Amit Varma
Biography of Amit Varma :
Amit Varma is a writer based in Mumbai. He has worked in advertising, television and journalism, and has written for publications like The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Wisden Cricketers\' Almanack. He was a Managing Editor of Cricinfo India and is now a consultant for them.
He used to write the weekly column
Thinking It Through for the business newspaper
Mint. He also writes the popular blog,
India Uncut. His witty commentary on major and minor issues of the day has made him an authoritative voice in Indian cyber-space, and has won him the Best Indiblog Award at the Indibloggies in 2005 and was nominated again in 2006.
In October 2007, Varma won the 2007 Bastiat Prize for Journalism, which aims to honour writers “whose work cleverly and wittily promotes the institutions of the free society”. In 2008, his first novel, My friend, Sancho was one of the novels nominated to the longlist for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. In April 2009, he was named by Business Week magazine in its India\'s 50 Most Powerful People 2009 list.
Amit was born in Chandigarh in 1973, and spent his childhood there before moving to Pune in 1986, where he remained until he graduated from Fergusson College in 1994. He worked in Delhi for a year as an advertising copywriter before moving to Mumbai in 1995 to join Channel [V]. From there he shifted to MTV in 1997, went back to [V] in 1999, and then did dotcom timepass in 2000 and 2001. He joined Wisden in 2001, and when they acquired Cricinfo in 2003, was its managing editor in India.
He started the blog India Uncut in December 2004, and it quickly became one of India\'s most widely read blogs, earning the Best Indiblog award at the 2005 Indibloggies, and being nominated for Best Asian Blog in the 2006 Bloggies and the 2008 Weblog Awards. His commentary on politics and economics was in demand in the mainstream media as well, and after leaving Cricinfo, he became a regular writer of Op-Eds and columns in various Indian and international publications. In 2007, he wrote a Weekly column for the business paper, Mint, called Thinking It Through, which won him the prestigious Bastiat Prize for Journalism, awarded annually to a writer "whose writings wittily and eloquently explain, promote and defend the principles of the free society."
In 2008, he gave up writing columns and doing freelance journalism so that he could devote his mental bandwidth to writing novels. He wrote My Friend Sancho that year, the manuscript of which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. Various publishers made offers for the book, and Amit went with Hachette, the global publishing giant which wanted to make its debut in India with this novel. My Friend Sancho was published in India in May 2009. He continues to blog at India Uncut, and is currently working on his second 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 masturbate 11 times a day. I exaggerate frequently, as in the last sentence.’ When crime reporter Abir Ganguly is called out by the police to cover a routine arrest one night, the last thing he expects is a shootout. But bullets are fired, and a man is dead. Did the cops screw up? Abir’s boss, not knowing that he was at the scene of the crime, wants him to file a story about the victim. For this, he must meet Muneeza, aka Sancho, the dead man\'s teenage daughter. Over the days, an unlikely friendship forms between them.