Indira Goswami
- Indira Goswami, known by her pen name Mamoni Raisom Goswami, was an Assamese novelist, a poet, and a Ramayana scholar. She was educated at Cotton College and Gauhati University, Assam. She taught Assamese and Comparative Indian Literature at the Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, University of Delhi. Indira Goswami has published eleven novels, eight short story collections, three autobiographies, three poetry collections and a research work on Ramayana. Indira Goswami was the winner of several awards, in particular, the Sahitya Akademi Award (1983), the Jnanpith Award (2000), Principal Prince Clause Laureate (2008), and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Gold Plate from Asiatic Society (2008). Several of her works have been translated into English and Indian languages such as The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker, Pages Stained with Blood, and A Man from Chinnamasta. Indira Goswami’s sensitivity to issues of suffering could be seen in her novels Ahiron and The Chehnab's Current, that depicts the hardships of characters in Kashmir and Madhya Pradesh, where her husband had worked as an engineer. Her depiction of the horrors and sufferings during the 1984 anti-Sikh killings in Delhi in her novel Pages Stained with Blood demonstrates the brutal face of the incident. She was also well known for her attempts towards social transformation, both through her writings and through her role as mediator between the armed militant group ULFA and the Government of India. She also wrote touchingly about the plight of abandoned widows at Brindavan. Her works have been performed on stage and were made into films. The film Adajya based on her novel The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker has won international awards. Words from the Mist is a film made on her life directed by Jahnu Barua.
