Right Brained Renegades
Writers & Musicians

Dom Moraes (Class of 1947)
Author & Journalist

Dom penned his first poem at the age of 12 and at 19 published his first book of poems A Beginning, which won the Hawthornden Prize for the best work of the imagination in 1958. He remains the first non-English and also the youngest person to win this prize. 
In 1960, his second book of verse became the Autumn Choice of the Poetry Book Society. 
In 1965 came his third book of verse John Nobody. In 1983, he published a privately printed book of poems Absences and in 1987 came Collected Poems. One of his books is Mrs Gandhi, a biography of former prime minister Indira Gandhi. He has edited magazines in London, Hong Kong and New York, been a war correspondent, served a United Nations body, and scripted and partially directed over 20 television documentaries for the BBC and ITV.
      

Maxim Mazumdar (Class of 1967)
Dramatist & Playwright

Maxim immigrated to Canada in 1969. He studied at Loyola (now Concordia University) in Montreal before co-founding the Phoenix Theatre in Montreal, in 1972. While with Phoenix he directed and acted, notably in works by Noel Coward. And in his own one-man works especially Oscar Remembered about the flamboyant Irish writer Oscar Wilde. It was a runaway success, produced internationally, on television. He subsequently took the play to the United States and across Canada, including the Stratford Festival ). 
After leaving Phoenix, he spent some time in New York City in the late 1970s. Maxim worked extensively with the Alleyway Theatre company in Buffalo, NY. The annual playwrighting competition there is named in his honor. In 1979 he returned to Canada and founded the Stephenville Festival where he continued to direct until his death in Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 28, 1988 

Ricardo de Mello (Class of 1968)
Musician & "Prankster"

In 1974, Ricardo participated in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and a year later at the International Festival of Music in Munich. Then in 1975 he moved to Hong Kong and joined the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra the following year.
His chamber musician experiences began with playing alongside his violinist father, who was also a member of the Orchestra. In 1975, the duo performed throughout Hong Kong, specialising in Romantic and Gypsy music.
Ricardo de Mello has continued this tradition of playing Romantic and popular music and performs with the Melody Quintet,
which he formed in 1982. The Quintet is versatile, traveling to Japan for two consecutive summers in the 1980s for performances at the Tokyo Hilton, augmenting the ensemble to a 30-piece group for the Vienna Opera Ball for the Prime Minister of Austria in 1992.
The Quintet has also given a Hong Kong Arts Festival concert at the Government House Hong Kong in 1994, and formed a 60-piece symphony orchestra for a Ford Motor Car Company concert at the Grand Hyatt Ballroom in 1993. American Express presented a special feature, "Around the World in Eighty Minutes with the Melody Quintet" at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts.
Ricardo loves sailing, so it's natural that he has performed on many passenger lines, including the Canberra, Fairstar, Sagafjord, the Royal Princess during her maiden voyage, and several times on board the QE2, in the majestic ballroom. In February of 1994,
he was the only Asian entertainer to perform as a Cabaret Artist on the world tour of the P&O's Sea Princess, alongside Irish comedian Tom O'Conner. In 1997, he performed on board the Crystal Symphony during a three-week cruise from San Francisco to Alaska.
Two of his most memorable performances on land include performing at the Great Hall of Moscow back in the 1970s and for the then US President Bill Clinton in 1998, during his visit to Hong Kong.

