisenhower Fellowship, the Sanskriti Award for Social and Cultural Achievement , the ‘Urban Hero’ title by Prince Claus Fund, Aga Khan Foundation International Scholarship and the Charles Wallace Conservation Fellowship, among others.
Ravina Aggarwal is the Director of the Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai, Columbia University’s academic knowledge platform for addressing the challenges facing our region and the world today. Ravina received her doctoral degree from Indiana University in 1994 and joined the Department of Anthropology at Smith College, where she became a tenured faculty member. She then worked as a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation in New Delhi. She is the author of several publications, including Beyond Lines of Control (Duke University Press, Seagull), the editor of Into the High Ranges (Penguin India) and Forsaking Paradise (Katha), and has recently completed a mystery novel for young adults
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American philosopher and novelist. Currently, she is Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New College of the Humanities, London, England. She graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. She is the author of ten books, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and the latest of which is Plato at The Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. She has won numerous awards, for both her fiction and scholarship, including, in 1995, a MacArthur Fellowship prize, popularly known in the U.S. as the Genius Award. In 2015, she was awarded the National Medal of the Humanities by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House.
Robin Jeffrey is a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore. His most recent book, co-authored with Assa Doron, is Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India (Harvard University Press, 2018). He and Doron published The Great Indian Phone Book in 2013. Jeffrey is the author of India’s Newspaper Revolution (2000), Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became ‘a Model’ (1992), What’s Happening to India? (1986) and The Decline of Nayar Dominance (1976). He was a school teachers in Chandigarh from 1967-9, taught for 25 years at La Trobe University in Melbourne and worked twice at the Australian National University. He lives most of the year in Melbourne.
Rohini Iyer has always been a first mover and a game changer. Her company, Raindrop Media is numero uno in the reputation management business so it comes as no surprise that Rohini Iyer consistently features among the most powerful and influential women in the entertainment industry. In 2018 itself , Rohini was part of the India Today, Femina and Verve power lists . She was also part of the book "Changemakers" and was also honored at the Women Economic Forum in London,the Stardust Achievers Awards in Dubai and at the Brand Vision Summit among others.Rohini Iyer is also a regular at panel discussions like the recent CII Big Picture Summit or their Indian Women Network. This year, the global Reputation Management company has pulled off events of monstrous proportions with the icing on the proverbial wedding cake being the recent wedding of international icons Priyanka Chopra & Nick Jonas.
Known for his insatiable appetite to learn and innovate, Roshan Abbas is also an author. He has mentored some of India’s best known faces, training them to the stage. His book, ‘Speechless’ is an Amazon bestseller and is the perfect guide for those hoping to charm people with their stories and presence. An award winning radio jockey, Roshan has created over 3000 hours of radio content, all through the magic of his voice and stories. In 2015, Roshan along with Gaurav Kapur and Ankur Tewari co-founded Kommune a platform that nurtures and discovers a new breed of Spoken Word artists. You will be in awe of the tricks he has up his sleeves.
Samanth Subramanian's narrative journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, WIRED and Harper's, among other publications. His first book, "Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast," won the Shakti Bhatt Prize. His second, "This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War," won the Crossword award and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. He is at work on a biography of the British polymath J. B. S. Haldane. He is currently a Leon Levy Biography Fellow at the City University of New York.
Sanchit Chaudhary is a Mumbai-based violinist trained in Hindustani classical music. He has completed his Master’s degree in Music from Banaras Hindu University where he also taught students music. Being the versatile musician he is, he has also collaborated and performed with various popular Indian artists, including, Sona Mohapatra, Mame Khan, Swaroop Khan, Mahalakshmi Iyer, Tochi Raina, Ram Sampath, among others and has performed for a range of events from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations to MTV Coke Studio. He has also recorded music for films as varied as the political satire, Bangistan and the recently released, chick flick, Veere Di Wedding.
As Chairperson of the JSW Foundation, Mrs. Sangita Jindal strategizes and oversees social development projects within the JSW Group.
The programs at the JSW Foundation span across a wide range of interventions and focus on the holistic development of the girl child. From providing Skill Development opportunities, to empowering woman across India, through health, education and livelihood oriented programs. JSW Foundation also works with the Government of India to devise strategies & programs to eliminate malnutrition in India.
