Panaji, Mar 24: Well-known writer and researcher Kasturi Desai died after a brief illness late Friday evening at a hospital in Belgaum. She was 55.

Married to Goan educationist Narayan Desai, Kasturi, a Bengali, had won the 'Sahitya Akademi Translation Award' in 2010 for 'Adhikar Aranyacho', a Konkani translation of Mahashweta Devi's Bengali novel, 'Aranyer Adhikari'. She had recently told reporters that she wanted to translate Rabindranath Tagore's book 'Shesher Kobita' into Konkani.

An associate professor of Botany at a Ponda-based college, Kasturi had done studies and written books on flowers and sand dune vegetation. She was a very popular lecturer and many of her students had rushed to Belgaum to donate blood, sources in the college told TOI. Kasturi was also an active member of the Goa Bengali Cultural Association and had written extensively on medicinal plants.

Sources said that as per wish, her body will be donated to the Ayurvedic college in Shiroda.