Kolkata engineer, IT student from Ujjain among winners

While Sinha won the first prize in the Hindi category, the second prize went to Dilip Kumar of Kalyan and the third prize to Ohol Suryakant Shushim of Ahmednagar.

The winners will be awarded at a ceremony to be held at the Hall of Harmony at Nehru Centre, Worli, Mumbai at 5:30 pm on January 30.

Born in the aftermath of the Mumbai riots in 1993, the CFP is a non-political organisation that has steadily worked towards bridging the gap between people from across the country and practicing communal harmony. For the competition this year, the theme was “Living with Differences.”

Roy, 23, of Kolkata, saw the advertisement for the competition in Mumbai and knew he had an experience to share. His description of his hostel years at REC, Kurukshetra won him the first prize in the English category. “Hostel life is a forced situation, especially in an engineering college. You have a quota for every state so the classroom is a mixed bag. There is no way out but it need not be a “fight or flight” response,” says Roy who is currently employed with Tata Consultancy Services. Roy loves writing and he says that the real pleasure of winning the contest was being recognised. “Winning the competition has set the ball rolling, I am looking forward to writing on more relevant subjects as these,” he says.

Sinha from Ujjain was going to catch a movie but on reaching the cinema hall, discovered that he didn’t have sufficient money. He spotted the advertisement after he picked up a copy of the paper at a news stand and spent the next two hours writing. At 42 pages, it was a mammoth of an essay. “I was worried that it was too long, but I couldn’t stop writing,” says the third year IT student from Ujjain University.

Considering the emphasis most schools place on English education, why did he choose to write in Hindi? “I like the language, I think in it. My mother is an MA in Hindi and she’s quite proud of me now,” smiles Sinha. Sinha’s essay had historical and political overtones where he speaks of the disintegration of a nationalist feeling among Indians and the increasing distance and intolerance between people of different faiths.

The judges in the English category were Dorab Sopariwala, election analyst and consultant on media and communications, Ingrid Srinath, Chief Executive Officer, Child Rights & You, Shyam Benegal, filmmaker, Anil Dharker, columnist and Shailaja Bajpai, Consulting Editor, The Indian Express.

The judges in the Hindi category were Vishwanath Sachdev, Editor, Navneet, Prasoon Joshi, lyricist, Dr Syeda Hameed, member, Planning Commission, Javed Siddiqi, writer and Kumar Ketkar, Editor, Loksatta.

“There was an undercurrent of nostalgia in some of their entries which was striking as in today’s day and age when the world has shrunk to a global village and identities are blurred,” says Dharker. For Shyam Benegal, what was an important criterion for the selection of the winner was “a certain freshness and originality in the thought-process”. “The competition also gives a chance to budding writers who are unsure whether they can make a career in this field” he added. “Apart from language, one looks for clarity of thought. Personally, I looked for a reflection of liberal ideas and respect for the ideals of secularism,” says Ketkar.

A booklet containing the short-listed essays will also be released at the awards ceremony on January 30.