Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen
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This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. (December 2008) |
| Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1952 Chaibasa, Bihar, India |
| Died | 1994 |
| Occupation | Freelance Journalist |
| Nationality | Indian |
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Influences
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Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen was a freelance journalist, & writer of Indian origin.
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[edit] Birth Circumstances & Early Life
Indrani who was born in Chaibasa, Bihar in 1952 to a local Coal-Mine Owner had a privileged up-bringing, sheltered from the abject poverty, corruption & hunger right outside the walls of her father's mansion. She was educated at Loretto's Convent School - a premier Catholic School in the nearby "Steel City" of Jamshedpur before leaving India to continue her studies at Barnard College at Columbia University.
[edit] Divorce & Re-Marriage
After her first divorce, she moved to Calcutta, where she was wooed by a succession of men, allegedly rejecting an Indian Army Officer because of "the Punjabi accent" of his spoken English. She ultimately re-married a Tea-Plantation owner of Tibetan origin & moved to the Estate, high above Darjeeling, in the embattled North-eastern state of Assam.
[edit] Relationship with Khushwant Singh
Indrani wrote to Khushwant Singh, a famous Indian Man-of-Letters, who answered her letters as he did of many aspiring young female authors, encouraging her. She mailed her first novel chapter by chapter to him, who mentioned her to David Davidar, the whiz-kid of Indian Publishing & head of Penguin Books , India.
She ran a hotel and authored three novels -- Daughters of the House, Crane's Morning and Hold My Hand, I'm Dying -- the last being published posthumously after her suicide.
[edit] Plagiarism Scandal
Her second novel, "Crane's Morning" was picked up by some elderly readers as having been plagiarized from the work of prolific romantic fiction writer Elizabeth Goudge. Many Tea Plantations in India have libraries accrued by previous British owners & managers, with forgotten works that had huge popularity in their hey-day - & this is how she probably came by a copy of Goudge's book - although what compelled her to plagiarize so hastily & with no apparent effort at concealement is a matter for speculation.
[edit] Suicide
Prior to her death by consuming Sodium Phosphate or Rat Poison - a common modus vivendi for female suicide in rural India, she had come back to her father's ancestral house - engaged in a contentious battle over property & assets against her own mother & sister. Inferentially, the suicide was a direct result of the media furor & "loss of face" she had experienced after she had been accused of plagiarizing Elizabeth Goudge's novel The Rosemary Tree[citation needed].
[edit] External links
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