Journalist and blogger Amit Varma’s first novel, written in 2008, is out on the stands. Looking smart and new in a grey paperback cover carrying an embossed lizard and shocking-pink heart flaunting the title My friend Sancho, the book really calls out to be picked up and read. The shock is not over, yet, as you find on reading the first few pages of the novel: “I should introduce myself now. My name is Abir Ganguly. I work for a tabloid in Bombay called The Afternoon Mail. I am 23. I eat meat. I am heterosexual. I don’t believe in God. I masturbate 11 times a day. I exaggerate frequently, as in the last sentence. I am ambitious in the sense of what I want to be rather than what I want to do….”
Sometimes, such frankness in expression, when it stems from a deliberate desire to shock, can put me off, but I read on for good reasons: (a) The adventure or fantasy hinted at on the back cover had made me curious enough to go on. (b) My desk training held me back from judging it too quickly. (c) This novel, I knew, had been nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008! Amit Varma was in the longlist with promising Indian voices such as Tulsi Badrinath, Daisy Hasan, Salma and others whose books I had read before.
So I continued, and soon I found myself sinking into a fast and entertaining story of the life and thoughts of Abir Ganguly. Abir, who has been put on a crime beat, is called over by one of his sources, Inspector Thombre, to cover, during action, an arrest he and his men are planning to make. Waiting outside as the cops enter the supposed gangster’s house, Abir and his cameraman are stunned when they suddenly hear gunshots… the suspected criminal has been shot, they realise! Abir gets a clue that it’s a mistake, when they hear the inspector mutter, “…at least, it’s only a Muslim,” as if that would mitigate the consequences… Abir and his colleague beat a hasty retreat. Things may have ended there, if not that he is asked to do a big story on the same crime. In this manner, he gets to know the daughter, Muneeza, of murdered Mohammed Iqbal, and also gets to see the workings of Thombre’s mind. The rest is about the developing relationship between Abir and Muneeza, narrated in a very unsentimental, witty style in the cyber language of the day!
Amit Varma was born in Chandigarh in 1973 and was educated in Pune. Starting as a copywriter, he got his first break into cyberspace as managing editor of Cricinfo, India, in 2003. He then started blogging at India Uncut, in 2004, which soon made news — picking up the Best Indiblog award (2005 Indibloggies) and nominations for Best Asian Blog (2006 Bloggies) and the 2008 Weblog Awards. A regular writer of op-eds and columns, his weekly column for the, Mint, called “Thinking It Through,” won him the prestigious annual Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007. In 2008, he gave up regular employment to focus on his first novel, My Friend Sancho. Now he is based in Mumbai and well into his second novel.
As things went, My Friend Sancho was not the winning entry in that competition; yet, it is unique and deserving in many ways. It is worth celebrating the author’s rare gift of being able to make the reader laugh out loud in places. One can feel the force of the new-age Indian English writing in it and celebrate its promise of the emergence of a generation carrying no memory of the wounds of the partition.
— SD
