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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
This personal essay by me appears in the winter edition of Forbes Life India. I feel the ground sway…
I’m amazed that India hasn’t yet woken up to the fact that Himesh Reshammiya is the new Govinda. I…
If you thought Ponytail’s speech the other day was funny, wait till you see this: Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, former…
The New York Times reports: A video of a dog apparently mourning the death of his owner at a…
Huffington Post reports: Glenn Beck called Hurricane Irene a “blessing” on his Friday radio show, saying it would teach…
02 September, 2008
Buried Alive
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
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