About the Book: Friend of My Youth
A writer arrives in Bombay on a book-related visit, and finds himself in search
of the city he grew up in and barely knows, a city shaken to its core not long
ago by the 2008 terrorist strikes— even as he takes for granted his errant local
friend, Ramu. A six-foot-tall Kannadiga and onetime junkie who cannot reconcile
himself to modern-day adult life, Ramu is an unlikely hero, Bombay incarnate;
the writer is his mirrored counterpart in an extraordinary narrative about this
city by the sea. Friend of My Youth is at once an unexpected exploration and a
concentrated