Derek Julien (Class of 1963)
Musician

Was very active in athletics right throughout. That slowly but surely took a back seat as involvement with guitar playing became the driving force. Was serious about a career in athletics till that happened
Actually became a professional musician in 1967 at the ripe age of seventeen. Now at the age of sixty am still with my first love.  
Music has taken me to many parts of the world. In 1969 went to play in Africa in what is now war-torn Somalia, Mogadishu, to be precise. It was a very lovely place then, specially for someone brought up in the city. Got to see a lot of the country as within a few months of being there got to meet and work with a very interesting Englishman (this in addition to fulfilling my music commitments). Apart from being the personal pilot of the then prime minister of Somalia he was also in partnership with two other gentlemen (one of whom was the famous actor William Holden) in an animal export business.
Having always been into animals this was a dream come true. Got to go on safari and catch various kinds of deer, gerenuk, waterbuck, some of the smaller cats etc. (generally the less dangerous of the bunch). No doubt this was profitable to someone but there was also the purpose to sustain what was even then many dwindling species. Left the heavier beasts to the hardcore trappers who would supply us with the cheetah, leopards and lions.
Actually this story is a whole very entertaining section in itself, best left for another time. 
On returning to India picked up right where I left off in the music scene here. Moved around a bit and mid ’71 joined what was to become one of India’s legendary progressive rock bands, Waterfront. This was a career leap musically/artistically but by no means financially. Yet it was a life experience I would gladly do again (except this time I would try to make more money).
Toured Europe for a year with this band (yet another story in itself) and on return to India continued till the late ‘70’s.
Then as is with the cycle of life one slowly starts to settle down, start a family, only to get slung into another upheaval (only kidding, couldn’t resist that). 
I am a very happily married man with a wife and daughter who are my whole world, well most of it anyway. I married my onetime classmate’s sister (Maria nee Samson and our daughter is Danielle. We have celebrated thirty one years of being married, so far. 
The end of the same year we were married we moved to Pune, which was beautiful. We just had to escape Bombay, except Pune has become pretty much a shithole now. (Patrick you can edit out this comment but this is how I feel) 

To cut short what could be a very long story suffice it to say my music horizons have expanded to cover performing, programming, producing, studio work and am now
 considering workshops on the finer aspects of guitar playing and product promotion.
 
Tune in for the next episode in the year 2030.

Andre de Quadros (Class of 1969)
Musician

André studied the violin from an early age and then studied conducting at the Bombay School of Music under the
distinguished German conductor, Joachim Buehler. Further postgraduate studies took place at La Trobe University, at the University of Melbourne, at the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst “Mozarteum” in Salzburg with a prestigious DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship, and in conducting at the Victorian College of the Arts, with the Rumanian conductor Robert Rosen.
André has conducted almost all of the major large choral works including Bach St Matthew Passion, Handel Messiah, Berlioz Te Deum, Bernstein Chichester Psalms, the Requiems of Mozart, Brahms and Verdi and Orff Carmina Burana in a special Orff centenary performance supported by the German Orff Foundation.
In 1994 and 1997, he appeared as a guest conductor at the Japan International Youth Music Festival and has conducted in Australia, India, Belgium, the UK, Scandinavia, Canada, the United States of America, Russia, Germany, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia.
He is widely regarded as an important figure in the world of multicultural choral music. In 1993 he was made an Advisor to and in 1999 was elected as a member of the Board of the International Federation for Choral Music. He edits two series of intercultural choral pieces, with Earthsongs in the USA entitled Music of Asia and the Pacific and with Warner-Chappell Music Australia.
He is the Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Festival of Choirs.

André is currently the  Professor of Music and Chair, Department of Music Education, Boston University, USA. 

Chris Desa (Class of 1971)
Musician & Maritime Captain

Chis started to play the piano at the age of 4 and then learnt guitar at 13. Music was always a major passion and over the years, Chris learnt to play 14 instruments, the most recent of which is the “autoharp”. Singing and playing guitar (6 and 12 string) during my sailing days in the merchant marine as well as writing his own songs has been his favorite pastime as well as performing concerts and jamming with other like minded and talented musicians, more particularly in the South East USA, Savannah GA where he lives since 1992.

Chris has been a regular at the Annual Savannah Folk festival for the past 15 years or more,  as well at several local venues like the monthly talent showcase, First Friday for Folk Music as well as for the 'Tree of Light" celebrations.

