Ashapurna Debi was born in 1909. Her conservative family did not send her to school, but encouraged by her mother, she learnt to read and write on her own and published her first poem in the children’s magazine Shishu Saathi. Married at fifteen to Kalidas Gupta of Krishnanagar, she continued to write with his support. Pratham Pratisruti (1964) is the first of a trilogy that includes Subarnalata (1966) and Bakul Katha (1973). Translated here as The First Promise, it won her the Rabindra Puraskar in 1966 and the Bharatiya Jnanpith award in 1977. Ashapurna published 181 novels, 38 anthologies of short stories, and 52 books for children. She died in 1995.
Maya Joshi is Associate Professor of English Literature at Lady Shri Ram College, but considers it her good fortune to have been exposed from childhood to literatures other than English and subject
