Meira Chand

NRI novelist Meria Chand awarded Singapore’s most
prestigious arts accolade

Los Angeles, Dec 06, 2023
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

NRI novelist Meira Chand has been honoured with the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s most prestigious arts accolade, in support of her artistic pursuits.

Born to Swiss-Indian parents, Chand, 81, is the first English-language female writer to be awarded the Medallion since Ho Minfong in 1997, She received the award from President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, along with fellow novelist Suchen Christine Lim and Malay dance veteran Osman Abdul Hamid, at a ceremony held at the Istana on December 5.

The award, which comes with a SG$80,000 grant for each recipient, is an initiative by late president and then Minister of Culture, Ong Teng Cheong.

As an award-winning novelist, Chand is known for their depiction of multicultural societies, and her book, ‘The Painted Cage’, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Her writing career began in India where she lived for five years and described it as “a life changing experience”.

Speaking further of her India experience, Chand writes on her website: “For the first time in my life, I met a half of myself I had never known. There was simply no way I could understand that experience, but through writing”.

Her novels, ‘House of the Sun’, ‘A Far Horizon’, and ‘The Pink White and Blue Universe’, are a reflection of her time in India, and the indelible effect of the country upon her,

About Meira

• Born in London to a Swiss mother and Indian father, Meira grew up and was educated in the UK. She studied art at Central St Martin’s.
• In 1962 she went with her Indian husband to Japan, where she taught art at an international school.
• Leaving Japan for Mumbai in 1971, she lived for five years in India, where she began writing. India, she says, was a life changing experience. ‘For the first time in my life, I met a half of myself I had never known.
• There was simply no way I could understand that experience, but through writing.’ Two novels, House of the Sun (1989), and A Far Horizon (2001), and a soon to be published collection of short stories, The Pink White and Blue Universe, are a reflection of her time in India, and the indelible effect of the country upon her.
• After returning to Japan in 1976, she wrote her first novel, The Gossamer Fly (1979), followed by four further novels about Japan, Last Quadrant (1981), The Bonsai Tree (1983), The Painted Cage (1986), and A Choice of Evils (1996).
• Two more novels, A Different Sky (2010) and Sacred Waters (2018), were written after she left Japan to live in Singapore in 1997.
• The hugely successful Singapore stage production, LKY The Musical, about the life of the country’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, was based on a story she wrote.
• Meira is now a Singaporean citizen and regards the country as home.
• She was born and grew up in South London.
• Her mother, Norah Knoble was of Swiss origin, and her Indian father, Habans Lal Gulati came to London in 1919 to study medicine.
• He was Britain's first Indian GP, a pioneer of early NHS services and the Socialist Medical Association, and first Indian Labour member of the London County Council for South Battersea, standing as a parliamentary candidate.
• She attended Putney High School and later studied art at St Martin's School of Art & Design and Hammersmith Art School.
• In 1962 she married Kumar Chand, and went with him to live in the Kobe/Osaka region of Japan.
• In 1971 she relocated with her husband and two children to Mumbai in India, but returned to Japan in 1976.
• She remained in Japan until 1997 when she moved to Singapore, where she now permanently lives, becoming a Singapore citizen in 2011.
• She has an MA in creative writing from Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia, and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Western Australia.