Fly in the honey

One of the lesser known kannada magazines, 'Sankramana', conducted a competetion in humour writing. I was not aware of it. My cousine Brinda Rao, saw the announcement and suggested that I should send an article. To send one, I had to write one. I could not think of anything. I thanked her for the suggestion and left it at that. She pursued the matter employing methods like coaxing, goading and threatening till I realised that it was an order and so, I wrote up on a subject that was the basis of my being, 'tooth ache', and sent it for the competetion. It won a prize and was published in their special edition. I was not aware that people read that magazine, till one gentleman wrote to me from Gadag, saying that he liked the article and congratulated me. Later I received a copy of the magazine and a parcel of three books as my prize and the matter ended there.


The State of Karnataka turned fifty and the ruling government (which had done nothing worth boasting either in the formation or running of the state) decided to celebrate the occassion grandly. A very good chance to spend and misappropriate money. One of the items on the agenda was publication of collections of 'representative' literary works like, novels, shortstories, poetry etc etc, published over the decades.
Kannada saahitya academy had a big role to play and the president of the academy happened to be the publisher of the magazine which had given the prize to my article. I think thats how my writing got mixed up in the collection of the humorous articles and found a place in "Golden humourous essays"!. I received a letter asking for my permission to include my writing and I of course was glad to oblige.

There was no news about the collection after that. About two years later I received a cheque for a thousand rupees from the Kannada development authority and after another two years, a complimentary copy of the book.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself in the company of very eminent writers whose works I have immensely enjoyed. The book carries writings of greats like Shivaram karant, VeeCee, ANMurti rao, Gorur, Kuvempu, Anakru, HaMaNayak etc etc and- thanks to Brinda and Cham Paa - Dr.Raghunandan!
I sincerely hope that the readers will not notice the fly in the honey.
The fly, for those who like flies, is in my Kanada Blog www.maatu-kate.blogspot.com, titled
"Hallunovu".