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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.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

Another Independence Day

July 2, 2009—mark this day. It’s a big day in the history of independent India because today was the…

Savita Bhabhi Fights Censorship

A dull government office. A pot-bellied bureaucrat in a safari suit sits behind a table on which many dusty…

‘My Mother’s Fault’

My friend Salil Tripathi was in Bombay this week to promote his marvellous new book, “Offence: The Hindu Case.”…

Spelling It Out

I’m just back from dinner with a few friends of mine, among them Anand Ramachandran and Salil Tripathi. They…

No More Pockets

Archana Sinha writes in: Nepal has ordered its customs officials to wear pocketless pants, with a view to discouraging…

02 September, 2008

Buried Alive

AP reports:

A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of parliament this week to spare him their outrage.

“These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them,” Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said on Saturday. “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”

I bet you’re shocked and outraged by the above two paragraphs, as I am. But at what? At the unusual act of burying the women alive, or the attitude of Zehri, which is so commonplace even in India?

To put it differently, if those women hadn’t been buried alive, but merely censured, and Zehri spouted the same crap about ‘centuries-old traditions’, would we have been as shocked? I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought. And that’s the problem.

(Link via email from reader Yadhu.)

Posted by Amit Varma in India | News | Small thoughts

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