If this year’s Booker shortlist holds any lessons for India, it’s a reminder of how short our memories have become, how comfortable with erasure and reappraisal. Narcopolis is Jeet Thayil’s first novel, set in a Bombay where addicts and seekers negotiate a city of casual cruelty, filth and degradation and equally astonishing flashes of beauty. Its appearance on the shortlist was greeted with a dutiful round of interviews and congratulatory news items.

><table width='100%' border=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td style='FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 18px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #0253B7;'><B>Nilanjana S Roy:</B> Bring up the bodies</td></tr><tr><tr><td style='FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold;'>In many ways, today

Nilanjana S Roy: Bring up the bodies

In many ways, todays brand of censorship is an assault on language itself as much as it is on free speech

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