National award in hand, 13-yr-old gamer Namya Joshi eyes book, YouTube

For Namya Joshi, school is no work, all “play”.

The 13-year-old from Ludhiana received the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar on Monday for using popular video game Minecraft to reshape curriculum and turning classrooms into educational gaming sessions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that she “has achieved international status in the field of multimedia due to her talent”.

“I was grinning ear from the ear when I got a chance to interact with our Prime Minister,” Namya tells The Indian Express. “Although I couldn’t get to talk to him, he took my name — ‘Punjab ki beti Namya Joshi’ — and just seeing him speaking live was a dream. We will get a chance to meet him when all the prize winners go to Delhi once the Covid situation improves.”