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My Friend Sancho
My first novel, My Friend Sancho, is now on the stands across India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.
To buy it online from the US, click here.
I am currently on a book tour to promote the book. Please check out our schedule of city launches. India Uncut readers are invited to all of them, no pass required, so do drop in and say hello.
If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho
Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.
And ah, my posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.
Recent entries
BBC informs us that scientists have now found a way to genetically engineer glowing sperms so they can “track…
My friend Rahul Bhatia has a fine story in Open about Dibakar Banerjee’s experience with the censor board during…
Here’s the WTF headline of the day: Woman co-pilot lands jet solo If that was a man, this wouldn’t…
Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, I came across this beautiful poem named “Dear Augusta,” by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Check it out—and…
Speaking about his new film Shaapit, Vikram Bhatt says: I did some research and a very important fact emerged.…
13 July, 2007
Big Brother is watching your foetus
I swear I’m not making this up. Here’s the link:
The central government plans to make it mandatory for the country’s women to register their pregnancies with it. It also wants abortions to be carried out only under specified circumstances. [...]
On Thursday, Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury told Hindustan Times that she wanted each pregnancy to be registered. [...] If Chowdhury has her way, abortions will be allowed only where there is a “valid and acceptable reason”. HT could not get officials to reveal the criteria that would make an abortion “acceptable and valid”.
So if you’re a young couple who have accidentally got pregnant and want to terminate, you will first have to convince a babu somewhere, without whose signature you will not have control over your own bodies. And if the government makes us register every pregnancy today to prevent female foeticide, why would they not demand that we register every act of sex so that sexually transmitted diseases can be stopped? Same logic, no? Applaud intention, forget outcome, throw the mommy out with the bathwater.
Also read: “Does Your Body belong To You?”
Posted by Amit Varma in
