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Blogging crept into Indian cyberspace, stealthily, like a virus, almost five years ago. Since then it’s become a huge movement and Satya Prabhakar, CEO of Sulekha.com, was quick to seize an opportunity. “There was so much enthusiasm among people who were blogging that we decided to have an online writing contest of short stories, or entries,” says Prabhakar. The next step, logically, was to bring out a book and that’s how Blogprint (Penguin, Rs 199) came into being.
Blogprint contains stories written by 25 Indian authors from around the globe. “The contest invites Indians as well as Indophiles to write fiction and non-fiction and post their entries on their respective blogs on Sulekha.com,” says Prabhakar who notes that 2008’s participation list was the best ever, clocking nearly eight thousand entries.
The selection process does seem rather complicated but in reality, appears to be more democratic at each step. The contest runs for six months and each week the Sulekha-Penguin team chose two entries, creating a shortlist of approximately 100 entries. Further filtering takes place in the form of hits calculated, comments as well as the number of times that the blog entry has been recommended. When an entry is selected for the contest, the blogger is awarded a cash prize of Rs 10,000 and also receives gift vouchers from the site.
Two Delhi bloggers have seen a fair amount of success, thanks to the contest. While Manjul Bajaj is a freelance consultant in the field of development and environment, Vandana Kumari Jena is an IAS officer, currently stationed in Orissa. “Being part of a lively and vivacious community of bloggers is very encouraging for any writer. The fact that our work is printed is a huge incentive to keep writing regularly,” says Bajaj. Her story, “Goddess on Campus”, is about a group of college girls who feel threatened by the entry of a beautiful girl who usurps all the male attention. Jena, on the other hand, has written “The Kumbh and Thereafter”, a story about a couple who abandon an elderly relative at the Kumbh Mela. “I wrote the story after I read a newspaper report about how nearly 50 women are abandoned by their families every time at the Mela because it’s so easy to do in that huge crowd,” says Jena. The book is due for a nation-wide release later this month.
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