The Akademi Awards

This is not to denigrate the talents of previous Akademi award winners many writers had earned their statue and citation several times over. Unfortunately, they frequently shared the podium with people who were not quite in the same bracket where talent was concerned. But there was a quiet revolution inside the august portals of the Akademi when Dr Anantha Murthy took over as president in 1996. The effects of Dr Murthys brief reign were on display at Kamani Auditorium earlier this week at the Festival of Letters the annual presentation of awards.

Choosing the award winners this year was like performing a Samudra-Manthan, Dr Murthy said in his presidential address. In a departure from what had become normal practice, no member of the Akademi was allowed to take part in the selection of the winners. Instead, the task was undertaken by various authors and men of letters while the Akademi played the UNs part. They began with a shortlist of about 400, cut that down to 60, and finally chose the top 21.

The ceremony, like all rituals, took over an hour to complete. Each author was first garlanded, then ushered to a chair where they sat while the secretary of the Akademi, Professor Satchidanandan, read out their citation, after which they were ceremoniously handed the statue. But despite the monotony, very few members of the audience grudged the authors their moment in the spotlight.

The list cut across the generations. The oldest author present was the nonagenarian Oriya scholar Satyanarayan Rajaguru, who received the award for his autobiography Mo Jeevana Sangrama. The youngest author on the list was 31-year-old Sunetra Gupta, the author of Moonlight into Marzipan and The Glassblowers Breath, who caused a flurry of activity from the photographers present when she rose to receive her citation.

The other winners included two economists Ashok Mitra and Gangadhar Gadgil, a civil engineer Lakhmi Khilani, and a mechanical engineer Gianeshwar apart from the usual assembly of scholars, poets, novelists and short story writers. (Gupta herself, apart from being one of the most talented of the Indo-Anglian authors, is an epidemiologist by profession).

And, of course, there were moments of comedy. One author jumped the gun, moving to receive his citation before his name was called out, another displayed some confusion about who was supposed to garland whom. Apart from Dr Murthy and the chief guest Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya, the only male author who chose to wear national dress was Ashok Mitra, resplendent in a beautifully pleated dhoti. Surendra Verma went to the other end of the sartorial spectrum, looking very comfortable in his denim jeans and matching jacket.

The only jarring note was provided by the backdrop, done in a startling shade of government blue that made it look like a relic from Doordarshans worse days. It stuck out like a sore thumb among the marigolds and earthen pots that formed the rest of the decorations and looked very out of place on an evening where the celebrations were in part, at least, to mark the breath of fresh air that had swept through the Sahitya Akademi.