'I am a very personal writer. I write direct to the reader. I don't hold back,' says India's most loved writer, Ruskin Bond.
'From the beginning (I have told her) "Whatever it may be -- you are losing or winning -- on the ground you're not going to cry!" She never cried.' '"I don't want you to project that you are a loser. You are a winner".' Vaihayasi Pande Daniel/Rediff.com speaks to Leela Raj about her famous daughter, now in the West Indies for the women's T20 World Cup.
'I had once gone to Kashmir with him and his wife. He would talk to the boatmen, the watchmen, at the dargahs he would ask so many questions. He always had a notebook and would write down everything... He was an intellectual and he was fun. He loved people, loved life and had the spirit of enquiry. He used to advise me, "When you write - inform, provoke, abuse".' Sadia Dehlvi on her 30-year-old friendship with Khushwant Singh.
In an interview to HarmonyIndia.org, the artist, who had famously said that he lived to paint and painted to live, spoke of what the 'bindu' meant to him, about his friend M F Husain and the legacy that he will leave behind.
Hers is a rags-to-riches story for the ages, peppered with risks, determination and strokes of luck.
Friends and colleagues pay rich tributes to the "charming, approachable, and very accessible" Indian Constitution scholar Granville 'Red' Austin.
People from all walks of life and political inclinations, budding and aspiring poets and lyricists, looked at Vaali for inspiration, writes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I like the thought that I am competing successfully with writers much younger than me,' says Ruskin Bond.
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