Scientists, homemakers discover writer within, a passage at a time

Write India, the country’s largest-ever crowd-sourced

short story writing contest

launched at

Times Lit Fest Delhi 2015

, came to a close with an impressive 25,000 stories written by participants ranging from ages 10 to 90 years. Stories came in from Caranzalem to Mokokchung, Ichapore to Vasco da Gama and Kashmir to Kanyakumari when 11 of the nation’s best selling authors joined hands with

Write India

in encouraging India to write.

Publishing offers started pouring in for the winners soon after the 12 selected by the 11 celebrity authors and The Times of India were felicitated in Mumbai on November 13. In a never-before exercise, Write India introduced a trend in crowdsourced writing when 11 top Indian authors — Amish Tripathi, Chetan Bhagat, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravi Subramanian, Preeti Shenoy, Tuhin Sinha, Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Datta, Madhuri Banerjee, Jaishree Misra and Anita Nair — created passages to inspire short stories by aspiring writers and then helped choose the best among them.

Of the cream of 25,000 stories sent, in a marathon exercise, the 11 celebrity authors helped The Times of India team choose 111. From these 111 tales, 36 of the finest have been published as Write India Stories. The book will be presented at Times Lit Fest Delhi 2016 by participating authors Ravi Subramanian, Ashwin Sanghi and Ravinder Singh.

Four Isro scientists and a bureaucrat, doctors, homemakers, IT professionals, a cinematographer, a yoga instructor, students, engineers, cabin crew and armed forces personnel — all participated in the contest, responding to prompts offered month after month by the celebrity authors. Themes ranged from psycho-thrillers to murder mysteries, from mythology to romances, tragedies and literary fiction.

When 14-year-old Prapti’s story made it to the Top 3 for author Ravi Subramanian on the theme of love and infi-delity, the hobby of a schoolgirl became the stuff dreams are made of. Shachee Desai from Vadodara was preparing for her board exams when she sneaked in time to participate and won for Madhuri Banerjee.

An IT professional, an HR manager, a lawyer, a doctor, a blogger, a homemaker and a personal assistant are among those who finally emerged triumphant in the Write India campaign.

Chetan Bhagat lauded Write India as “a great initiative to discover writing talent. In an age of YouTube videos and apps it is heartening to know that reading and writing are still alive and kicking,” he said.

Amish Tripathi was overwhelmed by the quality of stories. “Anything that encourages freedom of expression should be encouraged. Writing a book is essentially giving voice to one’s soul and this is one of the best possible platforms for freedom of expression,” he said.

With the end of Season 1, all eyes are on the next season, which is expected to unravel soon with another starry line-up of authors as mentors.