Pablo Picasso once said, 'it took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. 'Every story in Zohra Margaret Chaube's finely crafted book Gifts from a Grandma is a painting that children and young adults will love to marvel at.

-Siddhartha Gigoo, Commonwealth Prize-winning author

A fascinating book of stories for the young minds which will entertain and educate at the same time.

-Abdullah Khan, Novelist & Script Writer

Zohra Margaret Chaube was born on March 9,1936, in Bhopal, (at that time in Central Provinces), India. The second of four children, she grew up in Jabalpur, (Jubbulpore, C.P. during 'The Raj') where both her parents were professors in Theology and in Education, respectively.

She originally pursued her education in Science, with the intention of studying medicine. Once completing her Bachelor's degree in Lucknow University, for personal reasons she was unable to join medical college, but wanting a professional qualification, went in for Education instead, and acquired a B.Ed, in Jabalpur University at the age of 21, and then an M.Ed. 20 years later. During the years that she lived in rural Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as a homemaker and farmer's wife, she spent the little free time she found to make various contributions to magazines abroad and in India on current affairs, writing fiction and poetry, and when writer's block would hit, oil painting was a comforting outlet.

Mother of two, grandmother of three, she lives with her daughter Pravina's family, in a forested area of rural Tamil Nadu, sharing a fence with Auroville, at their forest retreat 'Inn Pondiville'. At least once a year she visits her son Priokumar and his family in Bangalore.