The 100th birth anniversary of Srinivas Rayaprol (R.S. Marthandam) was celebrated on October 25, 2025, at the Secunderabad Club, a place that held special meaning for the poet. The event brought together family, poets, writers, scholars, and admirers of Rayaprol from across India and abroad. It was organised by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust in collaboration with the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.

The evening also marked the presentation of the 17th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2025, awarded to Mubashira Patel, a 26-year-old postgraduate student of Sociology from Mumbai University.

Remembering Srinivas Rayaprol

The event opened with words of welcome from Prof. Aparna Rayaprol, youngest daughter of the poet and Professor of Sociology at the University of Hyderabad. She spoke about her father’s journey as an engineer and poet who believed in the value of both imagination and discipline.

Graziano Krätli, translator, editor, and Yale University librarian, joined via Zoom from the United States. As editor of Why Should I Write a Poem Now: The Letters of Srinivas Rayaprol and William Carlos Williams (1949–1958), he shared reflections on Rayaprol’s correspondence with the American poet William Carlos Williams and how it reflected a dialogue between two literary cultures.

Poet Sridala Swami read select poems by Rayaprol, offering a glimpse of his thoughtful and restrained lyricism.

Writer Pratap Reddy, an Indian-Canadian author, read from Rayaprol’s prose works, highlighting his distinctive voice and insight into human experience.

Presentation of the Prize

Poet and writer Sharmistha Mohanty, founder-editor of Almost Island, delivered the jury remarks and presented the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize 2025 to Mubashira Patel.

In her remarks, Mohanty praised Mubashira’s writing for its sensitivity, emotional depth, and lyrical control. Mubashira, who began writing poetry at the age of eight, describes herself as “a literature aficionado, an amateur philosopher, and a newly published poet.” Her academic interests focus on marginal voices and cultural memory—concerns that also inform her poetry.

Following the award presentation, Mohanty read from her own recent works, including The Gods Came Afterwards and Extinctions.

Her reading created a quiet, reflective atmosphere that set the tone for Mubashira’s own poetry reading, which followed soon after.

Family and Friends Remember

Manorama Kanuri, second daughter of Srinivas Rayaprol, shared an engaging account of her father’s life titled “Rayaprol Srinivas Marthandam – From Birth to 1998.” She spoke about his early years in Hyderabad, his studies at Nizam College, Banaras Hindu University, and Stanford University, and his long career as an engineer, balancing his professional duties with his lifelong passion for writing poetry.

Further tributes came from S.P. Shorey (Chief Town Planner) and Lakshmi Pamarthy, who shared personal memories of R.S. Marthandam’s time with the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (HUDA, now HMDA).

A video message from Sri Balakrishna and his former colleagues added a moving note of remembrance, recalling the respect and affection Rayaprol inspired among his peers.

A Continuing Legacy

The Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, instituted in 2009, recognises excellence in English poetry by poets aged 20–40 years. Jointly administered by the Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust and the University of Hyderabad, the prize has been awarded to several notable poets including Aditi Machado, Hemant Mohapatra, Aishwarya Iyer, Debarshi Mitra, Pervin Saket, Syam Sudhakar, Nikita Deshpande, and Ajay Kumar.

The 2025 edition, coinciding with Rayaprol’s centenary, celebrated both the poet’s legacy and the emergence of new voices in Indian poetry. It reaffirmed the idea that literature is not only a record of memory but also a living conversation between generations.

Closing Reflections

The centenary event at Secunderabad Club was both intimate and memorable.

It combined poetry readings, family recollections, and scholarly reflections, reminding everyone of the diverse life and enduring influence of Srinivas Rayaprol—an engineer who wrote with precision and a poet who lived with purpose.

Through the readings and tributes, the gathering honoured a man whose work continues to inspire new writers to explore the possibilities of language, thought, and imagination.

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Mubashira Patel, a 26-year-old student of Sociology at Mumbai University, is the winner of the 2025 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. She was selected from among 126 competitors this year by the poet and founder-editor of the literary journal, Almost Island, Sharmistha Mohanty and two faculty members of the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad who constituted the jury.  Abhilipsa Sahoo has received special mention from the jury.

Mubashira, who has been writing since she was eight years old, is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Sociology and calls herself “a literature aficionado, an amateur philosopher, and a newly published poet.”  Her academic work intersects with themes of marginal voices and cultural memory. Her writing often emerges alongside this inquiry, shaped by lyric form and a drive toward emotional excavation. Among her other passions are fanfiction and anime. 

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019), Satya Dash (2020), Pervin Saket (2021), Syam Sudhakar (2022), Nikita Deshpande (2023), and Ajay Kumar (2024).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhathi Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai, Vinay Dharwadker, Mani Rao, Sridala Swami, and Menka Shivdasani have previously been associated with the prize as jury members.

