On January 12, the Mozhi Prizes announced Sana R Chaudhry as its 2023 winner for translating Urdu writer Fahmida Riaz’s story, Flight of Birds. She will receive a cash prize of Rs 50,000. Mithila R was the first runner-up for translating The Lonely Woman by Mannu Bhandari from the Hindi, while Sangeetha Balakrishnan was the second runner-up for translating A Sliver of Sunlight by Nirmal Verma from the Hindi. They will receive a cash prize of Rs 25,000 and Rs 15,000, respectively.
The jury for the 2023 prize included writers and translators Jenny Bhatt, NS Madhavan, and Rahul Soni. NS Madhavan said about winner Chaudhry’s translation, “...Fahmida Riaz’s story, Flight of Birds is an example of bravery of choice. At one level, the story is about the making of an Urdu dictionary, where the use of Urdu words and phrases becomes inescapable. However, she found innovative devices to overcome these seemingly insurmountable difficulties, and in a different tongue, presented Fahmida Riaz in all her elegance and subtlety.”
The other shortlisted translators were:
- Debnita Chakravarti for Fill in the Blank by Saradindu Bandopadhyay. Translated from the Bengali.
- Varsha Tiwary for Rafoojee by Swadesh Deepak. Translated from the Hindi.
- Remitha for Still Eye by J Ajithan. Translated from the Tamil.
- Rahul Vishnoi for The Great Pilgrimage by Munshi Premchand. Translated from the Hindi.
- Radhika Ramesh for The Skies by Jeyamohan. Translated from the Tamil.