A philanthropist who believes in the transformatory powers of art, Sangita set up The Jindal Arts Centre (1992) at National Center for Performing Art, Mumbai, India which became a hub of interdisciplinary arts activity. She also publishes “Art India” Magazine which has been a chronicler of record of the Indian Art scene for over two decades.
Her efforts to preserve heritage for future generations led to extensive restoration work at the Hampi temple complex in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. The Hampi Foundation was conferred the UNESCO-Asia Pacific Award for Merit for Cultural Heritage Conservation for the work at the Chandramauleshwar Temple.
Sangita is an Eisenhower Fellow and is on the Board of Trustees of the World Monuments Fund & an Advisor on the Khoj Board. She has recently been inducted as a key member of the UN Women Business Sector Advisory Council (BSAC).
Today the work that Sangita oversees at the JSW Foundation, runs across 9 states in India, and has touched over a million lives.
Sanjeev Sanyal is the Principal Economic Advisor to the Government of India. An internationally acclaimed economist and best-selling author, he spent two decades in the financial sector and was Global Strategist & Managing Director at Deutsche Bank till 2015. He was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2010. He is also a well-known environmentalist and urban theorist. In 2007, he was awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship for his work on urban dynamics.
Sanjoy Hazarika, a human rights activist, scholar, author, journalist and filmmaker, is International Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), New Delhi. Previously, he was the Founder-Director of the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia. He is also founder of C-NES and pioneered the boat clinics on the Brahmaputra (www.c-nes.org). Hazarika is widely acknowledged as a specialist on migration and development-related issues in the North East. He is also author of five books including most recently Strangers no More, a successor to his acclaimed Strangers of the Mist. and documentary maker whose films range from travelogues to the endangered Gangetic Dolphin
Sarah Churchwell is Professor in American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is the author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and The Invention of The Great Gatsby, The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, and most recently, Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream. Her literary journalism has appeared widely in newspapers including the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times Book Review, and she has judged literary prizes, including the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction. She was a co-winner of the 2015 Eccles British Library Writer’s Award.
Sarnath Banerjee had written four books of graphic fiction. Corridor (Penguin, 2004), The Barn Owl’s Wonderous Capers (Penguin, 2007), The Harappa Files ( Harper Collin, 2011) and All Quiet in Vikaspuri ( Harper Collins, 2015). The themes in these books included power, masculinity, bureaucracy, rumour, scandal, trade, class-system, urban sprawl, meritocracy, religion and the uncanny.
As part of his ongoing project involving collaboration with historians, Banerjee had produced Liquid History of Vasco Da Gama for the Kochi Biennial, 2014, and The Poona Circle, a series of vandalised history textbooks, for the Pune Bienale, 2017.
His billboard series, Gallery of Losers, commissioned by Frieze Projects East, for the 2012 London Olympics, was widely displayed in East London.
Sarnath Banerjee had studied at Goldsmith college, London and currently lives in Berlin.
Sathya Saran is one of India’s best-known journalists and editors. As editor, she made Femina the most successful fashion and lifestyle magazine in India. She is author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling biography Ten Years with Guru Dutt: Abrar Alvi’s Journey. She is currently working on a number of books in her capacity as consulting editor with HarperCollins India.
Scott Hartley is a venture capitalist and best-selling author of The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World (Penguin Random House India, 2018), a Financial Times business book of the month, and finalist for the Financial Times and McKinsey & Company's Bracken Bower Prize for an author under 35. His work has been translated into half a dozen languages, and featured in the Wall Street Journal, BBC, and Harvard Business Review. Prior to venture capital, Scott worked at Google in the US, India, and Africa, Facebook, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society,. He holds a BA from Stanford University, an MBA and MA from Columbia University. He is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Shanta Gokhale is a Mumbai-based bilingual writer, translator, theatre critic and cultural columnist. She has been a lecturer in English, a public relations executive and Arts Editor of the Times of India, Mumbai. She has written two award-winning novels in Marathi and three plays. She has authored a critical history of Marathi drama, edited three books on theatre and translated several works of drama, fiction and non-fiction from Marathi into English and vice-versa. She won the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2016 for overall contribution to the performing arts
Shashi Tharoor is an award-winning author of 17 books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Great Indian Novel, Inglorious Empire and the recently published, Why I Am A Hindu. A second-term Member of Parliament representing Thiruvananthapuram, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, he has served as Minister of State for Human Resource Development and for External Affairs in the Government of India.
