Revisiting history

Chat Author of Chanakya's Chant, Ashwin Sanghi talks about his love for history, intrigue and writing

Indian fiction in English is going through its own coming-of-age moment where new authors are experimenting with different genres and are not scared of promoting their books with the distinct Indianness instead of aping their western counterparts. Moving beyond college romance or chick lit stories, readers are also welcoming the historical and mythological thrillers that authors are dishing out. . Ashwin Sanghi is one such author.

Businessman to author
With a management degree from Yale University and a stable family business Ashwin Sanghi penned his first novel The Rozabel Line, under the pseudonym of Shawn Haigins, which explored the idea that Jesus hadsurvived the crucifixion and eventually settled down and died in India. Explaining the choice behind his pen name, Ashwin Sanghi says, “I was a businessman for 16 years of my life, so when I started writing I wanted to keep my literary identity separate. But later it became a marketing hazard as I did not want my readers to be shocked to see a Marwari when they were expecting a Shawn Haigins.”

After a religious thriller, his second book Chanakya's Chant was a political thriller revolving around the life of the political strategist Chanakya during the rule of emperor Chandragupta Maurya, with a contemporary twist. The book also won the Vodafone Crossword Popular Choice Award 2010. The businessman-turned-author admits that he wanted to look beyond a mundane balance sheet and explore his creative side. After a prod from his wife, he began his literary journey. “Writing helps me create a different world that I can escape to,” he says. But commenting on a full time writing career he quips in, “My worry is, if I don't have a day job my writing will become a part of my mundane boring life. I like to wear the boring hat in the morning and the exciting one in the night when I am writing.”

Full report here Hindu

Writing is my salvation: Ashwin Sanghi

DNA's Daniel Pinto talks to Ashwin Sanghi, the writer of The Rozabal Line, a thriller that is based on the conspiracy theory that Jesus Christ came to India. Sanghi talks about his recent novel Chanakya's Chant among other things.

Tell us a little about yourself. What made you turn from management to fiction?
I was born in a Marwari business family. Circumstances meant that my life was mapped out for me before I was born. It was expected that I would start working for the family business at an early age (I started at 16); it was expected that I would complete an MBA (I did, from Yale, in 1993). At times, this predictability can be a source of security, but it can also mean a life of boredom. I was always a creative person but I had been thrust into the mould of a baniya. The first reaction was to be creative at work. Unfortunately, business is one of those things where money is involved and there are limits to the creativity that one can exhibit when it comes to hard-earned family assets.

I soon realised that I would need to compartmentalise my life. Business was the means to feed my family, but I also needed to have a parallel life that would feed my soul! Writing is my salvation, my means to place myself in an imaginary world and conjure up fantastic stories... it is my path to escape boredom. Some journalists ask me "Why not write books on management or business?" and I find that so very funny. The very reason for writing is to escape from what I do in my ordinary less-exciting avatar, why in heaven's name would I want to write about it?

What is like to have a best-seller (2007's The Rozabal Line) under your belt? 
The Rozabal Line gave me much more satisfaction than Chanakya's Chant even though the latter has been a much bigger success. The Rozabal Line was a chance for me to prove to myself that I had what it took to write a hundred thousand words of a novel. It was also my chance to struggle to find a niche in the publishing world and to do it without the usual advantages that I enjoy as a businessman. The fact that The Rozabal Line remained a bestseller for several months after its release by Tata-Westland was a personal vindication of sorts.

Full interview here DNA

Crossword awards announced

The Vodafone Crossword Book Awards 2010, the Crossword Book Award in the Indian Fiction category was jointly won by Omair Ahmed for Jimmy, The Terrorist and Anjali Joseph for Saraswati Park.

The award for Indian Non-Fiction went to VS Ramachandran for The Tell Tale Brain while Ranjit Lal won the award for Children's Writing for Faces in the Water.

The Vodafone Crossword Popular Book Award, which offers readers the opportunity to vote (online) for their favourite book from the list of the shortlisted books across the Indian Fiction and Indian Non-Fiction categories, was won by author Ashwin Sanghi for Chanakya's Chant.

The rest of the winners were selected by a panel of judges comprising well-known academics, critics and writers such as Geeta Doctor, Githa Hariharan, CS Lakshmi, Harsh Sethi, Sampurna Chattarji and Anshumani Ruddhra.

Full report here DNA

Related news: 
Literature award for Omair Ahmed and Anjali Joseph Hindustan Times
Awards for excellence in Indian writing Times of India

Crossword Book Awards to be announced

At or around 7.30 PM on Friday, September 2, the best-known – still - of India’s literature prizes will begin to be presented. Category by category, across five categories, the best books of 2010 – as chosen by four juries and, in one case, by popular votes – will be identified. As will the authors, translators and illustrators associated with those books. Publishers will gloat or sulk, as the case may be, and a splendid evening amongst books – such a rarity on the entertainment calendar – in Mumbai will conclude with a dinner where writers, book-publishing people and some readers will break bread and rub shoulders.

Yes, it’s time for the Annual Vodafone Crossword Books Awards once more. The brainchild of R. Sriram, the founder of the Crossword chain, the awards will be given out for Fiction, Non-Fiction, Translated Books (Fiction and Non-Fiction), Children’s Books and Popular Books. The first four will be decided by separate juries – whose identity is always kept secret till the presentation – while the fifth will be through online voting alone.