He is also a regular on the local radio station www.WRHQ.com  where he is featured quite often on their Second Sunday and at church functions, masses and weddings which gives him great pleasure to share his talent........which is appreciated by the congregation

Chris has over 37 years experience in the Maritime Industry and has held Senior Management positions both on board merchant ships for nearly 12 years, as well as the past 25 years ashore in many diversified fields, both Maritime and non-Marine related to Safety, Quality and Environmental Management operations. He was Master of India’s largest oil tanker VLCC MT. KANCHENJUNGA, which suffered an aerial missile attack in the Iran / Iraq war while fully laden with a cargo of 270,000 tons of crude oil. Despite extensive damage to the vessel’s navigating bridge and other vital systems disabled, as well as, a major fire in the fore peak store, the vessel was brought to safety under his able direction and leadership, without any salvage / external assistance

He is a “Fellow” of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers (FICS), “Member” of the Chartered Institute of Transport & Logistics (MCILT), the American Society of Quality (ASQ) as well as numerous other professional bodies in North America and abroad. Since his move to the USA in end 1992, he has been very actively involved in the areas of Maritime Quality, Safety and Environment Protection, Risk Management, Regulatory Compliance issues (USA, Canada and International), ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems, IMO’s International Safety Management Code (ISM Code) and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90).

Currently Chris has his own independent Maritime Safety and Quality Consulting company since 1997 and provides consulting services to major industry players on a worldwide basis

Dr Manil Suri (Class of 1974)
Author & Mathematics Professor

Manil Suri grew up in Bombay, India. He graduated with a Ph.D. in mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University and is a professor in the Mathematics Department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. His field of research is Numerical Analysis, and he has been an editor of the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis. His research in finite elements has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
His first English-language fiction, The Seven Circles, was published on Valentine's Day, 2000 in the New Yorker. The Death of Vishnu, his first novel, was released in 2001 by W.W. Norton in the USA, Bloomsbury in the UK and has appeared in 26 foreign-language editions. It has won several awards, including the Barnes and Noble Discover prize (US), the McKittrick Award (UK), and the Ralph Heyne Corrine Buchpreis (Germany).
He was named in 2000 as a "Person to Watch" by TIME magazine. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for the year 2004-2005. As of 2006, he is at work on his second novel, The Age of Shiva
 

Sohrab Homi Fracis (Class of 1974)
Author

Sohrab Homi Fracis is the first Indian author to win the Iowa Short Fiction Award, described by the New York Times Book Review as "among the most prestigious literary prizes America offers." 
In 1999, he was awarded the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature/Fiction. His collection, Ticket to Minto: Stories of India and America, was selected as a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction that year. In 2001, the book won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was published by the University of Iowa Press, to glowing reviews. It is now being read in several university literature classrooms. In 2002, he was awarded a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. 
After Campion Sohrab attended IIT, Kharagpur, and followed up with an MCE at the University of Delaware. After several years as a programmer-analyst contracted to Fortune 100 companies such as Ford Motor Company in Detroit, he heard his calling to become a writer. He studied for an MA. in English, with a concentration in creative writing, at the University of North Florida. Since then he has taught literature and creative writing at UNF, passing on his knowledge and experience to aspiring writers  

Rahul Mehrotra (Class of 1974)
Architect, Professor & Author

Rahul Mehrotra is an architect and urban designer trained at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.  He has been in private practice since 1990, and works on architecture, urban design and conservation projects. He has built extensively in India, and besides several single family houses , his projects include the Laxmi Machine Works Corporate Office in Coimbatore, an Extension to the Prince of Wales Museum in Bombay, an Institute for Rural development in Tulzapur, the Restoration of the Chowmahalla Palace in Hyderabad, and he is currently developing (with the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative) the Master Plan for the Taj Mahal and its surroundings. From 1994 to 2006, Professor Mehrotra was the Executive Director of the Urban Design Research Institute, which promotes awareness and research on the city of Bombay.He is now a Trustee of the Institute. He has written several books on Bombay, including ‘Bombay, the Cities Within’ and has lectured extensively on urban design, conservation and architecture in India. He also serves on several government committees that are responsible for historic preservation and the conservation as well as creation of public spaces in Bombay. Rahul Mehrotra teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is an associate professor.

Mark Pinto de Menezes (Class of 1974)
Musician

Mark the Drummer Boy started his musical career in the early 80's with Crosswinds (Ehsaan Noorani, Sanjay Divecha, Jayu Menon & Jeet Das). He then joined the legendary Rock Machine which subsequently re-christened itself Indus Creed. After several gigs on the international circuit Mark decided to settle down in Hong Kong where he produces, plays and teaches music 

Mark Selwyn (Class of 1974)
Musician

MS (Mark Selwyn) the bassist was the co-founder of Indus Creed. 

