N. Mazumdar, an engineer. One of three children (she had a sister and a brother), she was barely ten years old at Independence and the subsequent partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. That event, as is the subject of national and personal independence, is a recurrent theme of her writing. Although the Mazumdar family spoke German and Hindi at home, Desai's short stories in English span the pre-and post-Independence eras, starting when she was seven (publishing her first story at the age of nine) and continuing to the present in anthologies and periodicals, including
Thought,
Envoy,
Writers Workshop,
Quest,
Indian Literature, and
Harper's Bazaar. She received her early education at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School in New Delhi, and then at Miranda House, Delhi University, where she received a B.A. with honors in English literature in 1957. In December of the following year she married Ashvin Desai, a businessman, and together they have raised four children: Rahul, Tani, Arjun, and Kiran (who is now a novelist in her own right).
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