A. K.

Ramanujan

Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March

1929 – 13 July 1993) also known as A. K.
Ramanujan was an Indian poet and scholar of
Indian literature who wrote in both English and
Kannada language. Ramanujan was a poet,
scholar, a philologist, folklorist, translator, and
playwright. His academic research ranged across
five languages: English Kannada, Tamil, Telugu,
and Sanskrit. He published works on both
classical and modern variants of this literature
and argued strongly for giving local, non-
standard dialects their due. Though he wrote
widely and in a number of genres, Ramanujan's
poems are remembered as enigmatic works of
startling originality, sophistication and moving artistry. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi
Award posthumously in 1999 for his collection of poems, "The Collected Poems".

Biography Childhood

Ramanujan was born in Mysore City on 16 March 1929. His father, Attipat Asuri
Krishnaswami, an astronomer and professor of mathematics at Mysore University, was
known for his interest in English, Kannada and Sanskrit languages. His mother was a
homemaker. Ramanujan also has a brother, A.K. Srinivasan who is a writer and a
mathematician.

Education

Ramanujan was educated at Marimallappa's High School, Mysore, and at the Maharaja
College of Mysore. In college, Ramanujan majored in science in his freshman year, but his
father, who thought him 'not mathematically minded', persuaded him to change his major
from science to English. Later, Ramanujan became a Fellow of Deccan College, Pune in 1958
– 59 and a Fulbright Scholar at Indiana University in 1959 – 62. He was educated in English
at the University of Mysore and received his PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University.
Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri (born 1962 ), is an Indian

English author and academic. He was awarded the
Sahitya Akademi Award, India's highest literary
honour, in 2002 for his novel A New World. He is
currently Professor of Contemporary Literature at
the University of East Anglia.[1] In 2012,
Chaudhuri won the Infosys Prize for Humanities-
Literary Studies for his imaginative and
illuminating writings in literary criticism, which
reflect a complex literary sensibility, and great
theoretical mastery, along with a probing sense of
detail.

Early life

Amit Chaudhuri grew up in Mumbai. He attended University College London, Balliol

College, Oxford and has also been Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College.

Career

He was Leverhulme Fellow at Cambridge University, a Visiting Professor at Columbia

University, and Samuel Fischer Guest Professor of Literature at Freie Universität Berlin. He
has written numerous novels, short stories, poems and critical essays in English. His novels
have won several major awards and he has received international critical acclaim. His latest
book is The Immortals, a novel about music in the modern world. 2008 saw the publication of
Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture, bringing together his major
work as a critic. A collection of poems entitled St. Cyril Road and Other Poems appeared in
2005, and in 2001 he edited the influential The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature.
His study of D.H. Lawrence's poetry, D.H. Lawrence and 'Difference': Postcoloniality and
the Poetry of the Present, was called 'truly groundbreaking' by Terry Eagleton in the London
Review of Books.[2] He writes frequently for The London Review of Books, The Times
Literary Supplement, and The Guardian. His work has appeared in Granta, The New Left
Review, The Dublin Review, Bricks, N+1, Caravan and many other periodicals.[3]
Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Michael Madhusudan Dutt, or Michael

Madhusudan Dutta (25 January 1824 – 29 June
1873) was a popular 19th-century Bengali poet and
dramatist.[1] He was born in Sagordari, on the bank of
Kopotaksho River, a village in Keshabpur Upazila,
Jessore District, Bengal Presidency, East Bengal
(now in Bangladesh). His father was Rajnarayan
Dutt, an eminent lawyer, and his mother was Jahnabi
Devi. He was a pioneer of Bengali drama.[2] His
famous work Meghnad Bodh Kavya, is a tragic epic.
It consists of nine cantos and is exceptional in
Bengali literature both in terms of style and content.
He also wrote poems about the sorrows and
afflictions of love as spoken by àwomen.

