Srishti Jha is a writer, journalist, editor and translator with over a decade of experience across leading media platforms, including Hindustan Times and India Today. Her work spans art, culture, fashion, travel, heritage, design, languages, books, and human narratives, bringing depth and nuance to diverse storytelling.
Her debut translation, The Queen of Indian Pop: The Authorised Biography of Usha Uthup (Penguin India, 2022)originally written in Hindi by senior journalist and author, Vikas Kumar Jha, introduced the legendary singer’s story to English readers. Extending her craft to screen, she contributed to the Writers’ Room of Aarya (Season 3).
Books
The Queen of Indian Pop
Usha Uthup, India’s undisputed icon of pop music, has enthralled an entire generation of listeners with her unforgettable voice and continues to do so. Completing fifty years as a professional singer in 2020 was just another milestone in her fabled career.
This pitch-perfect English translation, by Srishti Jha, offers the reader a front-row seat to the life and times of the inimitable Usha Uthup.
Articles
Found In Translation And Other Things
How a writer rediscovered the power, movement and reimagination of language while translating her father’s biography of pop queen and singing legend Usha Uthup.
A winter dream guides me to elsewhere as I put thoughts to paper.
I etch my memories in the lines of my palm.
I think of the many lustrous evenings spent in all the cities I have lived.
All the luminous gatherings filled with love, laughter and beautiful schemes to make life better.
All the people who make a city, home.
I go back to the aroma of sweet, simple things.
Fodder for those who are obediently disobedient.
I again confess to myself that we are always survived by love.
In countless forms.
There are some people in this world who don’t belong to anyone.
They are as independent as solitude. They are told beautiful stories about loneliness. A kind of loneliness, that is like an island where no one is chased. No one is dictated. No one is forced to turn pain into lessons and happiness into reality.
These people just follow their eyes for as long as they can wander. Looking for another bird who wants to rest in quiet. For a bit, or for a lifetime.
They live beyond the lands and the skies, where there is no limit to memory, and where time can be cut with a sword, like a raw piece of cloth, creating a door for the soul.