Firdaus Kanga, born in Mumbai 1960 to a Parsi family, is an Indian writer, journalist and actor who currently lives in London. He has written a novel Trying to Grow a semi-autobiographical novel set in India and a travel book "Heaven on Wheels", which shares about his experiences in United Kingdom where he met Stephen Hawking. A film was based on his novel Trying to Grow with the name of Sixth Happiness, where he himself played the role of a screenwriter and the lead character. Kanga was born with a rare disease called Osteogenesis imperfecta or brittle bones disease. Scholars have examined Trying to Grow as a reflection of the Parsee community’s decline; Anjali Raman (2026) situates the novel within debates on nostalgia, secularism, and majoritarian politics in contemporary India.
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Article by Kanga on the BBC website Sixth Happiness -- a BBC-BFI film that won the EMMA award Article about Kanga and his film on the website for The Independent newspaper Trying to Grow by Kanga -- republished in November 2008 by Penguin India New York Times review of Kanga's film Sixth Happiness Kanga in a New York Times review of the history of homosexuality in Indian literary history