Surprises Galore At The Vodafone Crossword Awards 2009
A medico-writer wins the fiction award. An outspoken, banned book wins the non-fiction award. A financial journalist wins the award for childrens writing A market analyst and socio-political commentator on new models of economic development wins a popular award.
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SunandaKDattaRay-winner non fiction
KalpanaSwaminathan winner-fiction
SiddharthaSharma-winner Childrens category
Rajni Bakshi-double winner of Popular and non-fiction category
-- It seemed as though multiple identities and experiences had come together to hand mould the winners; and writing, as though an exercise in sheer passion, overcame their other professional commitments to rise like the proverbial phoenix.
The very well-travelled and highly outspoken master Sunanda K Datta ray spoke of encouraging a young writer from Mussourie with whom he had shared a gin and tonic several years ago...the Chief guest Ruskin Bond. It was a moment of world literature when these two were on stage; in Looking East To Look West - Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India, Datta-Ray proposes that the Singapore's engagement with India is not a recent phenomenon. The India-Singapore love affair, according to Datta-Ray, has had its seeds sown since Lee was a law student at Cambridge. An admirer of Nehru, the young Lee was at that time, also spearheading a political movement to overthrow British rule. Singapore is India's second largest investor in terms of Foreign Direct Investments, beating countries with far larger economies, like the United States and Japan. Not many people know this. And even fewer know that Singapore is a net recipient of migrant workers from South Asia. These workers with their blood and sweat, build the modern Singapore that we see today. India and Singapore's destinies have been intertwined since the conception of their national identities and one will not do without the other. Indeed, as Lee Kuan Yew said, Asia would be submerged if India did not emerge.
Indeed, when references are made to the dynamics of South East Asian politics, data Rays book will occupy pride of place.
A doctor, columnist, novelist and detective fiction writer, Kalpana Swaminathan holds the trophy aloft for fiction. She in fact did not believe it when her name was announced as the winner. Her book venus Crossing, a collection of 12 short stories does not paint India with deliberate emphasis to sell to a western world, but just sticks to sordid realities that often make the reader put the book down and think. Each story is about that moment of transit where lives intersect and get transformed into something fresh and significant. Her writing has been compared to Patrick White, which might not really uphold her brutal honesty and commitment to giving the reader an engaging true to life story.
Siddhartha sarmas 'The Grasshoppers Run' is a war novel for young adults set in the North-East during the Japanese invasion of India in 1944. It is the story of the friendship between an Assamese and a Naga boy, and how the tragic fallout of the invasion leads to the Assamese boy being involved in the reprisal by the indigenous people against the invaders.
Blazing a trail in a new category; it's a most unusual book; with a most unusual title and a most real context. A forgotten chapter of history comes alive for a generation that risks being sucked into frail reading habits.
Sprightly, enthusiastic and pink-sari clad Rajni Bakshi was at her happiest best with her double trophies. Her book "bazaars, conversations and freedom" opines that the market economy can be vigorous and productive, but also amazingly stupid and degenerate. The world is now much engaged in working out how mindless markets can be made to function better with the help of other institutions. In this striking book, Rajni Bakshi insightfully explores how the working of markets can be improved through a modern version of the combination
of trade and conversation that characterizes the age-old bazaars.
It was a victorious day to the sense of perseverance and application of four minds that were going to hear a lot more about.
