Mrinal Pande was born, the daughter of well-known Hindi writer Shivani, in Tikamgarh, a small town in Madhya Pradesh. Her education took place in Nainital, in the hill of Uttar Pradesh, and at Allahabad University, where she earned her Master in English.

Her first published work was a short story in Hindi, in 1967, when she was twenty-one.

Later, she also studies classical Indian music, and the history of art and design (at the Corcoran School of art in Washington DC) and taught at various Indian universities before turning her attention to journalism.

Since then, she has been columnist, broadcaster and television presenter and written several collections of short stories, novels and plays including The Daughter's Daughter, published by Mantra in UK and Penguin in India.

Mrinal Pande is the executive editor of the Hindi daily Hindustan. She is married and has two daughters, and lives with her husband in New Delhi.

Back of the Book

Writer and journalist Mrinal Pande sees in strong passionate women who defy the strictures of a male-dominated world, shades of the Goddess. There were many such women in her life, women who succeeded beyond the expectations of men. First, there was her forceful mother, the writer Shivani. Then came Badi Amma, the most colourful woman in this book, her domineering, intellectual aunt. There were the friends who silently lived lives of emotional deprivation till they opted out of the world altogether. There were women who made the news-among them prostitutes, activists and reformers. And there were also the women who preyed on men, in conscious contempt of their vulnerability in the grip of sexual passion. In all these women, the writer sees the original Devi, created by the Gods to quell the forces of evil that they had themselves failed to contain, but quickly dismissed by them once victory was theirs.

But the Devi keeps coming back in a myriad manifestations of herself, sorrowing, vengeful, but always the prime mover in the lives of men through the ages.

Contents:

Preface 
The Warrior Goddess
The Shailputri
More Tales of the Goddess
Saraswati
The Children of Saraswati
Laxmi
The Earth Mother
The Earth Goddess Transmutes
The Village Goddesses
The Dark Shaktis
Five Memorable Ones
Epilogue

Of Related Interest :

Every Woman a Goddess - The Ideals of Indian Art

A Kali in Every Woman: Motherhood and the Dark Goddess

Shakti - Power and Femininity in Indian Art

Durga - Narrative Art of an 'Independent' Warrior Goddess

Lakshmi and Saraswati - Tales in Mythology and Art

Dharti Mata(Mother Earth)

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