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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…
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
