She debunks the myth associated with professors: Manini Nayar Samarth is no regular pince-nez sporting, grey-haired, absent-minded tutor-with three young children and a plum job in Penn State University, she can hardly afford to be jaded. But what sets Nayar apart is the amazing regularity with which she has been receiving short story awards. As if the BBC award last year wasn't good enough, she has now gone and nudged past 700 others to bag the Boston Review's Short Story Award for 2002 for her story, Home Fires. "I attempt to explore some of the troublesome questions about our moral responsibility for one another ... though I think the answers, as in life, remain ambiguous," she says.

Bond With History

It began back in time when Kolkata was Calcutta-a proud bastion of the British babus. Slave agents had fanned out into the villages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh hunting for cheap labour to be sent to British colonies. And finally, when the first ships landed in British Guyana in 1834, the unfortunate roots of slave trading had struck. That is the storyline-factual, mind you-being adopted by successful New York radio entrepreneur Rohit Jogessar for the film marking his debut as producer. The movie, estimated to cost $1.5-3 million, is expected to be completed later this year with shooting schedules in Kolkata and British Guyana, now the Republic of Guyana. But don't begin to ask the cast. "The story line is the star of the film," pat comes the reply from Jogessar, who has traced his own roots to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. You were warned.

Good Fellow

FELICITATED AGAIN: Lahiri

If Jhumpa Lahiri were to throw a baby shower, this would probably be her most cherished gift. The Pulitzer Prize-winner has been named the 2002 Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in the Fiction category. And to think that Lahiri, who is expecting her first baby with husband Albert Vourvoulias, was rejected for all graduate English programmes in the US. Interpreter of malady, eh?

DEBUT MISS: Bakhsh's 29-minute film was nominated for an Oscar

Not Quite There

It just wasn't fair that in the halo of Lagaan, the nomination of another Indian's oeuvre at the Academy Awards went entirely unheralded. Sadly, the hype-in case of the feature film-or the lack of it-as happened with Shameela Bakhsh's production debut, Speed for Thespians-scarcely mattered as both walked away rich in experience but sans the trophy. The 29-minute film, a nominee in the best live action film category, is an adaptation of Anton Chekov's play, The Bear. For accidental filmmaker Bakhsh, 30-she was moulding to become script supervisor-an Indian from the Republic of Guyana, the elusive Oscar is no setback. In fact, it has opened up the promise of lots of new work of variegated content. So while a gold-plated knight would have been nice, who's complaining?

-bureau reports