Book Launch of ARYAA : An Anthology on Vedic Women

Hari Kiran Vadlamani ( Hari) is a Chartered Accountant by qualification and a serial entrepreneur, having been involved in four ventures in Technology and Energy sectors. He is deeply passionate about Art, Philosophy and Indian Cultural Heritage and is a Dharmic- Indic Liberal. In 2015 he transformed himself into a Social Entrepreneur pursuing the preservation, protection and promotion of Indian Heritage. He founded INDICA ( www.indica.in) and NICE (www.niceorg.in) , both not for profits in the area of Cultural Education and Entrepreneurship. Hari brings in an entrepreneurial mindset to his work of delivering indigenous knowledge as a service, product or an experience by incubating a portfolio of ideas, rapid prototyping, absorbing failures, applying a three horizon framework, thinking of scale etc. Having the mindset of a venture investor, Hari is focussed on backing passionate individuals. He encourages, enables and empowers them to discover, nurture and express their creative potential. He believes in transforming the narrator and not the narrative. A strong advocate of pluralism, Hari envisions a vibrant ecosystem of diverse set of players and ideas and seeks to build the enabling infrastructure. Hari believes that Indian thought and the indigenous way of life from various global traditions have solutions to some of the key challenges we face today, especially sustainability, happiness, well-being and peace. He is working on developing the requisite institutional mechanisms that can transform a billion global consumers into conscious thinkers, entrepreneurs, leaders and most importantly seekers. He has developed a unique six dimensional integral strategy for pursuing this vision.

Vijayalakshmi Vijayakumar is the Co-Founder of Center For Softpower and the founder secretary of Heritage Parampara a not-for-profit trust. She has flown powered aircrafts, played state level softball, danced Bharatanatyam, given talks on culture and heritage, organized conferences, been on the Central Film and Censor Board, the National Advisory Board for Philately and is a freelance designer and copywriter too. Heritage trust conducts two annual well-known festivals, Gudiya Sambhrama and Srishti Sambhrama, the Earth Mother Festival. A third festival that premiered in 2018 was The Heritage Drive, a 1100 km motor sport rally that took participants to heritage temples and included tree planting as well. She loves story telling, her approach is creative and innovative. She is presently writing a novel based on historical events in India

Shri. Prakash Belawadi is an Indian actor, and a director. He is the Managing Trustee and Founder of Center for Film and Drama which produces stage plays, conducts courses in Film making and acting.

Shivakumar GV is an IT professional in the domain of Learning and Development, with a deep interest in Bharateeya Samskriti. He is part of the Indica fraternity as a Scholar-in-Residence at Indica, Consulting Editor for Indica Today and contributes to Indica Conferences. He is researching on Puranas to create frameworks for application in contemporary times and contributes to Indica Conferences. At IndicA Today he writes on Civilizational narratives, Mahabharata and anchors Kannada content. He is also one of the authors of ''Unsung Valour: Forgotten Wars of Kurukshetra'' - curated by SaiSwaroopa Iyer for Indica. Mahabharata, Rigveda, Bharatiya Itihasa-Purana and Civilizational Conflicts are his areas of interest. He is a BTech graduate from National Institute of Technology, Surat and an MTech from IIT Mumbai. He lives in Bangalore with his parents, wife and daughter. He is greatly inspired by the Rivers of India – Saraswatee in particular.

Abhinav is a technology professional with over twenty years in the software industry, the technical editor of a book published by McGraw-Hill, a prolific writer on areas on technology and Indology. He is a computer engineer and holds a post graduate diploma from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Formerly an analyst with a Venture capital firm, Saiswaroopa's interests include Startups, Economics, Carnatic Music, Philosophy, Politics, History and Literature of India. She won a state level gold medal from TTD in rendering Annamacharya Kritis. She holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur Her first novel Abhaya explores the Diwali legend of Narakasura and the fascinating stories around his Shakta origins. Best Selling author Amish Tripathi has endorsed Abhaya saying, "Abhaya allows us to delve into the world of our ancestors and Gods through the route of great storytelling and a brilliant narrative. A thoroughly enjoyable read." Her second novel Avishi explores the forgotten RigVedic legend of Vishpala and reimagines the Rig Vedic India in its fascinating richness. Concepts like pre marital society, Ancient medicine including prosthetics and democracy in ancient India have been explored in this novel. She currently lives in London. Her next novella, Daughter of Mura is a sequel to Abhaya set in the Mahabharata times and explores the bitter sweet love story of Ghatotkacha and Mauri

Rohini Gupta is a writer who lives by the sea in Mumbai, India, surrounded by trees, cats, dogs, crows, books, coffee shops and a sprawling metropolitan city. She writes fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. 17 of her books are available on Amazon, most of them as ebooks. She is the editor of online poetry magazines and paints and draws when she is not writing or reading. She blogs at wordskies.wordpress.com. What she likes most is a few quiet hours to create a story with endless cups of coffee and maybe a purring cat or snoring dog.

Manjula Tekal loves to make sense of stories separated by place, time, and context. This muse has driven her to transition into writing after working in the corporate sector for several years. She is the author of ‘Devayani’, a novel based on a story in Mahabharata, set in pre-Rigvedic times, published by Garuda Prakashana. She is currently working on a novel based on a Puranic story. Her translated works include Dr Babu Krishnamurthy’s ‘Azad, the Invincible’ (English) and Jagmohan’s ‘My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir’ (Kannada). Several other works are in the anvil, including Savarkar’s ‘Gomantak’ (English) and Sankrant Sanu’s ‘My English Medium Myth’ (Kannada). Several of her articles have appeared in Indica Today. 