Although younger and bigger – in terms of prize money – literature prizes exist in India, the pedigree of the Crossword awards is hard to match. Decidedly more staid when it comes to razzamatazz, these awards are still anticipated the most and, arguably, discussed the most. For one thing, they’re the only ones which operate across five categories of English language publishing. For another, the combined prize money across the categories, currently amounting to Rs 13 lakh, is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Full report here IBNLive

Vodadone Crossword Book Awards back

Which is that one platform that brings together august names in the field of Literary excellence such as Sudhir Kakar, Omair Ahmad, Amish Tripathi, Rashmi Bansal, Captain Gopinath, Anushka Ravishankar, Ishrat Syed?

Vodafone and Crossword comes together once again in a beautiful amalgamation, India's answer to The Pulitzer, The Booker or The Commonwealth - The Vodafone Crossword Book Awards (VCBA) 2010. In its tenth year now, VCBA 2010 is the only Indian award that not only recognises and rewards good writing but also actively promotes the authors and their books. Prepare to know which Indian author has captured the minds of readers both young and old as the Awards unfold.

The Categories to be awarded are Indian Language translation, Indian Non fiction, Indian Fiction, Children's writing and Popular Category. R Sriram, Founder Crossword and Inceptor to the Vodafone Crossword Awards continues to be the guiding light as Mrinal Pande will Chair the Award Ceremony. Theatre doyenne Lilette Dubey will host the function.

Date: 2nd September 2011
Venue: TATA Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point
Time: 7pm onwards

Ashwin Sanghi on a high

After his bestselling book, The Rozabal Line, made waves when it released in 2008, Ashwin Sanghi's latest offering Chanakya's Chant has made it to the news too...and for all the right reasons.

Ashwin Sanghi is self-confessed lover of oddity, and it is this quality that has led to the depth of his books. It is no wonder then that his 2010 book Chanakya's Chant has been shortlisted for the Vodafone-Crossword Popular Choice Award 2011. The book is a fictional retelling of the life of Chanakya, the great political strategist of ancient India.

The novel relates two stories- the first of Chanakya's scheming to bring Chandragupta Maurya to the throne of Magadha; and the other, that of a modern-day character called Gangasagar Mishra who wants to position a child from the slums as the Prime Minister of India. With riveting tales woven around historical facts and events, this book has found favour among scores of readers from around the country. Only naturally, the author, who counts Archer, Sheldon, Hailey, Forsyth and Ludlum among his favourites, is over the moon. The final winner of the contest will be chosen from among ten shortlisted books via public voting.

Full report here Times of India

Crossing the threshold

Sarah Joseph's Othappu has just won this year's Crossword Award for translation. An appreciation of her work...

The in-betweenness of doors often defines the lives of women; like doors they hinge precariously between freedom and unfreedom. A writer like Sarah Joseph is also aware that there are open doors and closed doors. Margalitha in Othappu: The Scent of the Other Side, this year's Crossword Award winning novel for translation, chooses to walk out from the cloth-scheme of things into the wider world, managing to open the door of the convent and walk down the steps like the wind that never returns: At dawn, when the chapel bell rang in the convent, Margalitha took off her veil and under-veil. It did not bring on a storm, a pestilence or an earthquake. She stood looking at the clothes of holiness strewn on the floor, but felt nothing. After all, what did clothes add up to? Did a vocation lie in the cloth? Margalitha stepped out of the cloth-scheme of things. With a deep sigh, she managed to open the door and walk out into the wider world.

Freedom and choice, the most basic factors of human condition have tormented writers and philosophers at all times. They understand that total freedom and absolute choice are ideal wishes. Structural and ideological circumstances limit the freedom of choice. This is more so in the case of women. Those women who are conscious of it forge resistance. And those who risk their lives in this cause are called feminists. Sarah Joseph is a feminist. She says, “I am proud that I am born a woman. I feel fortunate to be living in an age that hearkens to the promising voice of women. As I am not a ‘male writer', I have no compulsions to reproduce the values of the ruling class. The culture of the dominant class is against women, just as it is against those low of caste [….] My duty is to write fearlessly about the world of women — women, who are denied self-determining rights over their own bodies by the oppressive gender regime.”

Full report here Hindu

When Mr Bond held writers captive

At the ninth edition of the Vodafone Crossword Book Awards held in Mumbai on Friday, August 22, author Ruskin Bond’s presence not only charmed the audience, but also inspired upcoming authors.

The soft-spoken Bond was in a jocular mood, remarking how now that authors have become celebrities, they’d rather stay away from the limelight. “Writers are best read, but not seen in public, because most of them are not good-looking,” he said, leaving the audience in splits.

For Bond, anonymity has come at a hefty price. The author narrated an incident at a bookstore many years ago, when he spotted a copy of one of his books at the very bottom of a shelf. He said, “I took it and put it right on top. Unfortunately, the manager saw me and ordered me to keep it back, tell me that nobody ever bought the book. So just to teach him a lesson, I bought the book!”

Full report here DNA