Biographies by the happynesswalas™
Vaani and AVIS offer to showcase your extraordinary journey, immortalizing your story.
Vaani and AVIS are powerful storytellers. Picture credit: Vinodh Velayudhan
Why a biography is important and relevant
Every human story is precious. And each story must be told. The Life journey that each individual goes through is unique and offers key learnable, teachable points of view. There is a storyteller in each of us yearning to share their journey, their lived experiences and their learnings with a larger circle. But not everyone can tell their stories powerfully, simply, evocatively - so that readers and audiences stay engaged with both the story and the storyteller. This is why a biography is both important and relevant.
Apart from the evident (and often less profound) benefits of enhancing the visibility and profile of the person whose story is being told, their biography actually is an opportunity to immortalize their journey - for posterity to benefit from it.
A good biography, while telling the story of someone who is born ordinary, is a work of art. It showcases their extraordinary journey, their lived experiences and their learnings on Life and Happiness in such a way that their story has a long-lasting, perpetual shelf life.
Vaani and AVIS are powerful storytellers
They write. They deliver inspiring talks. They host world-class conversations. They continuously share the Life lessons - that they learn from exploring human stories - with audiences that care to pause and reflect.
Vaani and AVIS were both in the media industry early on in their careers.
AVIS has worked with The Indian Express, India Today, Businessworld and Business Today. At The Indian Express, AVIS wrote a very impactful and popular column called Suburban Orbit. This column carried in-depth, investigative stories on the serious lapses in civic administration in the suburbs of Chennai (then Madras). In 1989, AVIS won the Vigil Award and the Junior Chamber International’s National Outstanding Young Person Award for this column. At India Today, AVIS co-wrote the cover story on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in May 1991. He and India Today’s photographer Shyam Tekwani were the only two journalists who traveled on the special plane that carried Rajiv Gandhi’s body from Chennai to New Delhi on the morning of Wednesday, May 22, 1991. AVIS’ coverage of the events that led to the assassination and of the assassination itself were sharp and exclusive. Also, when he was based in Kerala with India Today, AVIS wrote powerful human-interest features. One was on the broken lives of the people working in the state’s thriving bamboo industry. And the other was on the women of Aruvacode, a village near Nilambur in North Kerala. These women were being driven to join the sex trade to earn a living. This story led to constructive action from Kerala’s women and social welfare department. A development program was initiated that led to the whole village being transformed. The women were taught pottery. AVIS’ story and the government intervention that followed have had a profound, long-lasting impact: Aruvacode today produces some of the finest pottery and terracotta works in India. While at Business Today, AVIS contributed significantly to the magazine’s strategy, leadership and startup sections. He wrote in-depth stories profiling renowned founders and CEOs of Indian business houses.
Vaani has written evocative, human-interest features for The Times of India, Verve magazine and The Economic Times’ supplement, Madras Plus. Although she has profiled both celebrities and unsung people, she has always focused on talking about what made each of them human. She has had the unique opportunity to interview both Vani Ganapathy and Kamal Hassan. The celebrity couple had separated by then. Meeting them individually, Vaani dealt with their choices and journeys with sensitivity and dignity. Such empathy was – and still is – rare in the media world.
Vaani and AVIS are writers committed to telling only genuine, authentic stories that need to be told. And they tell them very, very well.
Two of AVIS’ books – Fall Like A Rose Petal and Uthirum Roja Ithazh Pola – are presently available on Amazon. ‘fabulous. brilliant. loveable.’ is Vaani and AVIS’ latest book. Read more about it here.
Every human story is precious. And each story must be told. The Life journey that each individual goes through is unique and offers key learnable, teachable points of view. There is a storyteller in each of us yearning to share their journey, their lived experiences and their learnings with a larger circle. But not everyone can tell their stories powerfully, simply, evocatively - so that readers and audiences stay engaged with both the story and the storyteller. This is why a biography is both important and relevant.
Apart from the evident (and often less profound) benefits of enhancing the visibility and profile of the person whose story is being told, their biography actually is an opportunity to immortalize their journey - for posterity to benefit from it.
A good biography, while telling the story of someone who is born ordinary, is a work of art. It showcases their extraordinary journey, their lived experiences and their learnings on Life and Happiness in such a way that their story has a long-lasting, perpetual shelf life.
Vaani and AVIS are powerful storytellers
They write. They deliver inspiring talks. They host world-class conversations. They continuously share the Life lessons - that they learn from exploring human stories - with audiences that care to pause and reflect.
Vaani and AVIS were both in the media industry early on in their careers.
AVIS has worked with The Indian Express, India Today, Businessworld and Business Today. At The Indian Express, AVIS wrote a very impactful and popular column called Suburban Orbit. This column carried in-depth, investigative stories on the serious lapses in civic administration in the suburbs of Chennai (then Madras). In 1989, AVIS won the Vigil Award and the Junior Chamber International’s National Outstanding Young Person Award for this column. At India Today, AVIS co-wrote the cover story on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in May 1991. He and India Today’s photographer Shyam Tekwani were the only two journalists who traveled on the special plane that carried Rajiv Gandhi’s body from Chennai to New Delhi on the morning of Wednesday, May 22, 1991. AVIS’ coverage of the events that led to the assassination and of the assassination itself were sharp and exclusive. Also, when he was based in Kerala with India Today, AVIS wrote powerful human-interest features. One was on the broken lives of the people working in the state’s thriving bamboo industry. And the other was on the women of Aruvacode, a village near Nilambur in North Kerala. These women were being driven to join the sex trade to earn a living. This story led to constructive action from Kerala’s women and social welfare department. A development program was initiated that led to the whole village being transformed. The women were taught pottery. AVIS’ story and the government intervention that followed have had a profound, long-lasting impact: Aruvacode today produces some of the finest pottery and terracotta works in India. While at Business Today, AVIS contributed significantly to the magazine’s strategy, leadership and startup sections. He wrote in-depth stories profiling renowned founders and CEOs of Indian business houses.
Vaani has written evocative, human-interest features for The Times of India, Verve magazine and The Economic Times’ supplement, Madras Plus. Although she has profiled both celebrities and unsung people, she has always focused on talking about what made each of them human. She has had the unique opportunity to interview both Vani Ganapathy and Kamal Hassan. The celebrity couple had separated by then. Meeting them individually, Vaani dealt with their choices and journeys with sensitivity and dignity. Such empathy was – and still is – rare in the media world.
Vaani and AVIS are writers committed to telling only genuine, authentic stories that need to be told. And they tell them very, very well.
Two of AVIS’ books – Fall Like A Rose Petal and Uthirum Roja Ithazh Pola – are presently available on Amazon. ‘fabulous. brilliant. loveable.’ is Vaani and AVIS’ latest book. Read more about it here.