Sheela Bhatt is working for NewsX where she is anchoring a weekly show No Holds Barred. Four decades ago, she started her career in Gujarati journalism and became one of youngest editors at 27 in 1986. As senior editor at rediff.com, she has covered the Gujarat riots of 2002, diplomacy, politics, and strategic affairs, extensively. She has written an 18 parts series on 'Deshionu America' after interviewing Indians, largely Gujaratis, in America.
Shekhar Kapur is an Indian film director, actor, and producer, known for his works in Hindi cinema and international cinema. Part of the Anand family, Kapur became known
in Bollywood with his recurring role in the TV series Khandan in the mid-1980s and his directorial debut in the cult Bollywood film Masoom in 1983, which won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie for that year, before gaining widespread success with the superhero film Mr. India
Shirley Abraham is a Cannes prize-winning documentary film maker. Her work is supported by the Sundance Institute, MacArthur Foundation, New York Times, Bertha Foundation, BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera English and India Foundation for the Arts. She has been a fellow of Sundance Labs, the Stories of Change Program at Oxford, Cluster of Excellence Heidelberg, TasveerGhar and Goethe-Institute. The Cinema Travellers is her debut film, co-directed with Amit Madheshiya. The film premiered as an Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival 2016, winning the Special Jury Prize for L’Oeil d’or: Le Prix du documentaire. It has played a hundred and twenty film festivals worldwide and won nineteen awards, including the National Film Award in India. Shirley and Amit have also made Searching for Saraswati, India’s first Op Doc for the New York Times.
Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, film archivist and restorer. He is the founder of Film Heritage Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of India’s cinematic heritage. Shivendra was elected to the Executive Committee of FIAF in 2017.
He made his first feature documentary “Celluloid Man” in 2012 that won two National Awards and travelled to over fifty festivals around the world. His second documentary “The Immortals” (2015) won the Special Jury Award for the Best Film at MIFF 2016. He has just completed his third documentary titled “CzechMate – In Search of Jiri Menzel”.
Shunali Khullar Shroff has worked variously as a journalist and a communications consultant over the length of a career spanning two decades. She is the author of the bestselling book Battle Hymn of a Bewildered Mother that was published in 2015. She writes on a variety of subjects for a host of publications and is a regular editorial contributor to the Conde Nast Traveller, India.
Shweta Bachchan-Nanda is a columnist for DNA and Vogue. A well-known personality, she is the daughter of actors Jaya and Amitabh Bachchan. Shweta is married to Nikhil Nanda and is the mother of two children. She has her own clothing label, MxS, which launched in 2018. She lives in New Delhi. This is her first novel.
Siddharth Dasgupta is a Poet & Novelist. His words have appeared in a gamut of global literary journals - Litro, Entropy, Cha, Punch, The Bombay Literary Review, Coldnoon, and Burning House included. As part of his dual life, he also undertakes cultural immersions with the likes of Travel + Leisure, National Geographic Traveller, and Harper’s Bazaar. Siddharth has three books to his name thus far; the Short-Story Collection The Sacred Sorrow of Sparrows and the Poetry Collection The Wanderlust Conspiracy both emerged in 2017, and have been met with strong critical acclaim. He is currently consumed by the fresh lacerations from a just-completed collection of poetry and other literary horizons. Siddharth's journeys – literary and otherwise – may be explored via https://citizenbliss.squarespace.com
Born in Indore in 1973, Sopan Joshi and grew up in Delhi, obtaining a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Delhi in 1996. Since then, he has worked as a reporter and an editor. He has written on agriculture, environment, automobiles and motoring, travel and adventure, sports, religion and electoral politics. His work – he writes in Hindi and English – relies on scientific research and reportage. His first book Jal Thal Mal explores in Hindi the science and history of sanitation, with a socio-environmental perspective. He has recently written two Hindi books for children on Mahatma Gandhi.
Website: https://mansampark.in/
Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and ten books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” His latest book is Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.
Sumana Roy's first book, How I Became a Tree, a work of non-fiction, was published in India in February 2017. Her first novel, Missing, was published in April 2018. Her poems and essays have appeared in Granta, Guernica, LARB, Drunken Boat, the Prairie Schooner, Berfrois, The Common, and other journals. She lives in Siliguri in India.
