London Sanjana Thakur, a 26-year-old writer from Mumbai, beat off competition from more than 7,359 entries from around the world to be named winner of the £5,000 Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2024 in London on Thursday.
Sanjana's story titled "Aishwarya Rai" takes her name from the famous Bollywood actress to reinvent and reverse the traditional adoption story.
The literary magazine 'Granta' has published all the regional short stories winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2024.
“I cannot express how honored I am to receive this incredible award. I hope to continue writing stories that people want to read,” Thakur said.
“For my strange story – about mothers and daughters, about bodies, beauty standards and Bombay street food – finding such a global audience is exciting. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said.
“I have spent 10 of 26 years living in countries that are not mine. India, where I am from, is both strange and familiar, accepting and rejecting. Writing stories is a way for me to accept that Mumbai is a city I will miss even when I am in it; “It’s a way of remaking the ‘place’ in my mind,” she added.
Her story revolves around a young girl, Avni, who chooses between potential mothers housed at a local shelter. The first mother is too clean; the second, who looks like the real-life Aishwarya Rai, is too pretty. In her small Mumbai apartment, with walls that are too thin and a balcony that is too small, Avni watches as she spins clothes in her washing machine, dreams of getting into a white limousine, and tries out different mothers at the shelter. One of them must be the right one, she thinks.
“The short story form favors the brave and bold writer. In 'Aishwarya Rai', Sanjana Thakur employs brutal irony, sarcasm, cynicism and wry humor packed into tight prose and stanza-like paragraphs to confront us with the fracture of family and self as a result of modern urban existence. ”said the British Ugandan. novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, president of the jury.
“No matter which city you live in, you will recognize stress-induced conditions such as insomnia, restless legs, panic attacks and obsession with celebrity beauty, in this case, Bollywood. Thakur takes this stinging absurdity to the point of suggesting hiring mothers to replace unsuitable ones. Rarely do we see satire performed with such ease,” she said.
"The power of Sanjana Thakur's story reminds us that the best fiction peels back the tough skin of life and grants us the privilege of feeling every flutter and pulse of its raw, quivering heart," added Asia judge O Thiam Chin. . region.
In addition to Mumbai, the rest of this year's winning stories take readers from a small town in Trinidad to a lonely motel in New Zealand, across northern Canada and Mauritius, with themes ranging from love and loss , troubled relationships with parents, and a woman's love of tea. .
Two are based on historical events, the 2023 wildfires in Canada and the day electricity came to a remote village in Trinidad.
Sanjana's story titled "Aishwarya Rai" takes her name from the famous Bollywood actress to reinvent and reverse the traditional adoption story.
The literary magazine 'Granta' has published all the regional short stories winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2024.
“I cannot express how honored I am to receive this incredible award. I hope to continue writing stories that people want to read,” Thakur said.
“For my strange story – about mothers and daughters, about bodies, beauty standards and Bombay street food – finding such a global audience is exciting. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said.
“I have spent 10 of 26 years living in countries that are not mine. India, where I am from, is both strange and familiar, accepting and rejecting. Writing stories is a way for me to accept that Mumbai is a city I will miss even when I am in it; “It’s a way of remaking the ‘place’ in my mind,” she added.
Her story revolves around a young girl, Avni, who chooses between potential mothers housed at a local shelter. The first mother is too clean; the second, who looks like the real-life Aishwarya Rai, is too pretty. In her small Mumbai apartment, with walls that are too thin and a balcony that is too small, Avni watches as she spins clothes in her washing machine, dreams of getting into a white limousine, and tries out different mothers at the shelter. One of them must be the right one, she thinks.
“The short story form favors the brave and bold writer. In 'Aishwarya Rai', Sanjana Thakur employs brutal irony, sarcasm, cynicism and wry humor packed into tight prose and stanza-like paragraphs to confront us with the fracture of family and self as a result of modern urban existence. ”said the British Ugandan. novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, president of the jury.
“No matter which city you live in, you will recognize stress-induced conditions such as insomnia, restless legs, panic attacks and obsession with celebrity beauty, in this case, Bollywood. Thakur takes this stinging absurdity to the point of suggesting hiring mothers to replace unsuitable ones. Rarely do we see satire performed with such ease,” she said.
"The power of Sanjana Thakur's story reminds us that the best fiction peels back the tough skin of life and grants us the privilege of feeling every flutter and pulse of its raw, quivering heart," added Asia judge O Thiam Chin. . region.
In addition to Mumbai, the rest of this year's winning stories take readers from a small town in Trinidad to a lonely motel in New Zealand, across northern Canada and Mauritius, with themes ranging from love and loss , troubled relationships with parents, and a woman's love of tea. .
Two are based on historical events, the 2023 wildfires in Canada and the day electricity came to a remote village in Trinidad.
