Born in 1960 in village Banadakoppa in Karnataka, India, I have been translating Vyasa's Mahabharata since 1997. I am currently working at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. I am a Demographer/Social Scientist by training, with a PhD in Demography from Bombay University. I have also completed my postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA.

I have served in India as a Lecturer at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai; and as the Director, Population Research Centre, JSS Institute of Economic Research, Dharwad. As an independent consultant to the University of Manitoba, I worked in India as Director, Monitoring and Evaluation; Director, Project Sukshema; and as Project Director, Uttar Pradesh Technical Support Unit.