Purushottam Lai, a native of India and professor of English at the University of Calcutta, is an internationally recognized poet and scholar. In 1958 he founded the Writers Workshop of Calcutta, an association of writers committed to translating the best of Indian literature into English and to promoting English as a creative force in Indian writing. For the past twenty years, Professor Lai has edited the association’s scholarly journal, Miscellany. He has written and edited dozens of books, including works of his own poetry and translations of much of the sacred literature of India. His current task is a “transcreation” of one of the world’s longest epic poems, the Mahabharata. To date, he has published at least 132 volumes of the proposed 180-volume project.