  nayantara sahgal (; born 10 may 1927) is an indian writer in english. her fiction deals with india's elite responding to the crises engendered by political change; she was one of the first female indian writers in english to receive wide recognition. she is a member of the nehru family(and not the nehru-gandhi family as she clarifies often), the second of the three daughters born to jawaharlal nehru's sister, vijaya lakshmi pandit. she was awarded the 1986 sahitya akademi award for english, for her novel, rich like us (1985), by the sahitya akademi, india's national academy of letters. ==early life== her father ranjit sitaram pandit, was a successful barrister from kathiawad and classical scholar who translated kalhana's epic history rajatarangini into english from sanskrit. he was arrested for his support of indian independence and died in lucknow prison jail in 1944, leaving behind his wife and their three daughters chandralekha mehta, nayantara sehgal and rita dar.  sahgal attended a number of schools as a girl, given the turmoil in the nehru family during the last years (1935â47) of the indian freedom struggle. her father would later die in prison while nayantara and her sister chandralekha were overseas attending college. her uncle jawaharlal nehru too was in and out of prison, as a political prisoner, in the 1930s and 1940s. ultimately, she graduated from woodstock school in the himalayan hill station of landour in 1943 and later from wellesley college (ba, 1947), which she attended along with her sister chandralekha, who graduated 2 years earlier in 1945. she has made her home for decades in dehradun, a town close to landour where she had been in boarding school (at woodstock). ==marriage and career== sahgal, who has been married twice, first to gautam sehgal, later to e. n. mangat rai, a punjabi christian who was an indian civil service officer. rai died aged 87 in 2003 in dehradun, where nayantara and he had lived for several decades, in the house once owned by her mother. though part of the nehru family, sahgal developed
1927_births Indian_novelists Indian_women_writers Indian_writers Kashmiri_Pandits Kashmiri_people Living_people NehruaGandhi_family People_from_Dehradun Recipients_of_the_Sahitya_Akademi_Award_in_English Wellesley_College_alumni Women_novelists