>Scorpions13256 at 15:21, 21 June 2021

2021-06-21T15:21:29Z

New page

{{Short description|Indian novelist and columnist}}
{{Infobox writer 
| name = Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen
| image =
| imagesize =
| caption =
| pseudonym =
| birth_date = {{birth year|1952}}
| birth_place = Chaibasa, [[Bihar]], [[India]]
| death_date = {{death year and age|1994|1952}}
| death_place =
| occupation = [[Freelancer|Freelance Journalist]]
| period =
| genre =
| subject =
| movement =
| signature =
| website =
}}

'''Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen''' (1952–1994) was an [[India]]n novelist and columnist.

==Early life==

She was born in [[Chaibasa]], [[Bihar]] in 1952 to a local coal-mine owner and had a privileged upbringing. She was educated at Loreto Convent School – a premier Catholic School in the nearby city of [[Jamshedpur]], before leaving India to continue her studies at [[Barnard College]], New York City.

==Personal life==
She was briefly married and was divorced, after which 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 remarried a tea-plantation owner of Tibetan origin and moved to an estate high above [[Darjeeling]] in the embattled north-eastern state of Assam.

She ran a hotel there and authored three novels: ''Daughters of the House'', ''Cranes' Morning'' (1993) and ''Hold My Hand, I'm Dying'', the last being published posthumously<ref>See: Khushwant Singh, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8w9VD1ILMewC&dq=indrani+Aikath-Gyaltsen+hold+my+hand&source=gbs_navlinks_s ''Women and Men in my Life''], 1995. As of 2013, the book was not available through such agencies as Amazon.</ref> after her [[suicide]].

==Mentorship of Khushwant Singh==

Indrani wrote to [[Khushwant Singh]], a famous Indian man-of-letters, who answered her letters as he did of many aspiring young Indian writers, encouraging her. She mailed her first novel to him chapter-by-chapter, and he mentioned her to [[David Davidar]], head of [[Penguin Books]] in India.

==Plagiarism scandal==
Soon after its publication, it became clear that her second novel, ''Cranes' Morning'', had been plagiarised from ''The Rosemary Tree'' by the English novelist [[Elizabeth Goudge]], which had been published in London by Hodder & Stoughton in 1956. Molly Moore of the Washington Post Foreign Service wrote: "Aikath-Gyaltsen recast the setting to an Indian village, changing the names and switching the religion to Hindu but often keeping the story word-for-word the same".<ref name=moore/> When the plagiarism was uncovered, ''Crane's Morning'' had been published by Penguin Books in India and Ballantine Books in the U.S. but not yet in the UK.<ref name=moore/>

==Suicide==

She died after consuming [[sodium phosphate]] ([[rat poison]]) in 1994 not long after the plagiarism was discovered.{{Citation needed|date=July 2020}} She had come back to her father's ancestral house where she was engaged in a contentious battle over property and assets against her own mother and sister, from whom she was estranged.{{Citation needed|date=July 2020}}

Khushwant Singh wrote about her in his book ''Women and Men in My Life'', which he dedicated to her.<ref>Khushwant Singh, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8w9VD1ILMewC&dq=indrani+Aikath-Gyaltsen+hold+my+hand&source=gbs_navlinks_s ''Women and Men in My Life''], 1995</ref>

==Novels==
* ''Daughters of the House'' (1992)
* ''Cranes' Morning'' (1993)
* ''Hold My Hand, I'm Dying'' (unknown)

==References==
{{reflist |refs=
<ref name=moore>
Molly Moore, [http://www.sawnet.org/news/aikath_gyaltsen.html "Plagiarism and mystery"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120812022351/http://www.sawnet.org/news/aikath_gyaltsen.html |date=2012-08-12 }}, Washington Post Foreign Service, 27 April 1994. Retrieved 2012-11-11.</ref>
}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aikath-Gyaltsen, Indrani}}
[[Category:1952 births|Gyaltsen]]
[[Category:1994 suicides|Gyaltsen]]
[[Category:People from West Singhbhum district|Gylatsen]]
[[Category:Indian women journalists]]
[[Category:Indian women novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian journalists]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian writers]]
[[Category:People involved in plagiarism controversies]]

Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen - Revision history

>Scorpions13256 at 15:21, 21 June 2021