and Avaneebala Award. In addition to these awards, Sandhya also received Chrulli Vasudevan Nambeesan Awardfor her poem, titled: Veendedukkal(Recovery). Last but not the least, her short story, Burj Khalifa received Thakazhi Sahitheeyam Ayappa Kurup Special Jury Award, the latest accolade she has received and also the trigger point for interacting with her to write a feature about this genius.

Sandhya has other areas of interests too. She is an amateur Mohiniyattam choreographer and dancer and performs whenever she gets a little bit of respite from her professional and literary commitments. Sandhya also heads and teaches dance to a women’s group, Ashtapournamiand holds a Guinness World Records Certificate for performing Mohinyattam in which the most number of people participated at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi on November 28, 2006.During her schooling days, Sandhya was the school leader and a member of Guides. She graduated in 1984 with first rank securing 99.7% marks, breaking the record.

After completing her PG with a third rank, Sandhya qualified in JRF (CSIR) and she joined for research under the guidance of Prof RN Pillai and she received her PhD in 1992. Subsequently, she worked as Research Associate (CSIR) in the Department of Statistics, CUSAT. In addition to that Sandhya had also pursued a PG Diploma in Higher Education from Indira Gandhi National Open University in 1999. Not content with that, she is also holding a masters degree in Psychology, also from IGNOU. Sandhya is a life member of both the Indian Society for Probability and Statistics (ISPS) and the Kerala Statistical