The jury for the Man Booker Prize may have given an Indian author (or an author of Indian origin) a miss this year, but the celebration of the Indian writing in the subcontinent continues with undiminished gusto. It’s a celebration that manifested itself at the recent award functions to laud, recognise and reward the outstanding literary figures from our part of the world. The Vodafone-Crossword Book Award 2010 raised a toast to the Indian writing in English at the NCPA in Mumbai on September 2. Omair Ahmad and Anjali Joseph were declared the joint winners of the award in the Indian fiction category for Jimmy, The Terrorist and Saraswati Park, respectively. V.S. Ramachandran’s cerebral work, The Tell Tale Brain, won the award for Indian non-fiction. Ashwin Sanghi bagged the Popular Award for Chanakya’s Chant.
A jubilant Sanghi said: “For me, personally, it’s a vindication of sorts. Many observers told me that my brand of historical, mythological and theological fiction would never have mass appeal. This award has proved otherwise.”
While Vodafone-Crossw-ord Book Award has limited itself to only Indian citizens, other awards are more open. The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, for example, has earlier awarded Pakistan’s stellar writer Mohammed Hanif for his savage satire on General Zia, this year another Pakistani figures on its shortlist: Jamil Ahmad for The Wandering Falcon. Also vying for the prize is Sri Lanka’s Shehan Karunatilaka for China-man. The borderlines are already blurring as Indian publishing is becoming one big celebration of voices from multiple regions in Asia. The longlist for the second edition of the DSC Prize for South Asian literature includes The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi. Based in Afghanistan, the novel was originally written in French and then translated into English. It is one of the three translated novels longlisted for this year’s prize: The other two includes U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Bharath-ipura (OUP), translated by Susheela Punitha, and Chandrakanta: A Street in Srinagar (Zubaan Books), translated by Manisha Chaudhry.
Manhad Narula, founder of the DSC Prize, says: “This year we saw close to a 20 per cent increase in the number of submissions that we have received and that too from newer frontiers. The entries received this year are from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan amongst others.”
Ira Pande, chairperson of the jury for the DSC Prize, feels that as far South Asian writing is concerned, there’s greater confidence in experimenting with language and narrative styles are emerging. Some of the themes in the 60 novels submitted this year include: terrorism and political violence; migrations and the rural-urban divide.
Sivaraman Balakrishnan, marketing manager, Crossword Bookstores, says the next logical step for the Vodafone-Crossword Award would be to “recognise” writing in the Indian subcontinent.
For the writer, every award has its own rewards. The most visible is the increase in sales of every prize-winning book. Balakrishnan says that after Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City won the Vodafone Crossword Prize, its sale went up by 50 per cent.
Agrees Shireen Quadri, manager, marketing & promotions, at the Simon & Schuster India. “After Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger made it to the Man Booker, the demand for the book, which was published in the US by S&S, went up by about 30-40 per cent,” she says.
While the literary awards in India are giving a fillip to writers, curiously, they face a quintessential dilemma: How exactly do you define Indian writing? With more and more awards being instituted for Indian writing in English, it is all set to be redefined.