Dilip D'Souza's
Ride Across the River was adjudged the
winner of
the fourth Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition at a function
today.
The theme for the competition this year was 'Journeys' -- and, as we had clarified, when inviting entries: "It could be a journey you made—on the road, on a train, by plane or boat, or just in your head. You can, for instance, give vent to your ire at the loss of the Railways' steel thalis, speak out against the public address systems, confess to sins committed in unlikely places or describe the surf at Goa."
Worn out with the variety that only seems like phony posturing to me—the 'love India or leave it', 'my country right or wrong' kind of rhetoric that is applauded as patriotism, Dilip D'Souza went on a journey "in search of patriotism" that finally helped him also understand the true meaning of a Dire Straits song, he said, as he read out excerpts from his prize-winning entry that would be
published in a forthcoming issue of Outlook
Dilip D'Souza had also participated in the
second Outlook-Picador Non Fiction Contest, and his essay, Kashmir Here, Kashmir There
had then been declared the first runner-up.
The other runners-up this year were:
Geralyn Pinto
for Re-Routing and
Tishani Doshi for Excerpts From the Journal of a Delusional Widow
These,
along with the other two short-listed entries would
also be published on the website soon. These are:
Ankush
Saikia's Spotting Veron
and
Samanth Subramanian's In Search of the Razor's Edge
Outlook and Picador India thank all the participants of the
fourth Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition. We were overwhelmed by your enthusiasm and by the number of entries we received.
The jury comprised:
Vinod Mehta, Editor-in-Chief, Outlook
Sandipan Deb, Managing Editor, Outlook
I. Allan Sealy, Author
Ajit Vikram Singh, Bookseller
Sam Humphreys, Editor, Picador
Previous Winners
2001: Tenzin Tsundue: My Kind of Exile
2003: Saryu Ahuja: Stars And Stripes
2004: Anuradha Roy: Cooking
Women
For runners-up and other short-listed entries for the respective years,
please follow the links under Also See on the right hand side bar of each of the
above.
There was no contest for 2003. The years mentioned relate to the year when
prizes were announced.