Dr. Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) is one of the leading writers of the India today. She has won the Jnanpith Award for the year 2000, which is the highest literary award of India today. She belongs to the family of Sattra adhikars (Head of Vaisnava monastery) of South Kamrup in Assam. Her father, Late Uma Kanta Goswami, was an economist, who worked as the Director of Public Instruction of the Government of Assam. Indira did her schooling in Guwahati and Shillong. She has written eighteen novels, and several hundreds of short stories. Her novels and short stories have been translated into many Indian and Foreign languages. She tries to write from her direct experiences of her life. She only moulds her experiences with her imagination. Her language is like a velvet dress by which she endeavors to cover the restless soul in its journey through existence. But however hard, she might try, the fabric of this dress seldom takes on the texture of velvet or fine Muslim, and it comes out rather tattered. Sometimes they feel that it is a futile effort to arrest the soul with language and capture it in cold print. It is better, perhaps to feel it only in numb science. But, then, those very experiences impel a person to unload them from the psyche by creative effort which gives a sort of relief. And, the tattered fabric has a beauty which puts to shame the finest of velvets.
