P. Lal Lessons

Purushottama Lal (1929 - 2010), born in Punjab India, was a poet, essayist, translator, professor and publisher. He was the founder and publisher of Writers Workshop in Calcutta. He studied English at the St Xavier's College, and later at the University of Calcutta. He would later teach at St. Xavier's College for over forty years. P. Lal was an honorary Professor of English at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta and Special Professor of Indian Studies at Hofstra University from 1962-3, and held Visiting Professorships at many colleges and universities throughout America. He married Shyamasree Devi in 1955. Under the name of P. Lal, he wrote eight books of poetry, over a dozen volumes of literary criticism, a memoir, several books of stories for children, as well as dozens of translations from other languages, chiefly Sanskrit, into English. He is known as the translator into English of the entire Indian epic poem Mahabharata. His translation. His Mahabharata is the most complete in any language, comprising all the slokas included in all recensions of the work. His translation of the Mahabharata is characteristically both poetic and swift to read. His translations from Sanskrit have included a number of other religious works, including 21 of the Upanisads, as well as plays and lyric poetry Since his founding of Writers Workshop, he had published over 3000 volumes by Indian literary authors, mostly in the English language, including poetry, fiction, educational texts, screenplays, drama, "serious comics," and children's books, as well as audiobooks. Writers Workshop has published first books by many authors who went on to fame, including Vikram Seth, Pritish Nandy and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. His publishing enterprise is unusual in that he personally serves as publisher, editor, reader, secretary, and editorial assistant. The books are also unique in appearance, being hand-typeset on local Indian presses, and bound in hand-loomed sari cloth.