Co-author of The Sundarbans Inheritance and Birds of India, expert birder, photographer and conservationist.
Sumit’s efforts in the field, over the last decade, have resulted in the documentation of new information regarding some extremely rare birds found in India including the discovery of a new subspecies of Brown Shrike and the rediscovery of the long lost Large-billed Reed Warbler.
He also contributes articles which are published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Sanctuary magazine, and peer-review articles for leading technical journals .
When not in the field, he owns and manages a premier birding website - 'Birds of India' at http://www.kolkatabirds.com/ and moderates Bengalbirds – an egroup focused at birding in eastern India.
He is currently the Honorary Wildlife Warden of South 24 Parganas covering the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve in West Bengal, India.
Sunil Amrith is Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities. Amrith studies the history of connections between India and Southeast Asia, with particular interests in the history of migration, and environmental history. His works include the prize-winning Crossing the Bay of Bengal. His new book, Unruly Waters: How Monsoons and Mountain Rivers Have Shaped South Asia’s History will be out in December with Allen Lane.
Sunil Khilnani is the author of The Idea of India, recently published in a 20th anniversary edition, and Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives (Penguin, 2017), which he also adapted and presented as a 50-part BBC podcast and radio series. His other publications include Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France (Yale, 1993), and as co-author, Civil Society: History and Possibilities (Cambridge, 2001) and NonAlignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India (Penguin, 2012) .
Suresh Prabhu is an Indian politician and currently serving as the Minister of Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation under the Modi government. He is a Chartered Accountant by profession and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). Since 1996, Prabhu has been a repeatedly elected Member of Parliament from Rajapur Lok Sabha constituency in Maharashtra. He currently represents Andhra Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha
Tara is and editor and writer. She is the founder of Bound and is a graduate of Barnard College and the Columbia University Publishing Course
The Naval Band in Mumbai, is the premier band of the Navy. Versatility is the hallmark of the Indian Naval Band whether arranged as a military marching band or as a concert ensemble. Its wide ranging repertoire includes stirring martial music, arrangement of Symphonies, Overtures, Concertos, Indian Classical Music and a host of other forms of contemporary genres including Pop and Folk music. The band regularly performs Symphonic Concerts along with public performances in India and abroad. The band has won laurels at every engagement performed and has won the Inter Services Band Competition nine times out of eleven competitions held.
Tongam Rina is an Indian journalist and human rights activist. She is the Associate Editor of The Arunachal Times and president of the Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists. She has been repeatedly threatened, and in 2012, she was near-fatally shot outside her office after she wrote critical articles about corruption, militants and dam projects in Arunachal Pradesh. For her journalistic work covering the unsuitability of hydropower projects, she received Wind under the Wings Award presented in 2017 by The Sanctuary Nature Foundation.
Urvashi Butalia is a publisher and writer. Co- founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publisher, and now director of Zubaan, she is also author of the award-winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.
V K Madhavan is the Chief Executive of WaterAid India. He has previously worked with ActionAid and The Hunger Project and spent eight years working in the Kumaun region of Uttarakhand with the Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (Chirag). In his years as a development professional, Madhavan has worked on an integrated approach to rural development – community health, primary education, natural resource management, on and off-farm livelihoods and investing in young people. Madhavan was a TED Global Fellow in 2009 and a TED Senior Fellow in 2010.
Feroze Varun Gandhi is a second-term Member of Parliament, representing the Sultanpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
He is a widely respected opinion leader and policy analyst, writing widely in English and subsequently in Hindi as well as other important regional languages, making him the widest read columnist in the country, reaching over 200 million readers.
A poet by inclination, Gandhi published his first collection of poems, ‘The Otherness of Self’ in 2000, at the age of 20. His second volume of poetry, titled ‘Stillness’, was published in 2015. In his new book, ‘A Rural Manifesto: Realising India’s Future through her Villages’, Gandhi presents an alternative approach to mainstream ideas of rural development, which, despite their many achievements, have their inherent limitations
The Admiral has completed nearly forty years of distinguished service in the Indian Navy. He has commanded frontline warships, including the aircraft carrier Viraat, and held some key assignments in his naval career, dealing with Operations, Strategy, Net Assessment, Finance, Policy, Acquisitions, Plans, HR, Training, Foreign Cooperation, Cyber and Space.
