The Grethe Frydenlund Award is a recognition given not for contribution in a particular year, but for years of dedicated service. Named after one of our founders, the Award honours members for their spirit and hard work, spanning years, if not decades. The Board is delighted to announce that the Grethe Frydenlund Award for 2025 was given to Anita Pratap.
Ambassador Hans Jacob Frydenlund (MFA), guest of honour at the 2025 AGM, told us how his mother co-created the International Forum with a firm belief that it would be good on a professional and human level for people to get an introduction, immersion and network when coming to Norway. ‘International Forum helped my mother fly,’ he remembered fondly.
Anita Pratap – the receiver of the Grethe Frydenlund Award 2025 – is the sixth recipient so far, and she has helped the International Forum ‘fly’ during the five years of her presidency (2019 – 2024).
Anita Pratap was born in the State of Kerala, in southern India, into a Syriac Catholic family. Her father was employed with Tata Group, a large Indian corporation, and he was posted at different locations in India taking his family with him. Due to his postings, as a child, Anita changed schools seven times in eleven years. Some find it stressful to move. She thrived. She passed Senior Cambridge from Loreto House Kolkata and did her BA Honours in English from Miranda House in New Delhi in 1978, winning the prestigious Founders Day Prize. She obtained her degree in journalism from Bangalore University. Upon graduating at 21, she was offered a job by Indian Express, one of India’s leading newspapers.
Journalism took her around the world into a number of highly dangerous places. Her primary interest was international politics and that led her to the ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka. Journalism became her life, and she is still working as a journalist for various media. After a life full of drama, reporting government meltdown, political catastrophes, disasters, assassinations, terrorism, war, riots, corruption investigations, mid-air plane crashes, Norway – where drama is a cancelled train – is a wonderful to live in.
In 1983, Anita was the first journalist who interviewed the chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, V. Prabhakaran. Her first book Island of Blood: Frontline Reports from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Other South Asian Flashpoints, a bestseller, was based on her reporting from Sri Lanka and her experience as a reporter in terror and war-stricken areas. Madras Café from 2013 is a Bollywood thriller modelled on Anita’s time as war correspondent. In the film, the journalist character Jaya interviews LTF leader Anna Bhaskaran, who is in turn modelled on Veluppillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil chief. The film’s Prime Minister is modelled after Rajiv Gandhi.
Anita also worked for India Today and then was a correspondent for Time magazine for eight years. In 1996, she joined CNN, her first experience as a television journalist. She worked from CNN’s Atlanta and Bangkok bureaus for a short while to get administrative experience. She then covered the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in late September 1996, for which she was presented with the George Polk Award for TV reporting. Anita has been the receiver of many prestigious awards, honours and prizes throughout her career.
Switching from print media to television, Anita also made various documentaries on social issues and arts, and co-authored – with Bangalore-based photographer Mahesh Bhatt – her second book Unsung, published in 2007 and recounting the stories of nine Indian people – a tribute to ordinary citizens who have dedicated themselves to improving the lives of people around them.
Her first husband was Pratap Ravindran with whom she has a son, Zubin, born when she was 22 years old. He was a senior reporter at The Indian Express where the two met. She subsequently divorced Ravindran and obtained custody of her son. In 1999, she married the Norwegian diplomat Arne Walther and followed him to his postings in Vienna, Riyadh and Tokyo.
Back in Oslo from Tokyo, she was made the Ambassador for Arendalsuka, Norway’s biggest Festival of Democracy, attended now by 165,000 people, including the Prime Minister, ministers, party leaders, CEOs, NGOs, organisations and associations. Anita also moderates the Ambassador’s Round Table and Global Outlook at Arendalsuka
She worked relentlessly to co-organise the Diplomatic Charity Event in December 2019 and again in December 2022. A total of 53 countries participated. In 2019, NOK 80 000 was raised for the Red Cross’ Water for Life Project in Burundi. In 2022, the NOK 280 000 raised helped to equip and send an ambulance to Ukraine’s warfront.
Her five years as International Forum’s President of the Board were filled with joy and laughter and very much work! Under Anita’s leadership, the financial situation stabilised, membership increased, the International Forum thrived. Due to her commitment and exceptional dedication, International Forum embraced the digital age of VIPPS, electronic membership cards, efaktura and Styreweb financial services, which has greatly benefited members and the organisation.
In Tokyo – Anita as wife of Norway’s Ambassador hosts a ladies dinner in the Embassy residence for the wife of Japan’s Prime Minister and Ingrid Schulerud wife of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg during their official visit to Japan. Friendships bloom in shared experiences.
As she accepted the Grethe Frydenlund Award, Anita remembered her first meeting with Grethe Frydenlund 24 years ago. Grethe was dressed in vivid green with bright red lipstick standing out from the crowd of people in dark clothes. She asked, ‘Do you live here? You must join my organisation!’ Anita claims that during the difficult moments of her presidency, ‘Grethe was the face that kept us going.’
At her funeral, Anita recalls that Grethe’s sister mentioned how, as children, when they went walking in the woods, Grethe often stumbled because she was gazing at the stars. Says Anita, ‘My heart smiled because that’s exactly how I was too. But life teaches. As a war correspondent, I learned to scan the ground for hidden landmines. But I haven’t lost the habit of looking up at the night sky. It’s a reminder of our smallness and the vastness of a beautiful universe.’
We can’t think of a more worthy awardee!
Bernadette Kumar