1. Venu Chitale became a broadcaster for both the India section of the BBC's Eastern Service, where she read news and gave recipes in Marathi, and the BBC Home Service, where she taught British listeners vegetarian cooking at a time when meat was rationed and in short supply.
Around 1944, Venu Chitale began working for Krishna Menon at the India League in London.
Venu Chitale's life is recorded in a chapter in Vijaya Deo's Sakhe Soyare, a book in Marathi.
Venu Chitale was born in Shirol, Kolhapur, in present-day Maharashtra, India.
Venu Chitale was the second youngest of seven children and raised by her older siblings following the death of both her parents.
Venu Chitale subsequently entered University College London, where in 1934 she studied Montessori ways of learning.
At the onset of the Second World War in 1939, they were both at the University of Oxford; Venu Chitale registered as an external student while Du Preez was studying journalism.
In 1940, at the request of Z A Bukhari, Chitale began her career with BBC Radio as secretary to the BBC talks producer George Orwell with the India Section of BBC Radio's Eastern Service.
In 1941, in one programme titled "The kitchen in wartime: some suggestions for doing without meat", Venu Chitale gave her suggestion of a vegetarian alternative to sausage and mash and spoke of what she thought an Indian housewife might do in Britain with the limited availability of ingredients and fuel; in another, she talked of "appetising curries".
Venu Chitale talked to a British audience on the cooking series The Kitchen Front and taught listeners vegetarian cooking at a time when meat was rationed.
Around 1944, Venu Chitale began working for Krishna Menon at the India League in London.
Venu Chitale was elected a member of The Asiatic Society.
Venu Chitale left Liverpool for Bombay on 4 December 1947, on the RMS Empress of Australia.
Venu Chitale published her first novel, In Transit, in 1950, about three generations of an Indian family during the interwar years.
In February 1951 a reception by the publisher Hind Kitabs was held in Bombay, where Chitale was introduced by M C Chagla, chief justice of Bombay.
Venu Chitale wrote for Navshakti, a Marathi newspaper, and spoke occasionally on All India Radio.
Venu Chitale's life is recorded in a chapter in Sakhe Soyare, a book in Marathi authored by Vijaya Deo.