Three artists out of the five nominated were from Mumbai - Anju and Atul Dodiya and Sudarshan Shetty. The fourth was N N Rimzon from Thiruvananthapuram. Among all of them, Gowda received the least attention since she refused to meet all media in her home town, Bangalore. In fact, when she was called on the night of December 12 and told that she had won a prize of Rs three lakh, her answering machine picked up the news first.

Gowda and Rimzon were unable to come down for the ceremony. At the roof-top though, the air was strangely quiet after the announcement, perhaps because the odds were titled very strongly against a city artist winning and people didn't quite expect it to go whereit did. The judges, collectors Jehangir Nicholson and Czaee Shah and the honorary director of the National Gallery of Modern Art, (NGMA), Dr Saryu Doshi, thought that Gowda, with her work in traditional materials such as cow dung and kum kum met their conditions perfectly.

"We are looking for someone who is constantly seeking to redefine the boundaries of art by pushing against them and constantly experimenting,"said Doshi on the afternoon of the 12th, just a couple of hours before the three judges sat down to make their final decision.

But since Sotheby's seems quite determined to push Indian art internationally, Mumbai might get a chance next year as this prize is to be an annual feature in the calendar of the art world.