http://irinaspage.com/Dr. Gajjar was born in Romania, raised and educated in the U.S. and subsequently lived and traveled in many countries. She is an old school intellectual: philosopher, scholar, writer, linguist, lawyer, and teacher.Irina was raised in an open minded Jewish family and married Navin Gajjar when she was barely twenty. Navin, who had come to the United States from India as a student and was working as a research engineer, forcefully encouraged her to further her studies and pursue her writing. When Navin was just a boy, an Indian astrologer had told him he would meet and marry a foreign woman who would become a famous writer. He and Irina have raised three outstanding children and have seven inspiring grandchildren.At home with both American Jewish and Hindu culture, Irina was influenced by her parents who studied universal religions and philosophies and by her husband's parents who admired everything American. After obtaining her PhD, Irina began to question the philosophical tenets that move our world. In time she came to believe in reincarnation and to explore and write about its implications.Irina is a writer of many genres from history, to philosophy, to science fiction and more. Her work earned the attention of the late great historian Dr. William McNeill and of the renowned Dr. Deepak Chopra. Irina speaks English, Gujarati -a major language of India- Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and French. She studied Sanskrit in India for ten years in order to translate the Hindu Scripture into English directly from the original.She graduated from the University of the Americas (then Mexico City College) Mexico, Magna cum Laude, at seventeen with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Romance Languages. Subsequently she obtained a Master of Arts degree in Spanish from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. She followed that with a Ph.D. in Ancient Indian Studies from Bombay University in India and a J.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Irina gave up a successful law practice to spend her time writing and to participate actively in the lives of her expanding family.