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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
Check out this piece by Shikha Dalmia on the role that market forces play in perpetuating the caste system.…
Our right-wing lunatics are so funny sometimes that it’s hard to hate them. Balbir Punj has a bizarre (but…
Having resumed blogging, it was natural for me to head over to the ToI site for the potential double…
The Hindustan Times reports that two Karnataka ministers were caught watching pornographic videos “when the house was in session.”…
This personal essay by me appears in the winter edition of Forbes Life India. I feel the ground sway…
27 February, 2009
Illegitimate All These Years
Immense celebration happened on the day the Oscars were announced, for I’m a huge fan of AR Rahman and was overjoyed to see him win. And immense WTFness happens today, for Rahman says:
This award legitimises our music and the aspirations of hundreds of other musicians.
Legitimizes our music? All these years, all 17 of them since Roja, millions of us have loved Rahman’s music—so it wasn’t legitimate all this time? The crores of records sold in India, the four national awards, the 11 Filmfare awards, hell, the love of all his fans—and it takes an Oscar to “legitimize” his music? Et tu, Rahman?
I know many Indians still have this pathetic colonial hangover that leads them to crave validation from the West. I’d assumed that Rahman, just by virtue of being so good, had more self-respect than that. Well, such it goes…
(HT: Mahendra Shikaripur.)
Update: A number of readers have written in to say that maybe Rahman just happened to use the wrong word, that English isn’t his first language, that maybe he simply meant to say that Indian music has now got its overdue recognition from the West. I guess that’s a fair enough explanation of what may have happened.
Posted by Amit Varma in
Arts and entertainment |
India |
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WTF
