Farrukh Dhondy

Farrukh Dhondy is a screenwriter, playwright, and writer. He is Indian-born British. He was born in Poona(Pune, India) in 1994 and completed his studies there. He went to The Bishop's School, Poona, and graduated from Savitribai Phule Pune University with BSc. Afterward, he received a scholarship from Pembroke College, Cambridge. In the beginning, he chose Natural Science to study, then he switched and pursued a degree in English in 1967. He pursued his master's degree from Leicester University. Later, he became a lecturer at Leicester College of Further Education and Archbishop Temple School in Lambeth in London.

Other than being a writer, Farrukh is a left-wing activist. In the beginning, he became part of the Indian Workers Association in Leicester. He was associated with left-wing and black intellectuals, such as Trevor Phillips and Stuart Halls. In 1979, he and his friend Darcus Howe and Late wife Mala Sen joined the Race Today(Publication) with the British Black Panthers as he found his writing abilities. The same period marks his very close friendship with author and Nobel Laureate V.S.Naipaul. Moving forward to his writing, he wrote biographies, textbooks, books for children, plays for theatre, scripts, and screenplay for films and television. He worked as Commissioning Editor at Channel Four from 1984 to 1997, for which he wrote a comedy series Tandoori Nights. Which also marked rivalry between two house owners.

In 2001, Farrukh wrote a biography of C.L.R.James. He wrote the screenplay of the Bollywood movie Mangal Pandey, which starred Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens, which turned out to be a blockbuster. His children's books include KBW, which was a young white boy's response to Anti- Bengali racism. In 2011, he published Rumi: A new translation, a translation of Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi's selected work; it was published in 2014. Also, he wrote the script for the short movie The K File in 2012. Subsequently, in 2013, his play Devdas was premiered in London, and afterward, globally, also he published his novel Prophet Of Love.

The activist and prominent writer have also received several awards, such as Whitbread Award in 1990 for his first novel, Bombay Duck. Fontana Award for Come to Mecca, Samuel Beckett Award for television play Romance. His work was also presented in Britain(1900-90) for children's fiction and Council's Literature Department. Farrukh Dhondy was received praise from the Political Magazine New Internationalist in its eminent "Final Page," which led to the revival of his lifelong campaign of recruiting more BAME talent for BBC. As a part of the Jaipur Literature Fair, he interviewed V.S. Naipaul in India and London, and its publishers produced his most remarkable work in an anthology. Currently, Farrukh resides in South East London.