Nandita C Puri was born in Calcutta and spent her early childhood in boarding school in the former French colony of Chandernagore. She studied in Calcutta and Bombay, majoring in English Literature and worked as a writer and journalist with several newspapapers like The Telegraph, The Statesman,The Times Of India, The Reader’s Digest and others. For nearly a decade she wrote one of the most popular weekly film column on cinema for Mid-Day (Potpuri) and India’s largest circulated daily, Dainik Bhaskar (Khaas Chehre). She has also worked as a broadcast journalist for All India Radio and Radio Network (with former BBC Chief Mark Tully) in Calcutta. She has written for television and feature films, having penned a typical Bollywood commercial film called Mera Dil Leke Dekho (2006) apart from a number of documentaries and shorts. However, her collection of short stories, Nine On Nine (published by Rupa & Co.in 2005) has been critically acclaimed and well received. It has gone into many editions and has also been translated in German at the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair. Besides one of the stories has been included in the Sahetya Akademi Anthology of Indian writers. Filmmaker, Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Graduate, and Catch 22) wrote about nine on nine, “Nine on nine is fascinating because it is funny and full of life, the writing is a mixture of compassion and toughness, and it is really political writing in the highest sense. The closest I can compare this book is to Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.
In 2010 Nandita published the biography, Unlikely Hero: Om Puri, which has been on the best sellers’ list and translated in several Indian languages including, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi and Marathi. The following year Nandita published her debut novel, Two Worlds (Rupa & Co), a historical romance spanning two centuries and several continents. The book was launched at the jaipur Lit Fest in the presence of Orhan Pahmuk. It was on the best sellers’ list for several weeks. Nandita Puri has been a member of the script committee of NFDC (National Film Development Corporation) and CFSI (Children’s Film Society of India) as well as a TEDx Speaker.
In 2017 she lauched the Om Puri Foundation at the 70th Cannes Film Festival in memory of her husband, internationally acclaimed actor Om Puri to carry his legacy and philosophy ahead. Currently she chairs the Om Puri Foundation. Nandita has been working and researching on the sensitive subject of “international child trafficking” and “inter country adoption” since more than three years now through the personal story of Jennifer Haynes. The book, Jennifer’s Story, is being published by Rupa Publications. She has also completed the screenplay, Homeless / Jenny Hoover (working title) based on her book Jennifer’s Story. Twitter-@Nandita_Puri
Men are working, women are working, and women are working more. The proportion of women in bastion like engineering, army and other women were negligible 20 years ago. Now it has increased to around 5% to 6%, which, I think, is not much. There was always a postman but not a postwoman. It's embedded in our minds. For a long time, bus drivers, truck drivers, train drivers were men, and still, they are women who found their place in these sectors but still, it's not satisfactory. The idea is to make the environment more women-friendly to find their way through.
“'Jennifer' recounts the genuine story of a young girl who was trafficked to America under the misrepresentation of adoption. The story begins with an Indian American named Jennifer in prison. Later in fast judicial hearing, she is extradited back to India for having no papers affirming her to be an American. Stunned and alone in a peculiar land, she battles to make a life for herself. Whenever you're snared as an individual, you hear her frightening history, of how she was shipped off America for adoption and how she was eliminated from the two families for sexual abuse and afterward how she get stuck in the American child care framework. With few possibilities, she begins hustling to procure and when she's gotten, she's shipped off India without wanting to, abandoning two kids. The book is both holding and instructive. Utilizing basic words, I tried to catch the chaotic ride of feelings Jennifer felt as she carried on with her life, with delicate experiences on how a few occurrences would shape her. Scattered in the first half are some instructive sections on global adoption laws and the historical backdrop of youngster dealing. They're not excessively long and assist with giving context to the story, rather than removing the concentration from it. The book is really interesting and offers a decent investigative view of how some more hopeless parts of the world work.”