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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.
Yes, says a court in Ireland, striking down a 19th century law against begging.
I don’t understand why Reuters carries the news in its Oddly Enough section. What is odd: begging or free speech?
Posted by Amit Varma on 17 March, 2007 in
Freedom |
Journalism
"Fear makes such a good soil for self-censorship,” says Garry Kasparov, as quoted by Business Week in their story on how the Russian government oppresses journalists, ”Who is killing Russian journalists?” The question, of course, is merely rhetorical.
If you are an Indian journalist, do read and feel relieved. Immense boredom may sometimes come, but at least there is no greater threat to life.
(Link via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 14 March, 2007 in
Journalism |
Politics
ATimes of India report begins:
Protests against Bengal’s industrial revitalisation could receive a new fillip after the suicide of a 62-year-old cultivator, an organiser of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (KJRC) in Singur, who lost nearly an acre of land to the Tata Motors project.
This is either dishonest reporting or shoddy journalism, and I shall give the benefit of the doubt to the reporter and assume that it is the latter. The protests at Singur are not against “Bengal’s industrial revitalisation” but against the forceful appropriation of land by the government. As I wrote in an earlier post on eminent domain and Singur, it really does not matter if the farmers got compensation: if they did not want to sell, it is theft.
Now, eminent domain might be justifiable as a last resort for matters of public use, such as building roads, but it is outrageous when it is applied to take land from poor farmers and give it to a rich industrial house. The irony here is that Tata would probably have been willing to negotiate with the farmers for the land directly, but by law, farmers aren’t allowed to sell their agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. Yes, that’s right: even if Tata was willing to talk to the farmers and negotiate with them, and farmers were willing to sell, it would have been an illegal transaction. So Tata had no choice but to go to the government, which, of course, is not into negotiating, and simply took the land by force.
I entirely agree with Shruti Rajagopalan when she writes here that the fundamental right to property, revoked in 1978, should be reinstated in our constitution. An “industrial revitalisation” is only sustainable when property rights are sacrosanct. Otherwise it’s a mockery.
Posted by Amit Varma on 13 March, 2007 in
Economics |
Freedom |
India |
Journalism |
Politics
Most of the Indian women I know who are around 30 years old are unmarried—and they’re happy that way. That is why I was somewhat bemused by this line in a Reuters report of Liz Hurley’s wedding:
Indian women are commonly married off in their teens to a man of their parents’ choosing, and are a cause of despair if they are still a spinster at 30.
Clearly the reporter in question, Jonathan Allen, had just flown down to India for the wedding, and obviously hadn’t spent any time here to get to know the place. Perhaps he even read Kipling for his research.
In tune with their coverage of India in the 19th century, another Reuters headline reads, ”Horses, elephants to star in Hurley’s Hindu wedding.” I’m relieved that there is nothing in the text about how Indians worship the cow and consider it their mother. Joy.
(Link via Divisha Gupta via email from Gautam John.)
Posted by Amit Varma on 13 March, 2007 in
India |
Journalism
Upside: The chicks throw themselves at you.
Downside: Everybody knows if you snog them.
I wonder why the British haven’t yet thought of putting their royal family on a reality show. Clearly there’s a market for it, and the royals would hardly notice the difference.
Posted by Amit Varma on 12 March, 2007 in
Journalism |
Miscellaneous
This article of mine was first published on April 17, 2005 in the Indian Express as ”Windbag and the willow”. This was also posted on Indian Uncut, and was shaped by the blogging I did on it all through March 2005.
THE next time you watch a cricket match, listen to the phrases that pop into your head with every piece of action. Have you heard these words before? I don’t know about you, but I am assailed by familiar phrases and sentences when I watch cricket, and I recoil each time one pops into my head. I am a cricket journalist, and it is my job to describe every game of cricket that I write about in a fresh manner, to give the reader a clear picture of what happened. And yet, that is so difficult.
Posted by Amit Varma on 15 February, 2007 in
Essays and Op-Eds |
Journalism |
Sport
