Dateline Stockholm – The Delhi Walla Enters the Nobel Prize Club

Dateline Oslo – The Delhi Walla Enters the Nobel Prize Club

The blogger’s photography gets recognition.

[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Delhi Walla has got the Nobel Prize for literature. Well, almost. A picture taken by me has been put up in the official website of the Nobel Foundation, Nobelprize.org.

In November, 2008, the South African Nobel laureate in literature, Nadine Gordimer, came visiting Delhi. It was her first visit to India in 14 years.

I too went to India International Center to listen to the author of acclaimed novels such as A Guest of Honour, The Conservationist, Burger’s Daughter and July’s People. More than 150 people had squeezed into the auditorium to be with the writer who during her Nobel Prize lecture in 1991 had famously referred to the South Africa of the apartheid years by saying, “Only many years later was I to realize that if I had been a child in that category — black — I might not have become a writer at all, since the library that made this possible for me was not open to any black child.”

While speaking from behind the lectern, Ms Gordimer, then 85, appeared fragile enough to fall and hurt herself. But she stood erect. Her eyes were penetrating, her face was stern and she frowned when a cell phone rang in the middle of a discussion on race relations in South Africa. After she got down the stage, Ms Gordimer was surrounded by Delhiites, who requested her to autograph the copies of her books. Looking vulnerable in the midst of an eager crowd, the author obliged.

Squeezing through her admirers, I managed to take some pictures of the Nobel laureate. In February, 2010, one of those photographs was uploaded on the Nobel Prize’s website. Click here for the proof. A screen shot from that link can be seen on the top.

Ms Gordimer in India International Center

Nadine Gordimer Spotting

Ms Gordimer in India International Center

Nadine Gordimer Spotting

Ms Gordimer in India International Center

Nadine Gordimer Spotting

Ms Gordimer in India International Center

Nadine Gordimer Spotting