The Good, The Bad and the Ridiculous: Profiles

Delhi-based journalist, Humra Quraishi has been writing for two decades. She is a columnist with The Tribune. Her interviews and features have been published in The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, The Statesman and The Indian Express. The book-Views: Yours and Mine is a Collection of some of her writings which have been published in the national dailies in the last two decades. She has two other books to her credit. A collection of short stories-Bad Time Tales (Haranand)published in 2002. Kashmir-The Untold Story (Penguin) published in 2004.

Khushwant Singh was born in 1915 in Hadali, Punjab. After university education in Lahore and London, he practiced at the Lahore High court before joining the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. He began a distinguished career as a journalist with all India Radio in 1951. Since then he has been founder-editor of Yojana, editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India and the Hindustan Times and chief editor of New Delhi. Today he is India’s best known columnist. Khushwant Singh has also had an extremely successful career as a writer. His published works include the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs, the novels Train to Pakistan, Delhi and The Company of Women, his autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, and a number of translated works and non-fiction books on Delhi, nature, Sikh history and religion, and current affairs. Khushwant Singh was Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. Among other honours he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 by the President of India (he returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union Government’s siege of the Golden Temple, Amritsar).