Manjula holds Master’s degrees in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. On social media, she is on Twitter (@Akumallaji), Instagram (@mtvji) and Facebook (Manjula Tekal). She lives in Champaign, Illinois.

Prasad Kulkarni is a Data Scientist by profession. He enjoys crunching massive datasets, building mathematical models and telling stories around them. While analysing historical data by the day, he enjoys contemplating on historical events in his own time. He is an avid reader of and listener to history, geopolitics and strategic affairs. However, nothing has caught his imagination like Mahabharata.

All this reading and thinking finds an outlet on his blog (https://histonerd.com/). Alongside, he enjoys writing on Data Science, Machine Learning and AI, on his blog named data4v. He has also written for Analytics India Magazine. For recreation, he enjoys trekking, singing and long walks. You can follow him on twitter (@pmka1991).

Bharathi is a Chennai based freelance writer whose childhood passion for writing transformed into a career in this field. She is the author of the story ‘The Fall of the First Son’ from the Unsung Valour anthology (by Indic Academy) published in 2021 and the Kindle book ‘When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemon Oorgai’, a collection of humorous anecdotes from her life experiences. Bharathi is active on Twitter, Instagram (as MyMBJourney) and Facebook (as BharathiVAuthor) with her weekly #MahabharathOnWhatsapp posts, sharing interesting snippets from the great epic. She has also recently started a Substack space (https://bharathiv.substack.com/) where she shares stories in an episodic format plus snippets from the ancient text. Apart from these, she has a twin novelette based on Srimad Bhagavatham and Mahabharatha in progress as well as other projects and she hopes to bring out many more tales to readers interested in the epics in the coming years.

Born when the adamant and adventurous Ashwini was rising over the idyllic town of Ghatsila, and the shy moon of shukla panchami was soaking in Anuradha’s turmoil and passionate devotion, Madhureima has always felt a strong urge to explore the mysteries of existence. This led her to traverse several disciplines and theoretical frameworks and take up diverse jobs. 

At present, she spends her time painting, studying Jyotish, reflecting over life and attending her spiritual, religious and domestic chores. She pays her bills purely by Krsna’s grace that manifests in the form of sales of paintings, commissioned artwork, freelance writing or training assignments or clients seeking out her Heart2Heart life coaching sessions.

Madhureima’s official name is ‘Madhurima Malladeb’. She lives in Hyderabad with her parents who sometimes lovingly and sometimes grudgingly support her creative quirks and idiosyncrasies. When not engrossed in her myriad interests, Madhu connects with new people or catches up with her sister, relatives and close friends over soul satiating tea, food and chat.

Deepak M R is a professional writer and author, who has previously worked in academia, training, and consulting. An avid reader, he considers the Mahabharata as the greatest tale ever told. He is the author of the novel Abhimanyu – the warrior prince (Bloomsbury, 2021). He is also one of the contributing authors in the anthology Unsung Valour (Bloomsbury, 2020) and has written a Kindle ebook Mahabharata Tales: Justice for Draupadi and other stories’. Presently he is working on stories featuring a great hero from the Mahabharata and runs a video show discussing myths about the Mahabharata. He is also working on a flash fiction short story collection. He stays in Bangalore with his family.

Rajani grew up in the garden city of Bengaluru and trained to be a software engineer. She discovered her creative side a few years into motherhood while reading books to her own children and began writing bilingual stories for them in English and Kannada. A couple of stories have been published on Pratham books' Storyweaver site. She particularly enjoys writing stories rife with humour. The rich narratives from the Puranas inspire her to recreate their stories for adults and children alike.

Celia Pillai has donned many professional hats, including being an architect, strategy & innovation consultant, entrepreneur and a yoga and healing chants teacher. The human mind has been her life-long fascination that also led her to the ancient Indian texts. Celia loves exploring and stretching her boundaries through art, conversations, nature, reading and writing. She is a vivid dreamer and a recovering perfectionist, who still obsesses over all things natural from eating to healing. Celia lives in Chennai with her family, that includes a naughty dog named Leo, who doesn’t let her cuddle

Kavita Krishna Meegama is a Hyderabadi educationist who has lived many years across the seas far away from her birthplace which has taught her the value of home, family and the culture that comes along with it. Fond of everything in life except making money it is quite a surprise she holds a steady job! Having tried everything from being an Engineer to a Filmmaker to a Journalist to a TV anchor, she has finally found herself by just being and not doing this or the other. Vedanta has been a lifelong interest and passion which has transformed her and helped her manage her life for the better. Moksha is no longer a strange word and an unattainable state thanks to the grace of her gurus.

Ranjith Radhakrishnan is a Bengaluru based entrepreneur. Highly unemployable hence self-employed. Ex actor, ex assistant director, ex script assistant, ex toll manager, ex pretty much everything. Father to a brat, husband to a wife who loves dogs, cats, cows, elephants, her husband and other animals, strictly in that order. Ranjith loves stories from our Puranas and Itihaasas (not mythology, mind!) and grandmother's tales. Proud pagan, ardent idol worshipper. Drinks a lot of tea as every right-thinking person should.