Firdaus Kanga (Class of 1974)
Author & Dramatist

Novelist and performer Firdaus Kanga's semi-autobiographical novel Trying to Grow (1994) was turned into the award-winning film Sixth Happiness for which he not only wrote the screenplay but also played the lead role.
He has presented a number of documentaries on the themes of disability, such as Double the Trouble, Twice the Fun a provocative documentary drama that explored sex between gay men and lesbians who have disabilities. The film was broadcast on 15 July 1992 as part of Channel Four's lesbian and gay series Out (1991-94). 

Rajdeep Sardesai (Class of 1981)
Journalist

After completing his BA (Hons) in Economics from St Xaviers College, Mumbai Rajdeep attended University College, Oxford where he did his MA and LLB. On his return he joined the Times of India as City Editor and Head, News Service.
Then in 1994 he joined New Delhi Television (NDTV) as a Political Editor. Since 1996 he has been the Anchor for live Election coverage of national and state polls; travelled and reported from USA, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh. Currently Rajdeep is the Host and Political Commentator, NDTV. He is a member of the Population Council; Press Club of India.
 

Sanjay Maroo (Class of 1981)
Musician

Twenty years after graduating from Campion Sanjay has matured into a one-man-band - Percussionist, Composer, Lyricist, Producer, and Vocalist. He has had the distinction of playing with two of the otherwise few Indian English original music bands, the Les Boys and later Rock Machine (Indus Creed)
In 1994 he was a member of Divya, India’s premier Indo-Jazz fusion band and performed at major International Jazz festivals such as the 25th Tokyo Jazz Festival, the Malaysian Jazz festival, The Jazz Club Hong Kong etc. alongside Jazz Greats such as Giovanni Hidalgo, Dave Valentin, Ernie Watts and Eric Marienthal.
He has composed, produced and performed in his own Pop albums “Fountain of Love”, “Tu Hi Tu” and the self-titled “Maroo”.
Now in 2005 his latest album Chaley Jaaon an album marking Maroo’s comeback has been acclaimed as one of the best pieces of work from Indi-Pop artists and this album is the first of it’s kind from India to be released on the Internet for digital downloads.

Anuj Timblo (Class of 1995)
Musician

While studying Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin and Jazz Guitar with renowned sessions guitarist, Russell Scanlon, Anuj Timblo, guitarist, songwriter and composer, founded one of America’s up and coming “buzz” groups - Pieces of East. In just one year of the group’s conception, he co-produced their groundbreaking debut album, “Shadow Box”, with legendary producer Mark Hallman (Carole King, Ani DiFranco) which received both popular support and critical acclaim from fans and press nationwide.
David Lynch of Austin’s most popular weekly, the Austin Chronicle, hails Pieces of East as “a veritable supergroup” while Madalyn Sklar, president of grassroots music community, Go Girls Music says, “Pieces of East delivers the best groove/pop I’ve ever heard.“
Notable Achievements and Performances include being presented the Austin Music Award two years in a row at the South by Southwest Music Festival for Best World Band in 2003 and 2004 appearing with Willie Nelson, Patty Griffin, Eric Johnson and many other world famous artists. The group was also nominated in several categories including Best Rock, Best Pop and Best None-of-the-Above Band standing second to recent sensations Los Lonely Boys
Anuj has Performed with diverse acts such as Grammy nominated virtuoso guitarist Eric Johnson, Terry Bozzio from Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, billboard-charting singer/songwriter Patrice Pike as well as the Tosca String Quartet from David Byrne's 2004-05 tour.
His group has also been invited to several national music conferences and festivals that include South Park Music Festival (Fairplay, CO), Nemo Music Festival (Boston, MA), Northgate Music Festival (College Station, TX), Go Girls Music Showcase (Houston, TX), Ladyfest, TX (Austin, TX), Midwest Entertainment Conference (Lexington, KY) and Pecan Street Festival (Austin, TX). Pieces of East has appeared on Fox TV, WQNA The Edge, KUT, and CBS.
Anuj and Pieces of East are currently touring the nation, exponentially building the buzz in cities such as Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta and St. Louis.
 

Visit Anuj's Official Website : www.piecesofeast.com