Vikram Chandra (novelist) Age, Caste, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More

 Some Lesser Known Facts About Vikram Chandra

• Vikram Chandra is an Indian-American writer who has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for his first novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain in 1996.

• He began writing his first novel while studying at Columbia University. At the University of California, Berkeley, and George Washington University, he started teaching literature and writing as a lecturer after 1987. During his college days at Columbia University, he also served as a computer programmer and software and hardware advisor. As a computer programmer, his clients were the oil companies, non-profit organizations, and the Houston Zoo. His first novel was published by Penguin/India in India. Soon, it was also released by Faber and Faber in the UK and by Little, Brown in the United States. Vikram Chandra got the inspiration to write his first novel from the autobiography of James Skinner – the Irish Raja of Hansi in Haryana. James Skinner was the legendary 19th-century Anglo-Indian soldier.

• Vikram Chandra released his second book in 1997, which was a collection of short stories and the title of the book was Love and Longing in Bombay. It was honoured with the title best book in the Eurasia region soon after the release of the book. In 1996, it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Later, it was also nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

• Sacred Games was published by Vikram Chandra in 2006. It was his second novel. The main character of the novel Sartaj Singh, a policeman, was already a character of his second book named Love and Longing in Bombay. Reportedly, the leading publishers in India, UK and the US bid high for publishing his book Sacred Games.                         

• ‘Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty,’ the book that was written by Vikram Chandra was on the final nomination list of the National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) in 2013.                                                                                          

• Vikram Chandra’s famous novel Sacred Games was adapted into a Netflix web series in 2018.

• the New Yorker featured Vikram Chandra as India’s leading novelist on their cover page in June 1997. Vikram Chandra’s books and articles have been translated into 20 languages. In 2015, Vikram Chandra earned the Guggenheim Fellowship. Vikram Chandra established Granthika Corporation in California, which is a software venture in 2016. To re-invent writing and reading on a digital platform, the site of the venture enables the access of writing tools from word processing. The writers can use this online editing platform where they can create knowledge and transform that into text and convert that into semantics. ^[2]Granthika

• In October 2000, for the movie Mission Kashmir, Vikram Chandra wrote the story of the movie Mission Kashmir along with Suketu Mehta. Hrithik Roshan, along with Sanjay Dutt, Preity Zinta, and Jackie Shroff were in the star cast of the movie that was directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra.
  

  A poster of the film Mission Kashmir

• Vikram Chandra’s mother, Kamna Chandra, is the famous television and radio writer of the 1950s. Vikram Chandra’s mother is a writer in Hindi films and scriptwriter in radio plays telecasted on Doordarshan and All India Radio. The stories of the movies like Prem Rog and 1942: A Love Story were written by Kamna Chandra.

• Vikram Chandra’s sister, Tanuja Chandra, is a Hindi film director and scriptwriter who has scripted the movies like Sur and Sangharsh.

• The script of the famous Indian movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was written by the other sister of Vikram Chandra named Anupama Chopra. The book ‘Sholay: The Making of a Classic’ was also written by Anupama Chopra. She has also received the Swarn Kamal national award for the best book on cinema in 1995.

• At the age of fifteen, Chandra started reading books written by modernist authors. The book that had a symbolic impact on his mind was “The Great Gatsby.” In a conversation with a media house, he stated,
  

  Once I started reading [the Modernists], I realized they were doing things to me that I didn’t understand. Reading “The Great Gatsby” at age 15 in India, I knew nothing — I had no context for it, social or symbolic — and it still blew me away, it was so beautiful.”

• Most of the writing ideas that hit Vikram Chandra’s mind were flashed in the shower. In a conversation with a media house, he revealed that his daughters always worried that how he took so long in the shower. He said,
  

  Write it down once I’m out. A shower is actually my most productive work area! It introduces this meditative, calm state that lets you explore. Sometimes problems just click in the shower. My daughters get so annoyed with me! They grumble about how ‘Dad takes such long showers!”

• According to Vikram Chandra, his name was mostly mistaken with the name of NDTV CEO Vikram Chandra. He shared an incident when his name was confused with NDTV’s CEO,
  

  I do get emails from time to time congratulating or cursing me for some interview with a politician. And Vikram – the other one – told my sister that he once had a guest on his show congratulate him for winning an award for Love and Longing in Bombay.”

• Vikram Chandra is an addictive reader. In an interview, he stated,
  

  I cannot imagine not reading…the smell of the book, the anticipation of reading it… I am an addictive reader. Reading a good book is as pleasurable as eating chocolate. Writing is pleasurable but it is work. I’m a reclusive writer down to my bones.”

  His favourite writers are,

  R K Narayan, Jim Corbett, Anita Desai and Salman Rushdie. I love Amitav Ghosh’s writings and Arundhati Roy‘s God of Small Things.”