Omair Ahmed and Anjali Joseph jointly win Vodafone Crossword Book Awards 2010

Sept. 3, 2011 - PRLog -- Mumbai,

3rd September, 2011

The new kings and queens of Indian writing in English were crowned; and there was a king and a queen for sure. In its 10th glorious year, the Vodafone Crossword awards went to Anjali Joseph (who could not make it) and Omair Ahmed in the fiction category and Ashwin Sanghi for Chanakyas Chant in the popular category.The other winners were V.S. Ramachandran for "The Tell Tale Brain" for Indian Non-Fiction, Ranjit Lal for "Faces in the Water" for Children's Writing and N. S. Madhavan & Rajesh Rajmohan for "Litanies of Dutch Battery for the Indian language Translation category.

The Chief Guest Mrinal Pandey; (Padmashri awardee) dressed simply in a cream and red saree; lamented the rapidly shrinking vocabulary of the present generation, She observed candidly that literature mutates and evolves with time.In a country fortunate to be blessed with many regional languages, we all sadly become monolingual by the time we are 30. Its a case of "tongues disappearing within the mouth", she added. Dolly Thakore, Anil Dharker and R Sriram, the Inceptor to the Vodafone Crossword Awards were all present as Lilette Dubey emceed the proceedings.

There was also a tabla performance by child prodigy Keshava who had also performed at the Commonwealth Games. Also in the distinguished audience were bestselling authors Rashmi Bansal, Amish Tripathi, Radhakrishnan Pillai, Capt Gopinath, Ishrat Syed and Radhakrishnan Pillai.

R Sriram, Inceptor, Vodafone Crossword Book Awards summed up beautifully when he said that good literature symbolizes freedom of spirit. It stays with you in your deepest and darkest moments and opens up an idea or a thought process. It makes us better human beings and illuminates our lives.

Heres to literary excellence.