Ameena Ahmad Ahuja

Ameena Ahmad Ahuja is an Indian painter, calligrapher, writer and linguist, known for her Urdu poetry-inspired art works.^[1] Born to a British mother and Nuruddin Ahmed, a barrister and litterateur,^[2] she did her training in art at the Slade School of Art of the University of London.^[3] She is a former member of faculty of the Department of Russian at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)^[3] and, besides Russian, she is known to be proficient in languages such as Persian, German, French, Hindi and English.^[1] Her career also covered stints at Columbia University as a lecturer of poetry and as an Artist-in-residence at the Harvard University and her exhibitions have been staged at many places in India^[4] and abroad including Moscow, Tokyo, Venezuela, Columbia and New York.^[5] She has served as the official translator during the visits of Soviet dignitaries including Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Bulganin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev to India.^[1] She was married to Vishnu Ahuja, a diplomat and former ambassador to the erstwhile USSR and had opportunities to visit many countries, accompanying her husband, who has since died.^[1] She is the author of the book, Calligraphy in Islam, a text in Urdu, published 2009 by Penguin India.^[6] The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2009, for her contributions to Arts.^[7]