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My Friend Sancho
My first book, My Friend Sancho, was published in May 2009, and went on to become the biggest selling debut novel released that year in India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and had earlier been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.
If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho
Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.
My posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.
Recent entries
So it’s about 10.45pm, and we’re headed in a tourist taxi to Siena Village, a resort a few kilometres…
I don’t know why, but I find this kind of funny. And what’s with the quote marks in that…
Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired: Here’s a brain teaser: Your task is to move a single line so that…
So while everyone’s celebrating the arrival of Akhilesh Yadav and how he’s revitalised the Samajwadi Party and UP Politics,…
... is done. The next time India walk out to play a Test match, my favourite sportsman of all…
03 September, 2007
“Some People Out There In Our Nation Don’t Have Maps”
I love beauty contests—and not for the beauty. At a recent Miss Teen USA contest, Ms South Carolina was asked:
Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?
Check out the answer:
Phew. In case you want a transcript, here it is:
I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the US should help the US, or, or should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
I can’t stop vibrating with laughter. Somebody touch me, you’ll enjoy.
(Link via separate emails from Aditya Kuber and readers Hemant Birje and Balakrishnan Sivaraman. My buddy Sumant Srivathsan also blogged about it a few days ago.)
Update: I have just concluded that it is terribly wrong on my part to laugh at that poor girl, who obviously blanked out in a high-pressure moment. Here, watch this clip, in which the poor young lady comes on a TV show and is given another chance to answer that question. This time, having had time to think about it, she begins:
Well, personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. I don’t know anyone else who doesn’t.
So there you go, she knows where the US is. But what about the Iraq?
Update 2: Har har har!
And indeed, ho ho ho!
For that matter, heh!
Posted by Amit Varma in
WTF