This 17^th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000, will be presented to the winner on October 25, 2025 on the occasion of Srinivas Rayaprol’s 100^th Birth Anniversary.

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Ajay Kumar, a 23-year old student of English Literature, is the winner of the 2024 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. He was selected from among 66 competitors this year by the Mumbai-based poet, Menka Shivdasani and two faculty members of the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad who constituted the jury. Neethu Krishnan, Aparna Chivukula, and Nikita Parikh have been shortlisted and received special mention from the jury.

Ajay Kumar, a Chennai-based poet, is the author of the e-chapbook, ‘balancing acts’ (Yavanika Press, 2023) and has published his poems in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Rattle, The Bombay Review, Usawa, ASAP Art, gulmohur, The Alipore Post, nether, The Bangalore Review, Muse India, The Chakkar, and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, among others. He was longlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts Creative Writing Award in 2023. He has a Masters in Literary and Cultural Studies from EFLU, Hyderabad, and is currently working on the manuscript of his first poetry collection.

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019), Satya Dash (2020), Pervin Saket (2021), Syam Sudhakar (2022) and Nikita Deshpande (2023).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhathi Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai, Vinay Dharwadker, Mani Rao and Sridala Swami have previously been associated with the prize as jury members.

This 16^th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000, will be presented to the winner at the Hyderabad Literary Festival in January 2025.

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Nikita Deshpande, a Mumbai-based writer, has emerged as the winner of the 15^th Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. She has been selected from a pool of about 120 entries for this year’s prize by a jury consisting of poet, Sridala Swami and two faculty members of the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust also announced the name of Shalim Hussain of Assam as being on the prize shortlist this year.

With a B.A. in English Literature from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Nikita Deshpande writes poetry, fiction and screenplays. She is the author of the novel, It Must’ve Been Something He Wrote (Hachette, 2016), has short stories in the anthologies, A Case of Indian Marvels (Aleph, 2022), and Magical Women (Hachette, 2019), and included in the poetry anthology, The World That Belongs to Us (Harper Collins, 2020). Her writing has also been published in The Deadlands, The Rumpus, Grazia, Scroll, Buzzfeed, and Firstpost, among others. She was awarded a 2015 Vermont Studio Center fellowship to work on her fiction. Nikita assisted directors on feature films like Fukrey and Mirzya before going on to write for Chai Chai, an animated series streaming on Amazon Prime in the US. She was also a writer on The Big Day, a documentary series on Netflix. She says, she ‘devours romance novels and stone fruit, and has rarely met a Jane Hirshfield poem she did not instantly fall in love with’.

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and, subsequently, to Hemant Mohapatra (2010), Aditi Rao (2011), Tushar Jain (2012), Mihir Vatsa (2013), and Ranjani Murali (2014), Aishwarya Iyer (2015), Goirick Brahmachari (2016), Debarshi Mitra (2017), Poorna Swami (2018), Prashant Parvataneni (2019), Satya Dash (2020), Pervin Saket (2021), and Syam Sudhakar (2022).  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhati Subramanian, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai, Vinay Dharwadker, and Mani Rao have previously been associated with the prize as jury members. The award, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000 will be presented to the winner at a literary event to be held soon.

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Dr. Syam Sudhakar, a bilingual poet who writes in English and Malayalam, won the 2022 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. A lecturer in English Literature at the St. Thomas College, Thrissur, he was chosen from among 114 entries received this year by a jury consisting of the noted poet, Mani Rao and two faculty members of the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.

Syam, a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Madras, has published widely, performed readings at home and abroad, and won several awards. His poems have been translated into Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Chinese and French. He has six poetry collections to his credit, including Drenched by the Sun (2013), Slicing the Moon (a bilingual video, 2013), and AvasanatheKollimeen (The Last Meteor, 2014). He has edited an anthology in English titled Shakespeare in the Age of Covid-19: Poems and Flash Fiction by Young Indians (2020) and four anthologies in Malayalam.

Noting what she called the ‘epic vision’ of Syam Sudhakar, the poet Mani Rao complimented him for the way he ‘stacks and links images effortlessly, restoring our awareness of the world as a creative project.’

Recognised as a significant award for creative writing in India, the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English by poets in the age group of 20-40 years.  The Prize is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  

The inaugural prize was awarded in 2009 to Aditi Machado and in 2021 to Pervin Saket.  Eminent poets like Jeet Thayil, Sudeep Sen, Keki Daruwalla, Arundhati Subramanian, K. Srilata, Manohar Shetty, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ranjit Hoskote, Vivek Narayanan, E.V. Ramakrishnan, Gieve Patel, Mamang Dai and Vinay Dharwadker have been associated with the prize as jury members. The award, consisting of a citation and cash prize of Rs. 15,000 will be presented to the winner at a literary event to be held soon.

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