-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A class X student of Kolkata’s top-ranked Modern High School (MHS) for Girls, Anandini Sengupta (15) is still savouring the sweet taste of success, months after her short story Hope Floats was selected from 10,000 entries and published by Scholastic Publishers in an anthology titled Teen Tales. The Top 16 entries of aspiring teenage authors in India were published last November (2022). That’s not all. Last April (2022), this budding short form narratives writer-poet bested 700 entries worldwide to win the Elmbridge Literary Competition (UK) 2022, for a story titled The Red River after bagging the city-based daily The Telegraph’s Under-18 Award for Creative Writing in March. Still earlier in October 2021, Anandini won the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Commended Poet award of the Poetry Society, London, for her poem The Mosquito while her story Home Is Where the Heart Is won the Leyla Beban Young Authors Foundation (USA) $1,000 for the 1,000 words Creative Writing Contest award. Competitive writing is second nature to all members of the Sengupta household. Mother Nandini, a commerce teacher at MHS, won first prize in a competition organised for teachers of Commonwealth nations in 2016 among several other awards. Her father Anandamoy Sengupta, an IT telecom professional, loves weaving tales, while grandfather Prithwish Dasgupta was a regular contributor to weekly supplements of national dailies and magazines. “By the time I was six, I had started reading Satyajit Ray’s classics, Agatha Christie’s crime novels, Ruskin Bond and unabridged plays of Shakespeare. I strongly believe that wide reading is the foundation of good writing,” says this prescient teen. The awards and recognition she has received is a huge motivation. “I submit my creative works for any competition that comes my way for the exposure and valuable feedback. I am very grateful to school principal Damayanti Mukherjee for encouraging me to write scripts for school plays and uploading all my award-winning stories on the school website,” she says. With a deep interest in history, this young writer is intent upon doing a bachelor’s in the subject after completing higher secondary education. “Histories are essentially stories with description and analysis. Studying this subject is certain to improve my writing skills,” says this young writer, who has acquired maturity beyond her years.
