As a child Menaka Raman used to write far-fetched stories about birthday parties, water parks and floating cake disasters. Since then, her life has been a series of fortunate events that led her far away from becoming a software engineer and set her back on the path of writing. She is a former advertising copywriter who chucked creating ads for plastic chairs and time share holidays to write about other things. She has been a newspaper columnist for over a decade now and enjoys working with non-profits. She is the author of nine picture books for children including Gappu Can’t Dance, Lenin’s Guests and I Love Me. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies published by Talking Cub, Scholastic India and Penguin UK. She lives in Bangalore with her husband, two children and dog. When she is not killing plants and walking Woody the dog, she is eating Nutella straight from the jar..