Kamala Suraiya (aka Kamala Das), besides being one of India’s best-known English poets, is the most famous writer of short stories in Malayalam. [She is better known to Keralites as Madhavikutty.]

In 1984, she was short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature along with Marguerite Yourcenar, Doris Lessing and Nadine Gordimer.

I shot Suraiya with a Leica M7 fitted with 90mm Summicron.