India needs laughter: Review of Sceptical Patriot by Sidin Vadukut

The Sceptical Patriot is interesting in parts, but it misses the author’s funny bone, writes Shovon Chowdhury in Tehelka

Reading this book was like watching Bill Murray do Hamlet. You wish him well, but you don’t want to be there. There are flashes of skill, and elements of interest, but all you can hear is the voice in your head screaming, ‘The horror! The horror!’

Not many people in India do funny. Sidin Vadukut might well be the most notable comic novelist in English that we have. That’s because no one writing in English wants to be undignified. English is a hard-won skill. It’s the only thing that keeps us above the masses, who do vernacular. To make a mockery of the very thing that defines you, is like kicking your mother in the shins.