Every year
Thirty-plus honoured,
in every field, every year.
Doctors by department, artists by craft, sportspeople, teachers, public servants and makers — chosen city by city, state by state, and printed in The Pencil.
Aarav Sharma
Potter · Bengaluru
“The clay remembers. That's signature enough.”
At twenty-nine, Aarav left an engineering post to sit at a kick-wheel for a year in silence. His first collection — thirty vessels shaped in a single monsoon — sold out in one afternoon at Oaktree Café. He now trains twelve apprentices, most of them women from Kumbharwada, and refuses to sign his pieces.
Artisans · No. 01 of this year's list
Anaya Rao
Ceramicist · Jaipur
“A cup must weigh nothing and feel like everything.”
Anaya works only with clay dug from the Aravalli foothills, fifty kilometres from her studio. Her celadon-glazed bowls have been served at three state banquets, but she is proudest of the tea sets she donates each year to the city's cancer wards.
Artisans · No. 02 of this year's list
Ishaan Mehta
Architect · Mumbai
“Draw the room before you draw the wall.”
Ishaan designs homes that begin as sketches on café napkins. His practice, Long Line Studio, has quietly reshaped how Mumbai thinks about small urban dwellings — 320-square-foot flats with reading nooks, indoor courtyards, and light that moves like a slow guest.
Architects · No. 03 of this year's list
Leela Narayan
Poet · Kochi
“A poem is a room I leave the light on in.”
Leela has been keeping the same notebook by the same window for eleven years. Her four slim collections have never been marketed, only passed. Each Sunday she reads aloud, unannounced, at Veridian Courtyard — twelve chairs, no microphone, no photographs.
Writers · No. 04 of this year's list
Hameed Qureshi
Master Tailor · Hyderabad
“A good stitch is invisible; a great one, only to strangers.”
For forty-two years Hameed has kept a single shop in Charminar's inner lanes. He measures with a length of cotton string, remembers every customer's shoulder, and quietly clothes half the city's musicians for free.
Designers · No. 05 of this year's list
Dr. Kavita Menon
Paediatrician & Painter · Pune
“Watercolour is what my hands do when my heart has spoken all day.”
Kavita runs a paediatric ward by day and a small art-therapy circle on Sunday afternoons. She has quietly funded twenty scholarships for young artists from tribal Maharashtra, drawn from the sale of her own watercolours.
Doctors · No. 06 of this year's list
Nominate
Know someone who deserves the light?
Every nomination is read, in person, by our city editors.