Mumbai, Nov 21 (IANS): Fourteen-year-old Prapti Panda, who wrote stories as a hobby during school vacations had never imagined that she would be among the top three winners chosen by author Ravi Subhramanian and would share the platform with the country's biggest writers.

Rohit Tandekar, a Mechanical Engineer from Mumbai who wrote stories to satisfy his creative instinct; Vasudha Chandna Gulati, a homemaker from Gurgaon who wrote as a hobby during her free time; and Shachee Desai, a student from Vadodra, whose love for writing made her squeeze time from her hectic schedule while preparing for her board exams had never imagined that within a few months of participating in a story writing contest, they would become published authors!

An IT professional, an HR manager, a lawyer, a doctor, a blogger and a personal assistant are among the top winners that emerged triumphant in Write India campaign, India's first-ever short story-writing contest that invited participation from all across the country irrespective of age, profession or qualification. Close to 25,000 entries were submitted and the winners are all now published authors with some having lucrative contacts for future projects.

Write India, the country's largest ever crowd-sourced platform for short stories, culminated on November 13, with the unveiling of the book, Write India Stories, at the St. Regis Hotel here. The event witnessed an unprecedented presence of several star authors and the proud winners on the same stage. 

In the list of authors were well-known names such as Amish Tripathi, Chetan Bhagat, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravi Subramanian, Preeti Shenoy, Tuhin A. Sinha, Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Datta, Madhuri Banerjee, Jaishree Misra, and Anita Nair. Among the celebrities that attended the event were politician and social worker Shaina NC, celebrity interior architect and designer Nisha Jamwal and authors Anand Neelkanthan, Kiran Manral, and Mahendra Jakhar.

Author Amish of the best-selling Shiva Triology series, said he was overwhelmed to see the quality of stories. "Anything that encourages freedom of expression should be encouraged. Writing a book is essentially giving voice to one's soul and this is one of the best possible platforms for freedom of expression," he added

Vinita Dawra Nangia, Director, Write India expressed her excitement about the event. "Words can't express how I feel holding the Write India book in my hands. It was just a random idea in a meeting that turned into this mega platform that helped accomplish the writing dreams of new authors. And this would not have been possible without the relentless support of my authors. This is how dreams unfold. Now we have established Write India authors offering to work with our winners. What a fantastic opportunity for our participants!"

With the end of Season 1, all eyes are on the next season, which is expected to unravel soon with an even more starry line-up of authors as mentors