Venita Coelho
Venita Coelho is an Indian writer, director and artist and currently lives in Goa. Coelho is credited with having made a mark for herself in children's literature, besides film and television. Birth, education. Born in Dehra Dun, which today lies in Uttarakhand, Coelho grew up and was educated in Kolkatta (then Calcutta), where she attended St. Xavier's College. She later moved to Mumbai (Bombay), and did her diploma in social communications media at the Sophia College there. Career: media and books. After working in film and television for over a decade as writer-director-producer, she  re-located to Goa. She is now the author of seven published books, including "Dead As A Dodo", which won "The Hindu"/Good Reads award for best fiction for children 2016. In films and TV. Her career in television started as an intern at UTV in Mumbai. She has since written, produced and directed shows. She quit her decade long career in television when the "saas-bahu" genre became dominant. Coelho has said, "I couldn’t bring myself to do that to other women. Put out as a role model a heroine who only suffers endlessly." She returned to television to  work on the show, "Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin" (an adaptation of "Betty La Fea") which ran counter to the dominant narrative style of television to tell the story of an ugly underdog. For Indian television her writing credits include the series "Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha", "Amma and Family", "Avishkar", "Jungli Toofan Tyre Puncture", "Trikaal" and "Head Over Heels". She has also written and directed telefilms -- "Wild Rose", "Picnic" and "The Lost Son". She gets co-writing credits on the Story/Screenplay for "Musafir" and the Adaptation and Screenplay credits for "We Are Family". For Malaysian television she  wrote "Idaman". Her work for television in Singapore includes the telefilm, "Angel", and the series "Anything Goes", "Rojak", "Bold and Bollywood", "Rehai" among others. She has been Vice President, New Product Development at Sony Entertainment Television; Vice President, Fiction Content, Endemol India; Vice President, Fiction Content, Nimbus and Creative Head, Cinevistaas Ltd. Coelho has written the daily soap "Trikaal" and Karan Johar's adaptation of Stepmom, We are Family. She also wrote the script for "Jassi Jaisa Koi Nahin" in 2003. In art. Coelho works in oils and acrylics on canvas and glass. She held her first solo exhibition titled  ‘The Naked Gaze’ in Goa in 2010. Columns and the media. She wrote a column for "The Indian Express" titled "The Tale of Two Cities" that covered the difference between lives in privileged South Mumbai and life beyond Bandra. Under the pseudonym "Hot Potato", she wrote a column for "The Indian Express" on the inner complications of working in the media. She wrote a series of short fictions in "The Asian Age" titled "Five Minute Fiction". Her column for "The Herald" ("O Heraldo") in Goa was called "The Accidental Activist", and chronicled her challenges as part of the Goa Bachao  Abhiyaan and the popular people's movement that protested a controversial Regional Plan for Goa.