About the Contributors
Rent from DeepDyveVishwamitter Adil published English translations of Urdu poetry and fiction and was a screenwriter, director, lyricist, and film actor. He died in 2002.
Abul Bashar was born in 1951 in Hamarpur, West Bengal, India. His works include Bhorer prosuti, Saidabai, Simar, and Mati chere jai. His earliest work explores the lives of Muslim women of West Bengal. In 1988 he received the Ananda Purashkar.
Samaresh Basu was born in 1924 and spent his early childhood in Dhaka (in present-day Bangladesh). From 1943 through 1949 he worked in a factory in Ichhapore and was an active member of the trade union and the Communist Party; he was jailed from 1949 to 1950, when the party was declared illegal, and while in jail, he wrote his first novel, Uttaranga. In all, he wrote more than 200 short stories and 100 novels, including those published under the aliases Kalkut and Bhramar. His book Shamba, a modern interpretation of the Puranic tales, won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980. He died in 1988.
Rajinder Singh Bedi was born in Lahore in 1915 and moved to India after Partition. The author of several collections of short stories and film scripts, he is regarded as one of the most prominent Urdu fiction writers. Two of his collections of short stories, Dana-o-Daam (The Catch) and Grehan (The Eclipse), were published before Partition. His novel Ek Chadar Maili Si received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1965 and was made into a popular film. He died in 1984.
Alok Bhalla has a doctorate from Kent State University and is a professor of English literature at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. He has published extensively on translation theory, literature, and politics and has recently edited a collection of stories, Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Urvashi Butalia was born in Ambala, India, in 1952 and completed graduate studies in London in 1977. In 1984 she cofounded Kali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house. Her writing has appeared in numerous periodicals in India and England. Her most recent edited books are Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir and The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.
Radha Chakravarty is a Reader at the Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi. She has translated numerous Bengali authors into English, and [End Page 213] her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in journals and critical anthologies worldwide. Her books of translations include The Bankimchandra Omnibus by Bankim Chandra Chatterji; In the Name of the Mother: Four Stories by Mahasveta Debi; Crossings: Stories from Bangladesh and India; and most recently Boyhood Days by Rabindranath Tagore. In 2005 she was nominated for the Crossword Translation Award.
Krishna Dutta was born and raised in Calcutta before moving to London. She is a scholar and translator, particularly of the works of Rabindranath Tagore. In addition to coauthoring his biography Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, she also edited and translated, with Andrew Robinson, The Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, and Tagore's The Post Office, Noon in Calcutta: Short Stories from Bengal, and Glimpses of Bengal.
Gulzar (Sampooran Singh) was born in Deena in 1934. He moved to Delhi after Partition and began his career writing lyrics for film and television. In 1971 he became a screenwriter and director, scripting more than sixty films and directing seventeen. His honors include the National Award (received three times) and the Filmfare Award (received fourteen times). In 2002, Filmfare awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to Hindi cinema. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2003 for his collection of Urdu short stories, Dhuaan.
Rashid Haider was born in Pabna in 1941 and now lives in Dhaka. Best known as a novelist and short-story writer, he has written extensively about the Liberation War and the lives of rural and middle-class people. A playwright, translator, political historian, and biographer as well, he received the Bengla Academy Award in...
