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My Friend Sancho
My first novel, My Friend Sancho, is now on the stands across India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.
To buy it online from the US, click here.
I am currently on a book tour to promote the book. Please check out our schedule of city launches. India Uncut readers are invited to all of them, no pass required, so do drop in and say hello.
If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho
Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.
And ah, my posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.
Recent entries
I feel hugely sorry for this kid. In her world, it might be a huge deal to become “the…
The Times of India reports: The government has banned Fashion TV for nine days after finding a program it…
Forget Robert McKee and Syd Field: If you want to learn how to make a successful Hollywood film, watch…
Daniel Pepper of CMS has a worrying story up on how RTI activists in India are increasingly facing a…
This sentence says so much about the level of parliamentary debate in India today: Finally, marshals were called in…
11 October, 2008
Witchcraft In India
The Times of India has a story today on a tribal woman in a village in Madhya Pradesh who was accused of witchcraft by her fellow villagers.
A group of villagers ... took the woman to a deserted location and forced her to pick a silver coin from a vessel containing boiling oil. The woman suffered severe burns on both her hands and she fell unconscious. However, this did not deter the villagers and they thrashed her badly with hot iron rods due to which she received head injuries. [...]
The villagers then dumped her outside her house. Her family members, including her husband, did not allow her inside…
Why was she suspected of being a witch? Well, two members of a family had died in the space of a month, and the villagers, presumably driven by other enmities, blamed those deaths on this poor woman. Once accused, she had no chance of proving herself innocent. A villager explained to ToI:
Women, whosoever, labelled as a ‘witch’ by the villagers has to pick a silver coin from a tank filled with boiling oil, with both her hands. If her hands are burnt, her witchhood is confirmed, otherwise she is declared innocent.
So if you’re a woman is such a village, especially low down in the social hierarchy, you’d better make sure you don’t piss anyone off. Unless you’re really a witch and have burn-proof arms.
Posted by Amit Varma in
