Monty is the best thing to happen for British Indians, in particular Sikhs, but everyone brown too, in a long long time.

I feel sorry for Muslim writers in the West. They have so little scope for play, for anything other than addressing the big 'Islam versus Everyone Else' issue of the day. Even if they do ostensibly write about other things, it will be contextualised as 'an example of how Muslims can be normal and not just full of anger at the West', or ‘an insight into the lives of ‘moderate’ Muslims’. I don't think Hindu or Sikh writers have this burden to the same extent (they do have pressures, but not so all-consuming and narrow) – there is ‘British-Indian chick-lit' and you can still have novels like Nirpal Dhaliwal's 'Tourism', 'Gautam Malkani's 'Londonstani', or Jhumpa Lahiri's subtle observational work, which are all examples of novels varied in scope and genre and theme, and are not freighted and loaded with being representative of the crisis of an entire religion which is simultaneously demonised and in violent ferment from within. A novel like Nadeem Aslam's 'Maps for Lost Lovers' is fine, but I longed for some levity, some play, some sense of nonchalance and humour. It must be claustrophobic at times.