The Scotiabank Giller Prize is not only Canada's best-known literary award, it's the most lucrative.

This year's winner, UBC creative writing professor Ian Williams, took home $100,000 for his debut novel Reproduction.

The Giller also inspired Vancouver businessman Barj Dhahan and his wife Rita—both avid readers—to create a similar prize to nurture Punjabi literature.

It was done through a Dhahan family–founded charity, the Indian Education Society, in partnership with UBC's department of Asian studies. 

This year's winner of the annual Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature is Jatinder Singh Haans, author of the short-story collection Jyona Sach Baki Jhooth (Truthful Living, All Else a Lie). It came with a $25,000 cash award, which was announced at a gala at UBC's Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre on November 2.

The keynote speaker was Singaporean author Balli Kaur Jaswal, whose Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows has been optioned by director Ridley Scott's production company.

During a recent visit to the Georgia Straight office, Haans said through his translator, Barj Dhahan, that the stories are set in agrarian communities in Punjab as they struggle to adjust to a fast-changing environment and face new social, economic, and political issues.

The title story revolves around the tension between a father and son on their farm.

"The father is still used to the old tools, the old ploughs, and so on," Haans explained. "In fact, he has a little bit of love for these tools, whereas the son is into newer equipment, new machinery, modern technology, and so on. And they're having a struggle to reconcile both perspectives."

Haans lives in the village of Aloona Tola on the outskirts of the Punjabi metropolis of Ludhiana. He said he was thrilled upon hearing that he had won the Dhahan Prize, which is the most lucrative Punjabi literature award in the world.

"It's a big honour but it also comes with a responsibility—almost a sense of obligation in the future...meaning pressure to write more."

Another story in the Haans's book, "Love Jihad", focuses on a couple who can't conceive a child.

In the urban areas, the woman looks at technological and medical interventions to address this. "Whereas in the village, it would have been a traditional kind of way where the mother-in-law or the father-in-law says 'you go on this pilgrimage, have a bath over there, do those kinds of rituals.' "

Yet another short story focuses on a mischievous boy named Jindoo from a poor family who struggles in a government school. But a caring teacher engages the boy through role-playing rather than conventional educational approaches.

There are two second-place Dhahan Prizes. Each came with $10,000 for writers in two Punjabi scripts: Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi.

One of those second-prize winners, Lahore-based writer Mudassar Bashir, visited the Georgia Straight to discuss his honoured Shaumukhi novelette, Kaun (Who).

The main character, Sarmad, wants to work as an actor in movies even though he's been trained in commerce. His director friend, Joseph, is highly skeptical that he can succeed in such an artistic endeavour because of his business background.

But Joseph puts Sarmad in a room with a bunch of old scripts and costumes, and tells him to select characters and perform them in front of a mirror.

"When Sarmad is in front of the mirror...the mirror becomes a scene," Bashir explained. "Through these scenes, he performs seven or eight characters—a labourer, a singer, a person who worked on a portrait—and there are different eras he travelled through that mirror."

Kaun shows how hate can flourish through identities linked to caste, language, religion, and costumes. It's a timely message in a world riven with divisions.

Bashir has written 11 books and he sees parallels between the monarchs and kings of a bygone era and the multinational companies generating their own histories today.

"But when you consider monarchs or kings or rajas or maharajas, they are only 0.1 percent of the population," he said. "Where is the 99 percent? We have to try to look on those people. What was their culture? What was their traditions? What were their difficulties?"

He pointed out that under the rule of the Mogals, families had to pay burial expenses through the king. And when an army stated in a town, the residents had to pay a tax called chula, which is a Punjabi word to describe an open hearth for cooking.

"Every family had the responsibility to feed at least two soldiers on a daily basis," Bashir stated.

To learn things like this, he said it's necessary to study folk tales, folk poetry and hear the stories of elders.

And he hasn't lost sight of the so-called little people who've largely been written out of official histories.

"When you visit the Taj Mahal, you're inspired," Bashir said of the famed mausoleum in the Indian city of Agra. 

But he noted that everyone hears the love story of the emperor Shah Jahan, who financed the construction to house the tomb of his favourite wife, and not those who actually built it.

"Where was the working class?" Bashir asked. "Where were the technicians? Where were the architects? They sacrificed their lives. They sacrificed their homelands. What was their struggle?"

The second-prize winner in Gurmukhi script, Gurdev Singh Rupana, could not come to Vancouver due to a health concern. His book, Aam Khaas (Ordinary Extraordinary), is a collection of short stories about marginalized people.