Bibliofile

It's odd how a process of selecting literary awards that has been in place for over half a century, and which takes almost a year to decide the prize-winners, is so... sarkari. The list (you can't possibly call it a shortlist) is drawn up at least a year ahead of the announcement, only getting longer as it goes from selection panel to advisory panel to jury. Among the nine or ten names that figured in this year's list included Ram Guha (An Anthropologist Among the Marxists and Other Essays), Githa Hariharan (In Times of Siege), Shashi Tharoor (Riot), Ruchir Joshi (The Last Jet Engine Laugh), Makarand Paranjape (Used Book), Tanika Sarkar (Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism) and Imtiaz Dharker (I Speak for the Devil). It was Imtiaz who won until someone realised too late that she wasn't an Indian citizen.

When Khushwant Singh described his relationship with publisher Oxford University Press as "marrying a grand duchess—the honour is more than the pleasure", the audience at the launch of his Illustrated History of Sikhs was naturally very amused. Is that how Arundhati felt about getting the Sahitya Akademi award?