About Me

While working on his magnum opus, Ulysses, the great Irish author James Joyce met a friend who asked him how the writing was going.

Joyce replied that he had been working all day and had produced two sentences.

“You have been seeking the mot juste?” asked his friend. “No,” said Joyce

“I have the right words. What I am seeking is their right order in the sentence.”

Hi, I’m Harish Alagappa

I believe in the power of ideas.

I believe that words, spoken or written, are how ideas manifest.

And when the right words find their right order, stories are born.

I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller.

I seek to find the right words and their right order.

My Beginnings

My journey as a writer began when I was around seven years old. I loved encyclopedias and would write entries for fictional countries and people I invented. As I grew older, I found myself capable of writing about real people, places, and things too.

Learning My Trade

As a high-school student, I won the Times of India News Makers’ Award in 2005 for my contributions to the Times of India NiE (Newspaper in Education) programme, which aimed to identify and highlight talented writers from high schools across India.

I studied Aerospace Engineering at university and won numerous writing competitions organized by some of India’s leading colleges and universities, including St. Stephen’s College, Lady Shri Ram College, IIT Kanpur, and IIT Delhi – where I won first prize for writing a one-act play with no dialogue.

I was the only student not majoring in sociology to make the all-India finals of the Young Sociologist of the Year essay competition at Christ University in Bangalore.

Published Work

I authored a short children’s book, 50 FAQs on Waste Management, published by TERI Press in 2014, which was distributed to schools across India.

I have contributed to two anthologies commissioned by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom: ‘The Decline and Fall of Indian Liberalism’ in What Does It Mean to Be a Liberal in India (2015); and ‘Old Country, New Ideas: How Liberal Is India’s Youth?’ in How Liberal Is India? (2019).