Mandira Nayar has been a journalist for over two decades. Till recently she was the deputy bureau chief at The Week magazine in Delhi where she spent a lifetime writing on history, culture, books and foreign affairs. She still writes for a living but no longer out of a newsroom. History obsessed, she is a Charles Wallace scholar and breathes to read. She is also the co-founder of Agla Varka, a cultural platform that aims to spark meaningful conversations on Punjab and create a new narrative that goes beyond stereotypes. She has worked with The Hindu and The Telegraph.
A Suitable Agency will be representing her first book, about Burma, the golden land for India. Rangoon—a glittering metropolis—was an Indian city in the 1930s with more immigrants flocking to its shores than Ellis Island. The separation in 1937 was the first severance Indian subcontinent has ever known. This was ten years before the Partition. If the Radcliffe line cut through the heart of Punjab and Bengal, the border between India and Burma permanently tore asunder tribes, cultures and languages in the North East. The book traces India’s historical entanglement with Burma—a connection that is explored through the strategic lens—but never through culture, memory and loss.
The book will be published by Juggernaut.