COMMONWEALTH SHORT STORY PRIZE GOES TO INDIA, WRITER,S FIRST
TALE
ഇന്ത്യക്കാരന്റെ ആദ്യകഥയ്ക്ക് കോമണ്‍വെല്‍ത്ത് ചെറുകഥാ പുരസ്‌കാരം
Academic
Parashar Kulkarni has become the first Indian author to win the Commonwealth
short story prize, beating almost 4,000 entries to take the £5,000 award with
the first short story he has ever written.Kulkarni, an assistant professor in
social sciences at Yale NUS College Singapore, focuses on religion and violence
in colonial India in his academic work. His winning story, Cow and Company, is
set in India in the early 1900s, and follows four men looking for a cow to
feature in advertisements for chewing gum.
“‘And
the caption?’” asks their managing director. “‘Go Mata Ko Bhata – the chewing
gum the cow mother loves.’ ‘It still sounds a bit out of place to me.’ ‘You can
trust me on this, sir. I have spent quite a bit of time on the subject. What
better way to get the natives to love our chewing gum than to link it to the
cow? ... The cow chews all day long. All Hindus love cows. If we use her on our
posters they will love our chewing gum.’” “I watch a lot of archival material
for my academic work, and there’s a lot remaining that I don’t use, with
interesting stories in there,” said Kulkarni. “This particular story is set in
1905 in Bombay, or Mumbai, which is going through a transition.”
The
short story is the first he has ever written, although he has also completed a
novella and is working on a second. “In my academic work I think of myself as a
mainstream political scientist. Often academic work can end up being
ideological. But I feel that in literature, or in fiction, the defences are
down and you can explore specific stories, which might not be particularly
empirical but are important … They are at the margins, whereas in academia, you
explore the mean,” he said.Kulkarni has previously won the British Academy
Brian Barry prize in political science for his research on religion, property
rights and violence against women in colonial India. “I began using fiction
therapeutically, but it has taken on a life of its own,” he said.
Nearly
4,000 entries from 47 different countries were received for this year’s award,
for the best piece of unpublished short fiction in English by a writer from a
Commonwealth country. Twenty-six stories were shortlisted. Gillian Slovo, chair
of the judging panel, said that in his short story, “Parashar has conjured up a
large cast and their way of life, and at the same time he has succeeded in
exploring serious issues in a way that can make us laugh. And all of this in a
few thousand words.
ഇന്ത്യക്കാരന്റെ ആദ്യകഥയ്ക്ക് ഈ വര്‍ഷത്തെ കോമണ്‍വെല്‍ത്ത് കഥാ പുരസ്‌കാരം. മുംബൈ സ്വദേശി പരാഷര്‍ കുല്‍ക്കര്‍ണിയാണ് താനെഴുതിയ ആദ്യകഥയ്ക്ക് പ്രശസ്തമായ അന്താരാഷ്ട്ര പുരസ്‌കാരം സ്വന്തമാക്കിയ ഇന്ത്യക്കാരന്‍.
പുരസ്‌കാരത്തിനായി ലഭിച്ച നാലായിരത്തോളം കഥകളില്‍ നിന്നാണ് പരാഷറിനെ തിരഞ്ഞെടുത്തത്. സിംഗപ്പൂരിലെ എന്‍.യു.സി കോളേജിലെ അസിസ്റ്റന്റ് പ്രൊഫസറായ പരാഷിന്റെ 'കൗ ആന്‍ഡ് കമ്പനി' എന്ന ചെറുകഥയാണ് പുരസ്‌കാരത്തിന് അര്‍ഹമായത്.
ജമൈക്കയില്‍ നടന്ന ചടങ്ങില്‍ ബുക്കര്‍ പ്രൈസ് ജേതാവ് മാര്‍ലണ്‍ ജെയിംസാണ് പരാഷിന് പുരസ്‌കാരം സമ്മാനിച്ചത്. കോമണ്‍വെല്‍ത്ത് രാജ്യങ്ങളില്‍ നിന്നുമുളള എഴുത്തുകാരുടെ ഇംഗ്ലീഷ് ചെറുകഥകളാണ് പുരസ്‌കാരത്തിനായി പരിഗണിക്കാറുളളത്.
Prof. John Kurakar
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