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The well-known artist and writer A Ramachandran grew up among the temple murals of Kerala.  But he began to look at them with the inquiring insight of a scholar following his exposure to the art traditions of India and the world as a student of Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan.  He realized the urgency of documenting the existing murals to save them from oblivion.  Following a research project of the Visva Bharati University in the early Sixties, Ramachandran regularly visited the major and the mor obscure sites for the next 40 years.  He has written this book with profound scholarship in spite of his busy schedule as a painter and sculptor.  And he has brought to the study the aesthetic understanding and the sensitive eye of the artist.  Ramachandran’s repertoire as a writer includes delightful children's stories, imaginative autobiographical pieces and perceptive art historical essays.  Ramachandran, with his wife Chameli, lives and works in Delhi.

D. Thangadurai, Ph.D. currently holds the position of Postdoctoral Fellow at the ISOPlexis Germplasm Bank, Centre for Macaronesian Studies, University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal. He has a Ph.D. degree from Sri Krishnadevaraya University, India (School of Life Sciences, Anantapur). His current postdoctoral research related to "Germplasm Bank of Macaronesia" has been funded by the European Commission and concerns the collection, characterzation, conservation and utilizationo f plant genetic resources using morphological, biochemical and molecular tools. During 1998-2004, he was the recipient of a DST (Depart of Biotechnilogy) and CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research)'Junior and Senior Research Fellowships' from the Government of India for molecular Taxonomy Initiative, which enabled him to travel throghtout India that resulted in the publication of more that tenty five research papers in International Journals. He is a recipient of Best Young Scientist Award for the best paper presented in the National Seminar on Modern Biology at Nagarjuna University, India in 2003. He is also serving as a peer reviewer for several International journals including Journal of Food Science, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

W. Tang Ph.D. is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Plant Biotechnology and Functional Genomics in the Department of Biology, East Carolina university, Greenville, USA