Amit Varma's "My friend Sancho", short listed for the Man Asian Literary award is a very quick read. Published by Hatchette, the book costs 195 Rs and is around 220 pages. With a larger than life font size and ample spacing between short paragraphs, it is a fast food novel readable in an hour or so. This book was listed on the most selling list in Odyssey and Landmark, on each of my visits within the last month or so. I finally visited his blog www.indiauncut.com a few days back after hearing so much about the man and his blog. He apparently has received some kind of journalism award and he contributed to telegraph, HT etc over the years, in addition to serving on the editorial board of Cricinfo. After reading numerous coming of age, new age early 30s indian male drunk on booze and lost love, ABCDs type stories, I had become kind of tired. But the quick visit to his blog made me buy this book and give it a shot inspite my tight schedule. So I gave in and bought the book, with the usual guilt feeling.
The story is wafer thin. Abir Ganguly, the protagonist, is a bong who is on a crime beat with the Afternoon Mail. He is called upon by a typical police wala - Inspector Thombre, who wants his share of fame, to cover an arrest in one of the city's suburbs. A case of mistaken identity resulting in killing of Mohammed Iqbal is covered up by Abir in his article. The victim's daughter Muneeza ( named Sancho by her father who himself was Don Quixote ) enters Abir's life when Abir is directed by his superfluous boss to cover the life of Iqbal. Romance is in the air between the two and Abir gives a peek into his life led as a bachelor hard done by laziness and creative urge to cook up stories for his paper. Meanwhile, his new boss at work, Sandhya, gives him the veiled managerial talk to cover not just Iqbal, but also Thombre and leave the judgement to audience on who really is the culprit. Inspite of loathing Thombre, Abir does take the pains of getting to know his subject and in the due course empathizes with the police wala and his like. The chemistry between Abir and Muneeza is not evocative and is done in by Abir's revelation towards the end that he was witness to her dad's killing. As expected, she does flee from him and the book ends with Muneeza saying just a "hi" to him. I was left with, "what the heck" type feeling, but since I didnt waste too much time on the book, I came over the disappointment and went back to what I want to do best....snooze.
Abir's supervisor at work and few other bosses are caricatured along predictable lines. A talking jealous lizard from Abir's delusional mind is supposed to be his alter ego or rather his straight talking self-conscience. There are few really good laughable lines, such as the unique way of stating something outlandish towards the end of a very normal list of things, and then disclaiming that he didnt really mean the last sentence. I guess, those things and their essence cant be recreated in any review or blog. So if one is curious, please feel free to borrow it from me :-)