He has authored, and published/ presented numerous documents and papers on strategic, operational, security, maritime and socio-economic subjects. Many of his papers have won awards, in India and abroad. As C-in-C of the Western Naval Command, in addition to his core function and responsibilities, he has made sustained efforts to raise maritime awareness and to bring the Navy and Civil Society closer.
Mr Vijay Vardhan,
Lead, Natural Resources Management, ITC Ltd
Vijay Vardhan is a Post Graduate in Agriculture and leads the Natural Resource Management interventions in ITC’s Social Investments programme. Vijay has over 20 years experience in the development sector with expertise in participatory Water Stewardship, Natural Resource Management and Rural Development. He has played a key role in implementing ITC’s Water Stewardship programme to drive ‘water security for all across ITC’s value chain catchments. Vijay has participated and shared his expertise in various national and international forums. ITC’s water stewardship programme has benefitted 870 lakh acres of farm fields and has enabled ITC’s water positive status for over 16 years.
Vivek Anantram is a Flautist learning Hindustani classical music since the past 12 years from Pandit Vivek Sonar, Padmavibhushan Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia’s senior disciple. Vivek has performed at various prestigious festivals from the Bramhand festival 2014, Kala Ghoda Festival 2016 and was also one of the main flautists at the only festival dedicated to the flute – the Bansuri Utsav. He can also play various genres of music including Hindustani classical, fusion, bollywood and has even been an accompanist for Kathak and Bharatnatyam dance recitals. Apart from being an established musician, he is also an honorary professor of music at the Somaiya School of Music and has even conducted music workshops at IIT Bombay and other schools.
Yuki Ellias is an international actor, director and corporate coach. She trained at the Jacques Lecoq School of Theatre in Paris and is a trained pedagogue from the London International School of Performing Arts. She starred in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Shakespeare Company and was the Movement Director for UK’s leading opera company, Opera North for their production of Mozart’s Magic Flute. Her theatre company Dur Se Brothers has produced four shows, including the award-winning play, Elephant in the Room. She endeavors to produce theatre for diverse audiences and uses theatre art techniques for high impact communication initiatives as a corporate coach
Dr. Yusuf Merchant is a medical practitioner who has been working for the rehabilitation of people with mental health issues like substance abuse and depression for over thirty-five years, in the course of which he has developed a host of fundas/principles, which have helped many addicts and depressed people to resurrect their lives. His organization DAIRRC is affiliated in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
The pre-eminent classical tabla virtuoso of our time, Zakir Hussain is appreciated both in the field of percussion and in the music world at large as an international phenomenon and one of the world’s most esteemed and influential musicians. The foremost disciple of his father, the legendary Ustad Allarakha, Zakir was a child prodigy who began his professional career at the age of twelve, accompanying India’s greatest classical musicians and dancers and touring internationally with great success by the age of eighteen. His brilliant accompaniment, solo performance and genre-defying collaborations, including his pioneering work to develop a dialogue between North and South Indian musicians, have elevated the status of his instrument both in India and globally, bringing the tabla into a new dimension of renown and appreciation.
Zareer Masani is the author of Macaulay: Britain’s Liberal Imperialist (The Bodley Head, 2013). He has an Oxford history doctorate and is the author of three other historical books: Indira Gandhi: A Biography, Indian Tales of the Raj and India from Raj to Rajiv (with Mark Tully). He has also written a widely acclaimed family memoir, And All Is Said: Memoir of a Home Divided (Penguin, 2013).
Zareer spent two decades as a producer for BBC Radio 4 and is now a freelance historian, journalist and broadcaster. His particular areas of interest include the British Raj in India. He is currently researching a book on the role of Indians as partners in running the Raj.
Dr. Zirak Marker is a renowned child and adult psychiatrist and psychotherapist with clinical training from the Westchester Medical Centre, New York University. Dr. Marker has over fifteen years of experience in Educational Psychology, and is currently the CEO of the Aditya Birla Integrated School; for children with learning disabilities and psychological/emotional problems.
For thirty years, toured, performed and recorded with the fairly well established Indian Rock band – Indus Creed.
Formerly known as Rock Machine the band was recognized as one of the pioneering musical acts, responsible for putting Indian rock on the international map.
With Rock Machine/Indus Creed - recorded, arranged, performed and co-produced all of the band’s albums.
www.zubinbalaporia.com
www.bandwagonstudios.in
https://www.youtube.com/user/zubinb3