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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 Dalit Cartel

Check out this piece by Shikha Dalmia on the role that market forces play in perpetuating the caste system.…

Ban Nudity! Ban Nightlife!

Our right-wing lunatics are so funny sometimes that it’s hard to hate them. Balbir Punj has a bizarre (but…

City News

Having resumed blogging, it was natural for me to head over to the ToI site for the potential double…

The Ill-Effects of a Rave Party in Udupi

The Hindustan Times reports that two Karnataka ministers were caught watching pornographic videos “when the house was in session.”…

I’m All In: Confessions of a Poker Obsessive

This personal essay by me appears in the winter edition of Forbes Life India. I feel the ground sway…

05 March, 2007

On rave parties, victimless crimes and shooting the messenger

All the newspapers today are full of the “rave party” that was busted by cops near Pune yesterday. It is a party that I might well have gone to in my youth (I never did drugs, but I did like to rebel), and I feel sorry for the kids who’ve been arrested for activities that harmed no one. It is a pity that so many victimless acts are treated as crimes in our country. If I want to snort a little of whatever it is kids these days snort, what business is it of anyone else? Unlike cigarettes, where bystanders can be hurt by passive smoking, most recreational drugs don’t even harm anyone else.

But then, who cares about individual freedom in this country?

An aside: And do check out the following line in the Hindu report:

All those arrested have been booked under the NDPS Act and Foreigners Act, while the police are also thinking of invoking provisions of the IT Act against them because the invitations for the party were sent via the Internet, he [the superintendent of police in Pune] said.

That’s right, shoot the messenger. Bang bang. 

Posted by Amit Varma in Freedom | India | News

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