INDIAN AUTHORS AND BOOKS - 5 - ANSWERS

1. A. Sepoy Mutiny, 1857

"A Flight of Pigeons" is a novella by Indian English author Ruskin Bond set in 1857 and is about Ruth Labadoor and her family (who are British) in the town of Shahjahanpur (in present-day Uttar Pradesh) who take help of Hindus and Muslims to reach their relatives when the family's patriarch is killed in a church by the Indian rebels.

The novella is a mix of fiction and non-fiction and was adapted into a film in 1978 called "Junoon" by Shyam Benegal, starring Shashi Kapoor, his wife Jennifer Kendal, Tom Alter, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Naseeruddin Shah, Deepti Naval and Nafisa Ali (debut film).

Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist.

He wrote his first novel, "The Room on the Roof", when he was seventeen which won "John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize" in 1957. Since then he has written several novellas, over 500 short stories, as well as various essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best-loved and most admired chroniclers of contemporary India.

In 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi award for English writing, for his short stories collection, "Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra", by the Sahitya Akademi. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 for contributions to children's literature.

He now lives with his adopted family in Landour near Mussoorie in Uttarakhand.

2. C. Satya Vrat Shastri

Satya Vrat Shastri (born 29 September 1930) is a highly decorated Sanskrit scholar, writer, grammarian and poet from India. He has written three Mahakavyas, three Khandakavyas, one Prabandhakavyas and one Patrakavya and five works in critical writing in Sanskrit. His important works are "Sri Ramakirtimahakavyam", "Brahattaram Bharatam", "Sribodhisattvacharitam", "Vaidika Vyakarana", "Sarmanyadesah Sutram Vibhati", and "Discovery of Sanskrit Treasures" in seven volumes.

He is currently an honorary professor at the "Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies", Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was the Head of the Department of Sanskrit and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Delhi, where he was the "Pandit Manmohan Nath Dar Professor of Sanskrit" (1970–1995).

During his career he has won many national and international awards, including, the "Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit", given by "Sahitya Akademi" in 1968 for his poetry work, "Srigurugovindasimhacharitam", then in 2006, he became the first (and till date the only person) recipient of the Jnanpith award in Sanskrit language (conferred in 2009 by his former disciple and Thailand's Princess "Maha Chakri Sirindhorn").

During his stint as a visiting professor at the Chulalongkorn and Silpakorn Universities in Bangkok as well as the Northeast Buddhist University, Nongkhai, Thailand, he taught Sanskrit to Thailand's Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn [1977–1979]. Upon royal request, he wrote "Sri Ramakirtimahakavyam", a rendition of "Ramakien" (The Thai derivation of the Hindu epic "Ramayana") from Royal Thai into Sanskrit, which received rave reviews from many literary quarters.

3. A. Gurdial Singh

"Marhi Da Deeva" (The Lamp of the Tomb) is a 1964 Punjabi novel by Gurdial Singh which established Gurdial Singh as a novelist. The author himself described it as the first Punjabi novel in "critical realism". It came in for high praise, with some critics calling it a landmark equivalent to Premchand's "Godan". It was translated as "The Last Flicker" by the Sahitya Akademi.

The novel was adapted into a 1989 Punjabi film of the same name. Surinder Singh directed the film, which starred Raj Babbar, Deepti Naval and Parikshit Sahni in lead roles. The film received a National Film Award and was critically acclaimed.

His other notable novels are "Anhoe" (1966), "Addh Chanani Raat" (1972), "Anhe Ghore Da Daan" (1976) and "Parsa" (1991). "Anhe Ghore Da Daan" was made into a film of the same name in 2011 by director Gurvinder Singh. The novels "Addh Chanani Raat" and "Parsa" have been translated into English as "Night of the Half Moon" (published by Macmillan) and "Parsa" by the National Book Trust, respectively.

Singh received various awards over the course of his life, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in Punjabi in 1975 for the novel "Adh Chanani Raat", the Soviet Land Nehru Award in 1986, the Jnanpith Award in 1999 and the Padma Shri in 1998.

4. A. Qurratulain Hyder

"Aag Ka Darya" (River of Fire) is a landmark historical novel written by Qurratulain Hyder providing context to the traumatic partition of the Indian subcontinent into two nation-states. It has been described as "one of the Indian Subcontinent’s best known novels". The novel timelines spanned over two thousand years starting from the time of Chandargupta Maurya in fourth century BC to the post-Independence period in India and Pakistan. It was published in Urdu in 1959 and translated by the author into English in 1998.

Born in Aligarh in 1927, Hyder migrated to Pakistan in 1947. Her debut novel, "Mere Bhi Sanam Khaane" (My Temples), examined the causes of Hindu-Muslim violence that led to the partition of India. "Ainee Apa" – as she was endearingly referred to by her readers – dealt with the aftermath of such communal discord in her next novel "Safina-e-Gham-e-Dil" (Boat of Sorrow).

When the military and religious fundamentalists tightened their grip on Pakistan, in 1959, Ainee Apa gifted her third novel, "Aag Ka Darya" (many considered her first three novels as a trilogy on partition of Indian Subcontinent), to the Urdu literary world. This was at a time when the Pakistani establishment was systematically cleansing the country’s ethos of any traces of Hindu (thereby Indian) traditions, which earlier existed alongside the Islamic ones and Hyder's "Aag Ka Darya" immediately caused severe controversy in Pakistan and forced Hyder to return India permanently where she was welcomed with open arms by none other than Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad. In Bombay she served as managing editor for Imprint and co-edited The Illustrated Weekly of India with Khushwant Singh. She moved to Delhi in 1984.

Her later novellas, "Sita Haran", "Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Na Kijo", "Housing Society" and "Chai Ke Bagh", like her longer fiction, are centred around politics and culture.

(Hyder's short-stories collection "Patjhar Ki Awaz")

(Qurratulain Hyder's graveyard in Jamia Nagar, Delhi)

She received the 1967 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu for "Patjhar Ki Awaz" ("The Sound of Falling Leaves" - Short stories), 1989 Jnanpith Award for "Aakhir-e-Shab ke Hamsafar" and the highest award of the Sahitya Akademi, the "Sahitya Akademi Fellowship" in 1994. She also received the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India in 2005 before her death in 2007.

5. B. Jayanta Mahapatra

Jayanta Mahapatra (born 22 October 1928) is a major Indian English poet and has authored popular poems such as "Indian Summer" and "Hunger", which are regarded as classics in modern Indian English literature.  He is the first Indian poet to win Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry and also the first English poet to be conferred with "Sahitya Akademi Fellowship". Jayanta Mahapatra was awarded Padma Shri in 2009. However, he returned the Padma award in 2015 to protest against the rising intolerance in India.

Born into a prominent Odia Christian family in Cuttack, Odisha, Mahapatra completed his M. Sc. in Physics from Patna University, Bihar and began his teaching career as a lecturer in Physics in 1949. During his professional life, he taught Physics at various government colleges in Odisha and superannuated at the Ravenshaw College, Cuttack as the Reader in Physics in 1986. He began his writing career very late in his forties and has already authored 27 books of poems, of which seven are in Odia and the rest in English. His poetry volumes include "Relationship", "Bare Face" (2001) and "Shadow Space" (1992). Besides poetry, he has experimented widely with myriad forms of prose. His published books of prose include "Green Gardener", an anthology of short stories and "Door of Paper: Essay and Memoirs".