<p>The three winners in the seventh edition of the Sunday Herald short story competition conducted by Deccan Herald received their awards at a function held at the Bangalore Club here on Friday.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Rohith Rajagopal, a software professional, clinched the first prize of Rs 30,000 for his story ‘War of words.’ T S Ronnie, an advertising professional, won the second prize of Rs 25,000 for her story ‘Cobwebs’. Akshara Gopalan’s story, ‘Writers Block’, won the third prize of Rs 15,000.<br /><br />K N Tilak Kumar, Editor, Deccan Herald, gave away the awards.<br /><br />With around 500 entries coming in this year, the task of shortlisting the entries and choosing the winners was a difficult task, said the judges.<br /><br />Stanley Carvalho, Andaleeb Wajid and Lakshmi Palecanda were the judges of the competition.<br /><br />“We judged the stories based on language, storyline, plots, character and creativity.<br /><br /> It was a wonderful experience overall,” Palecanda said. While Rohith’s story has words as characters and their conversations, Ronnie has written an introspective piece and reaction of a male protagonist’s reaction towards a simple thing such as peanut sweet.<br /><br /> “The story has three parts – nostalgic, contemporary and the final one is strong and concludes with why the protagonist has such a reaction. This contest has provided me a great platform and I plan to write more in the coming days,” said Ronnie.<br /><br />Akshara, a college student currently pursuing Bachelor of Liberal Arts at Symbiosis Institute, Pune, could not attend the function. However, her proud mother Srividya Gopalan collected the prize on her daughter’s behalf.<br /></p>
<p>The three winners in the seventh edition of the Sunday Herald short story competition conducted by Deccan Herald received their awards at a function held at the Bangalore Club here on Friday.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Rohith Rajagopal, a software professional, clinched the first prize of Rs 30,000 for his story ‘War of words.’ T S Ronnie, an advertising professional, won the second prize of Rs 25,000 for her story ‘Cobwebs’. Akshara Gopalan’s story, ‘Writers Block’, won the third prize of Rs 15,000.<br /><br />K N Tilak Kumar, Editor, Deccan Herald, gave away the awards.<br /><br />With around 500 entries coming in this year, the task of shortlisting the entries and choosing the winners was a difficult task, said the judges.<br /><br />Stanley Carvalho, Andaleeb Wajid and Lakshmi Palecanda were the judges of the competition.<br /><br />“We judged the stories based on language, storyline, plots, character and creativity.<br /><br /> It was a wonderful experience overall,” Palecanda said. While Rohith’s story has words as characters and their conversations, Ronnie has written an introspective piece and reaction of a male protagonist’s reaction towards a simple thing such as peanut sweet.<br /><br /> “The story has three parts – nostalgic, contemporary and the final one is strong and concludes with why the protagonist has such a reaction. This contest has provided me a great platform and I plan to write more in the coming days,” said Ronnie.<br /><br />Akshara, a college student currently pursuing Bachelor of Liberal Arts at Symbiosis Institute, Pune, could not attend the function. However, her proud mother Srividya Gopalan collected the prize on her daughter’s behalf.<br /></p>
