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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.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

The Bombzooka Question

I have three hypothetical questions for you guys. Humour me and try and read all the way through. One.…

A Tale of Two Cities

I was on a CNN-IBN show earlier this evening, where the topic under discussion was the arrest of two…

Thodi Si Tu Lift Karade

I suppose I should display some empathy here, but I can’t help but be a little amused by the…

The Gathering Birds

’Before anyone else was interested in the ornithology of terror he saw the gathering birds,’ Salman Rushdie writes about…

‘A Living Room Full of Guys’

Check out this TED Talk by Tony Porter on how men get trapped in a ‘Manbox’—and women bear the…

10 June, 2009

The Creaking Fan

It’s news when a rich industrialist’s wife spends a night in jail like this:

In the barrack, Sheetal [Mafatlal] was made to sleep on a thin, prickly coir mattress with around 50 hardcore criminals and a swarm of mosquitoes for company.

The creaking fan overhead, jail sources say, moves too slowly to beat the collective heat of bodies and the stench around, thanks to gutkha-chewing undertrials.

But it’s not news when other undertrials, innocent until proven guilty, have to spend nights, even weeks, months, perhaps years in such conditions. That’s the real scandal, but we take it for granted, we know the system’s broken. But when Mrs Mafatlal has to spend a night in such conditions, going chheee in a prison cell instead of mua at a party, that’s newsworthy. See now.

Posted by Amit Varma in India | Journalism | Media | News | WTF

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