Manik Bandyopadhyay (birth name Prabodh Kumar Bandyopadhyay, 19 May 1908–3 December 1956) is a major figure of twentieth-century Bengali literature. He authored 38 novels and 306 stories. His best-known works include Padma Nadir Majhi (The Boatman on the River Padma, 1936), Putul Nacher Itikatha (The Puppet’s Tale, 1936), Shahartali (Suburbia, 1941), Chatushkone (The Quadrilateral, 1948), Swadhinatar Swad (Taste of Freedom, 1951) and Halud Nadi Sabuj Ban (Yellow River Green Forest, 1956). He was born in Dumka, Santal Parganas. His father was a government official who was transferred all over Bengal, giving young Manik a wide exposure to diverse places, cultures, dialects, and people. He became a member of the Progressive Writers’ Association in the early 1940s, and joined the Communist Party of India in 1944. In ill health and plagued by financial problems, he died at the early age of 48. His unfailing commitment to his creative objective gave him an iconic status as an ‘engaged’ author, a ‘pen-wielding proletarian’, according to the author’s own description.
Rohan Shivkumar is an architect and urban
designer based in Mumbai. He has studied at L.S. Raheja College of Architecture, Mumbai for his GD Arch. and at the University of Maryland , USA for his Maste
Madhusree is a filmmaker; also a curator and pedagogue. Though visual culture is the key to her works, inter-disciplinary initiatives and multi-linguality in representations frame her myriad engage
Uma Randeria was one of the translators of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi from Gujarati into English. She has also translated collections of short stories from Russian and Bengali into Gujar
