Indian
Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar has spent his retirement making classical Sanskrit literature readable in English, and has concentrated on the parts of it that most translators skip: the comic, the erotic and the frankly worldly. Shuka Saptati, which he rendered as Seventy Tales of the Parrot, is a frame narrative in which a pet parrot keeps a merchant's wife from visiting her lover by telling her a story every night for seventy nights, each one about a woman in a compromising position who talks her way out of it. Haksar has also translated the Hitopadesa, the Kama Sutra, the Simhasana Dvatrimsika, Bhartrihari's poetry, and Kshemendra's satires on courtesans and confidence men. He argues in his introductions that the Sanskrit tradition was never as solemn as its modern reputation, and his versions are deliberately plain and quick rather than antiquarian. Before turning to translation he was a career Indian diplomat, serving as High Commissioner to Kenya and Ambassador to Portugal and Yugoslavia. He was educated at the Doon School, Allahabad University and Oxford.