Boredom

A friend’s status message on Facebook leads me to wonder: If you are bored, does that not mean that you are boring?

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 February, 2010 in Small thoughts

Priorities

Mohit sent me an SMS a couple of hours ago informing me that this year’s edition of Gladrags Mrs India is sponsored by Unwanted 72. Isn’t that just delicious?

Posted by Amit Varma on 11 February, 2010 in India | Miscellaneous

Welcome to the 19th Century

Ah, modern times. Check out these two amazing news headlines:

Community ostracises woman touched by outsider
Muslims on social networks are sinners

Such stories they contain. It’s bewildering to be a writer of fiction sometimes, when the real world is so very far out and strange. 

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 February, 2010 in Arts and entertainment | India | News | WTF

Hachette on the Rise

Just back from the Galle Lit Fest, rested, and all set to resume blogging. Let me begin with the good news that my publisher, Hachette India, just a year old in this country, has already become the second-biggest publisher in India, ahead of Harper Collins and Random House, and behind Penguin. Here’s the full story: I’m most pleased that My Friend Sancho has been described as one of their flagship sellers here. Authors are supposed to have uneasy relationships with their publishers, but I get along really well with these guys, and their success is well deserved.

Also, in the UK, Hachette consolidates its No 1 position, which it has held for a while now. More power to them.

*

In other book related news, I’ll be part of a panel at the Kala Ghoda Festival discussing “City Stories”. Anjum Hasan will moderate, and my fellow panelists are Chandrahas Choudhury and Lata Jagtiani. It’s on Monday, at 8pm; the full Kala Ghoda schedule is here. There’s also a panel on food writing at 6.30 pm featuring my friends (and India’s best writers on food) Vikram Doctor and Nilanjana Roy, and I’m looking forward to being in the audience for that. Hop over if you have time.

Posted by Amit Varma on 05 February, 2010 in Arts and entertainment | My Friend Sancho | Personal

Off to Galle

In a few hours, I’m off to the Galle Literary Festival. Blogging will be light till I’m back in town, and I don’t expect to be online much. But who knows, I may tweet salacious (and made-up) literary gossip if the fancy strikes me. Watch out for that.

If you’re at the festival, both the events that I’m part of take place on Sunday, January 31. At 10am, I will be in conversation with Shehan Karunatilaka, a Sri Lankan novelist who will be talking about his forthcoming novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew. It’s a book set in the world of cricket, and we’ll talk about Sri Lankan literature, Sri Lankan cricket and Shehan’s own writing.

At 2.15pm, I will have a session to myself in which I will talk about My Friend Sancho, read out bits of it, and chat with the audience. If there is time, I may also read from an Abir Ganguly short story that I finished writing a few hours ago, and that will be part of an anthology of Indian writing that you’ll see on the stands later this year.

And ah, I promise at least one orgasm. So if you come, you’ll see me come. Promise.

Posted by Amit Varma on 27 January, 2010 in Arts and entertainment | My Friend Sancho | Personal

Why Australia? Why Not Dubai?

Reader Ruchir Khare writes in to point me to this passage from the Johann Hari piece on Dubai that I linked to in my last post:

A Human Rights Watch study found there is a “cover-up of the true extent” of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and suicide, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

Ruchir’s questions: What has the Indian government done about this? What has the media done about this? These figures, after all, are greater than those coming out of Australia.

*

Oh, and my buddy Madhu pointed me this morning to the WTF headline of the day: “Aussies celebrate R-Day by racially assaulting 2 Indians.”

This is not on some random blog somewhere, it’s from The Economic Times. Some editor actually approved this. Such it goes.

Posted by Amit Varma on 27 January, 2010 in News | WTF

An Offence That Cannot Be Ignored

The WTF statement of the week comes from a Dubai cop:

The woman confessed that she had sexual intercourse with her fiancé and that she had alcohol. We cannot just ignore such an offence.

The woman is question is a British tourist who complained on New Year’s Day that she had been raped by a waiter the previous evening. The cops “arrested her after she revealed during questioning that she had drunk alcohol and had sex with her fiancé, with whom she was on holiday.”

As for the waiter, he’s presumably still on the loose, still waiting.

*

And while on Dubai, check out this superb article by Johann Hari: “The dark side of Dubai.” (Link via Sonia Gupta.)

Posted by Amit Varma on 26 January, 2010 in Freedom | News | WTF

My Walking Stick Is Bigger Than Yours

The line of the day, which I want to see on a t-shirt before I die, comes from the great Mahinder Watsa:

Why have a walking stick if your own penis can oblige!

I especially love the touch of having the exclamation mark at the end of the rhetorical question. Immense panache. The quote is from here, and is part of a recent development in Watsa’s writing—he’s actually beginning to indulge in wisecracks. Consider his crack here about how he thought only frogs were green—or his advice here to “eat any vegetable you like best and with every bite think a sexual thought.”

The questions, of course, are as clueless as ever. Still, we’re over a billion people strong, and the stork sure didn’t bring them.

*

Ouch. Did I just write, “Consider his crack here...?” Somebody hit me.

*

Earlier posts on Watsa: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Posted by Amit Varma on 23 January, 2010 in Miscellaneous

Cricket and War

The WTF statement of the day comes from Pradeep Magazine in Hindustan Times:

In this wave of attacks from all sides, the IPL has unleashed one more this year. What the Mumbai terror attacks could not achieve—an Indo-Pak war—this fresh row could well do that.

I never thought that in a fracas between Lalit Modi and the rest of the world, the rest of the world will make a fool of itself. Such it goes.

*

My thoughts on the IPL auctions are here. I must admit, the thought of war never crossed my mind. But then, I am not a defence analyst.

Posted by Amit Varma on 23 January, 2010 in Journalism | Media | Sport | WTF

Modern Warfare

The US Army has killer robots. The Lashkar has para-gliders. I’d love to watch the movie—but I’m scared about the real world.

Posted by Amit Varma on 22 January, 2010 in News