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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…
16 November, 2008
“The War Is Over”
On an email group I’m part of, Roswitha writes that the recent New York Times hoax reminded her of the gorgeous poem below:
Ginsberg
by Julia VinogradNo blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn’t made this mistake with him.
It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.
So Ginsberg got the idea, “I’m going to shout
‘the war is over’ as loud as I can,” he said
“and all of you run over the city
in different directions
yelling the war is over, shout it in offices,
shops, everywhere and when enough people
believe the war is over
why, not even the politicians
will be able to keep it going.”
I thought it was a great idea at the time
a truly poetic idea.
So when Ginsberg yelled I ran down the street
and leaned in the doorway
of the sort of respectable down on its luck cafeteria
where librarians and minor clerks have lunch
and I yelled “the war is over.”
And a little old lady looked up
from her cottage cheese and fruit salad.
She was so ordinary she would have been invisible
except for the terrible light
filling her face as she whispered
“My son. My son is coming home.”
I got myself out of there and was sick in some bushes.
That was the first time I believed there was a war.
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