Mridula Koshy Biography and latest books by Mridula Koshy

Mridula Susan Koshy (born 1969) is an Indian writer. She lives in New Delhi with her partner and her three children. She is the author of a collection of short stories If It Is Sweet. (Westland/Tranquebar, May 2009).

Koshy, who was born and raised in Delhi till the age of 15, migrated to the US in the 1980s. After graduating from Occidental College on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where US President Barack Obama studied, Koshy became a full-time trade union activist and a community organiser, apart from holding several small-time jobs, like waitress, backstage dresser and silver ware polisher.

Interestingly, she returned to Delhi four years ago and took to full-time writing. Her career as a trade union worker has a lot to with the stories - they are full of the sweat and grime of the city. The narration is punctuated with slogan-like graffiti, italicised excerpts and distortions of words to convey the regional identity of the characters.

Before returning to India, she worked as a trade union and community organiser in the US. Her stories have appeared in Wasafiri, Prairie Fire, The Dalhousie Review and Existere, as well as in anthologies in India, the UK and Italy. She is currently working on a novel.

She has been a cashier at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, swap-meet sales clerk, backstage dresser at fashion shows, waitress, polisher of silverware, writing adviser, a professional advocate of multiculturalism, a house painter, receptionist at a law firm, collator of tax forms, union organizer and community organizer.

If It Is Sweet  (Westland/Tranquebar, May 2009)

According to Mridula: the book "travels through the streets of Delhi picking on odd lives and the disavowed dramas that play themselves out on the stretch of the crowded BRT and in the adjoining residential neighbourhoods like Defence Colony, M-Block Market (of Greater Kailash I), Chirag Delhi flyover and Humayun\'s Tomb".