Provost Karen Gould, Nalini and Uka Solanki, Manilal Mehta, Suketu Mehta
The Fifth Annual Uka and Nalini Solanki Foundation Lecture Series featured Suketu Mehta, renowned author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (Vintage 2005), The Solanki Lecture Series is an endowed lecture series created by Uka and Nalini Solanki in order to invite a distinguished individual to CSULB campus annually to discuss South Asia related topics. The lecture series is part of the generous endowment provided by the Uka and Nalini Foundation, which funded the Yadunandan Center for India Studies. The Center is named after Nalini Solanki’s great-great grandfather, who was an advocate of education in northern India. Previous guest speakers of the Solanki Lecture Series were Arvind Panagariya, Suniti Solomon, Richard Garnick and Sam Pitroda.
In Mehta’s lecture entitled “Dealing With Moral Complexity, or, What is a Writer’s Dharma?” he discussed the challenges writers face when incorporating moral complexities into their work as well as the difficulties of including personal experiences in their writing. He also openly debated the distinct differences between fiction and nonfiction from the writer’s viewpoint.
Suketu Mehta is an esteemed journalist and fiction novelist. His first book, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, won the Kiriyama Prize and allowed him to be a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. The award-winning writer has been published in New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Time and Condé Nast Traveler. Mehta was born in Calcutta and raised in Bombay and New York. He graduated from New York University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Lecturer Suketu Mehta pictured below