As a young student, Dutt was influenced by the thoughts and actions of the Young Bengal-a
movement by a group of illustrious former students of The Hindu College (now Presidency
College) in Calcutta (now Kolkata) against the atrocities, blind beliefs and customs they held
as illogical, prevalent in the Hindu society of 19th century Bengal. Dutt, a student of Hindu
College himself, aspired to be an English poet and longed to travel to England to gain fame.
When his father, concerned by these trends, arranged his marriage, he rebelled. One aspect of
his rebellion involved conversion to Christianity. Dutt is widely considered to be one of the
greatest poets in Bengali literature and the father of the Bengali sonnet. He pioneered what
came to be called amitrakshar chhanda (blank verse). Dutt died in Calcutta, Bengal
Presidency on 29 June 1873. Although his first love remained poetry, Michael Madhusudan
Dutt, or Madhu- as he was called affectionately,showed prodogious skill as a playwright. He
was the first to write Bengali plays in the English style, segregating the play into acts and
scenes. He was also the pioneer of the first satirical plays in Bengali – "Buro Salik er Ghare
Row"(Bengali-ববুডডড শডললিডকের ঘডডড ররড) and "Ekei Ki Bole Sovyota(Bengali-এডকেই লকে বডলি

সভভ্যতড?) (Is this what we call Civilisation?". When Deenabandhu Mitra wrote a Bengali play
portraying the plight of the workers in indigo plantations at the hands of their British masters,
Dutt was the person who translated the play into English.
Jagannath Prasad Das

J.P. (Jagannath Prasad) Das is an eminent

litterateur from Odisha who has dominated
the Odia literary scene for over forty years.
His literary oeuvre comprises poetry,
plays, short stories, novel, essays,
children’s poems and nonsense verse. He
has done translations of literary works
from different languages into Odia and
English. He has done extensive research
into Odishan art and has published three
works on the pictorial arts of the state. He
has also done paintings, acted on stage and
in films, and taken active part in social and
cultural movements. His writings have
been widely translated into Hindi, English
and other Indian languages, bringing him
national recognition. He has been honoured with awards for his writings, the important ones
being the Central Sahitya Akademi award for his poetry (which he refused), the Nandikar
Award for plays, the Sarala Award for short stories and the Saraswati Samman for his poetry.
He has been connected with literary, cultural, and charitable organisations and has been
member/office holder of these bodies. Starting his career with a brief teaching assignment as
Assistant Professor in the University of Allahabad, he joined the Indian Administrative
Service and had held many important positions in the Government of Odisha and the Central
Government. He has chosen to settle down in Delhi after taking premature retirement from
Government service and is a well-known figure in the cultural and social life of the city
where he lives. It would come as no surprise that Prof.Sumanyu Satpathy has titled a short
biographical piece he has written on him The Artist as Polumetis , the Greek term meaning
many-mindedness. J.P.Das was born on 26 April 1936 to Shridhar Das and Indu Devi at
Banpur in the Puri District of Odisha. His father, an eminent literatteur, was then teaching at
the Banpur High School. Banpur is a village and Das studied in the local ‘vernacular’ school.
Shridhar moved to Cuttack as Professor in the Christ College there and the family moved
there in 1948.
Tapan Kumar Pradhan

Dr Tapan Kumar Pradhan (born 1972;

Bhubaneswar, Odisha) is an award-winning
Indian writer, poet and activist. He hails from
Laxmisagar in Bhubaneswar. Dr Pradhan is best
known for his translation into English of his
own Odia poem collection Kalahandi for which
he won Sahitya Akademi's Golden Jubilee
Indian Literature Translation Prize for Poetry[1]
in 2007 along with Rana Nayar.[2] His other
award winning and popular[3] poems include
Equation, The Hour of Coming,[4] Wind in the
Afternoon,[5] Epitaph and Boddhisattva. In the
words of the Polish writer Wislawa
Szymborska, with whom he was in
correspondence, Dr Pradhan is a "skilled wordsmith, whose poems make engaging reading...".

Award winning works

In 2007, Dr Pradhan received Indian Express Citizen for Peace Prize from Shyam Benegal
for his essays on communal harmony. He has also won First Prize in All-India Inter-bank
Hindi Essay Competition for 2007–08, a prize he also won in 2006–07 for his essays on
micro-finance and financial inclusion. He also won First Prize in the RBIA Silver Jubilee
essay competition on Future of Central Banking conducted by Reserve Bank of India in
2007–08. He was the First Prize winner in RBI Brand Building Competition, 2007 for his
bold satirical essay "Dreaming the RBI Brand", which created shock waves in the Reserve
Bank fraternity. Earlier he had won Third prize in World Habitat Day Essay Competition
2007 for his essay titled Green & Intelligent Buildings and Urban Infrastructure. During his
student days he had won many literary prizes including Upasika Kamaladevi Award for
essays on Buddhism, Shatadru prize for short story and Ankur prize for poetry etc. He was
Utkal University literary champion during 1993–94. Pradhan's poem "The Buddha Smiled"
won commendation first prize in All India Poetry Competition 2013 [12] conducted by Poetry
Society (India).