{"id":52168,"date":"2012-10-13T21:18:52","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T21:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=52168"},"modified":"2012-10-13T21:18:52","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T21:18:52","slug":"winning-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/winning-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Fresh from another award, writer\u00a0<strong>Dilip D\u2019Souza<\/strong>\u00a0talks to<strong>\u00a0Aradhna Wal<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_21918\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-21918\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Dilip.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-21918\" title=\"Words\u2019 worth Dilip D\u2019Souza\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Dilip.jpg\" alt=\"Words\u2019 worth Dilip D\u2019Souza\" width=\"250\" height=\"304\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-21918\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Words\u2019 worth<\/strong> Dilip D\u2019Souza<br \/>Photo: Shailendra Pandey<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<strong>DILIP D\u2019SOUZA<\/strong>\u00a0does not call himself a journalist. He finds that an insult to other people in the field who have worked hard to get where they are. Nor does he label himself a leftist, rightist, centralist. \u201cI\u2019m just a writer. And a man with opinions,\u201d he says.<br \/>\nThe 52-year-old Mumbai-based writer recently won the \u2018Newsweek and The Daily Beast-Open Hands Prize for Commentary in South Asia\u2019. His award entails a month-long residency at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in New York. Nominated by his editor from HarperCollins India, he won the award for three pieces \u2014 \u2018Mr Tendulkar\u2019s Neighbourhood\u2019 and \u2018Get to the Top\u2019 for<em>The Caravan<\/em>, and \u2018A Few Good Doctors\u2019 on rural healthcare in Chhattisgarh, for\u00a0<em>Fountain Ink<\/em>\u00a0magazine.<br \/>\n<strong><\/strong>A graduate of BITS Pilani, D\u2019Souza refers to his days as a software engineer in the States as his \u201cprevious life\u201d. Twenty years ago he discovered his passion for writing and came back to India. Since then he has been on the hunt for stories in different parts of the country, from living next door to Sachin, to Muslim neighbourhoods in Mumbai, to denotified tribes. He is, however, keeping his next project under wraps.<br \/>\nHe attributes living and travelling abroad to opening his eyes to India. \u201cGrowing up you get conditioned to poverty and to filth. After I came back, the first thing I asked myself was, why don\u2019t we keep our streets clean. You get rid of preconceived notions. People in the States grow up with the same family values, if you want to call them that, as we do. And, despite what many undergraduate fresh-off-the-boat students expect, women are not simply going to fall in bed with you.\u201d His book<em>\u00a0Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America\u00a0<\/em>was his attempt to look at the country without prejudice. \u201cI held up a mirror to America, which reflected both me and my country. Writing is a way of educating myself.\u201d<br \/>\nLabel shy, D\u2019Souza laughingly recounts the Wikipedia war over his political loyalties. Different users changed his description from Communist to left liberal and, post-award, to \u201cfar-left, Western left liberal\u201d and \u201cfollower of Che Guevara\u201d. \u201cCall me what makes you happy,\u201d he says, \u201cI am just trying to keep an open mind.\u201d<br \/>\n<em>Aradhna Wal is a Sub-Editor with Teheslka.\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:aradhna@tehelka.com\">aradhna@tehelka.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fresh from another award, writer\u00a0Dilip D\u2019Souza\u00a0talks to\u00a0Aradhna Wal DILIP D\u2019SOUZA\u00a0does not call himself a journalist. He finds that an insult to other people in the field who have worked hard to get where they are. Nor does he label himself a leftist, rightist, centralist. \u201cI\u2019m just a writer. And a man with opinions,\u201d he says. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":52186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21],"tags":[7458,7051,5901,7459,20,7056,7460,7461,7462,7463,7464,6204,7465,7466,6952],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}