THE NEXT 100 - AUTHORS

YOUNG AUTHORS WHO SYMBOLISE INDIA TOMORROW

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EPIC IMAGINATION

SAMHITA ARNI, 37

Author, Bengaluru

“In trying to meet the challenges looming in our future, we will have to come closer, find greater meaning and allyship than before”

Samhita Arni was four when her father, an officer in the Indian Foreign Service, was handed a Pakistan posting. In Karachi’s embassy library, she found several versions of the Mahabharata. Having read the text over and over again, she decided to illustrate and rewrite Vyasa’s epic. Arni was 12 when her The Mahabharata: A Child’s View was released. There was something endearing about the quirky way in which she drew astras, but whatseemed precocious was her antiwar stance. Arni’s talent only grew with time; in 2012, she found herself on the New York Times bestseller list with Sita’s Ramayana. Though the illustrations were by Moyna Chitrakar’s, a Patua scroll artist, Arni imagined Sita’s voice and narration of the Ramayana. She followed up on the success of these titles with The Missing Queen in 2013, and The Prince, a period novel that hit stands in 2019. •

—Shreevatsa Nevatia

FELINE PHILOSOPHER Arni was 31 when she rescued her first cat. She named him after a character from Chhota Bheem—Chutki.

KANISHK THAROOR, 37

Author, New York

“Fiction can make people think about issues, can spark imaginations, can take people out of their own frame of reference”

Written in the Stars