ARITRA GHOSH, winner of the Kosambi Memorial Book Prize 2021, awarded every year by Permanent Black , gives us a student's guide to surviving final year locked away from friends. " I suppose the story of my experience of the pandemic year as a student is still a work in progress. Too early to pin down, as we say in history" When I had to return home to Delhi for the mid-semester break around February-March last year, I had no idea that I would not be returning to the University for the whole year and more. By May, I was in disbelief and denial. Maybe that is why I chopped off my hair. It was a terrible decision. By June, I was fuming and by August, I was considering how and who to bargain with so that the virus would simply cease to be. By September, my humour had begun to become like, you know, the kind of strange stuff you expect from tired adults. Clearly, that was because I had spent a significant amount of time around my parents. By December, as best as
Last year we turned 20 and to mark our birthday, we started a history prize. The Kosambi Memorial Book Prize. The prize also celebrates the excellent series of scholarly books we co-publish with Ashoka University. The Hedgehog and Fox series is edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee and now has 81 titles. The prize is given to the best student of ancient history at Ashoka University. It is partly funded by a bequest from the historian Meera Kosambi and is given in memory of her grandfather, the historian Dharmanand Kosambi. The winner is nominated by the university. In its first edition the prize was awarded jointly to Revanth Ukkalam and Haritha Govind. (Read our post about it here.) This year the value of the prize is Rs 25,000 and the winner is . . . well, you have to wait till Wednesday 3 February to find out.