Vatayan Poetry Award 2011 to Javed Akhtar & Prasoon Joshi
30th June 2011

The Vatayan: Poetry on South Bank Award 2011, in association with The Nehru Centre and Hindi Samiti UK, was conferred on the iconic lyricist Javed Akhtar and screenwriter and columnist Prasoon Joshi. The awards were presented by Lord Desai, Shabana Azmi and Baroness Flather in a ceremony at The House of Lords on Thursday 30th June 2011. For the first time, the Life Time Achievement Award was presented to the famous poet, lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar by Baroness Flather, Lord Desai and Dr Madhup Mohta.

After an introduction by Dr Padmesh Gupta, editor of Pravasi Times and Purvai, young singer songwriter, Reena Bhardwaj began the programme with the Saraswati Vandana. Nasreen Munni Kabir, writer and documentary filmmaker spoke about Prasoon's literary contribution and Sangeeta Datta, the film historian, writer, a trained singer and film director about Javed Akhtar's achievements.

This is the first time that two poets who write for films are honoured with literary awards to acknowledge their contribution in promoting and propagating Hindi in the world. The two award winning poets, Ruth Padel and India Russel read English translations of Prasoon's poems, Taarey Zameen par and Meri Maan.