Nuns, Jesuits, red meat, and an Indian Catholic minority mingle with mouthwatering Indian cuisine and universal childhood emotions such as motherlove, fear of abandonment, curiosity, and desire in this unique novel set entirely in India. So do puberty, adolescence, and the awakening of a repressed mind, clamoring for justice and truth. The result is a blend of "Angela's Ashes", "Catcher in the Rye", and "Portnoy's Complaint", one that has been described as having "copious funniness" and being "achingly beautiful."
At 72,000 words (around 260 pages) a complete novel in itself, "One Little Indian" is a reworking of the childhood, coming of age first 60 percent of "The Revised Kama Sutra" (which is actually 2 novels in one, according to some of its readers), and it includes additional, never-published chapters that been left out because of space constraints. The book ends with Vijay graduating from college. The later chapters, focusing on his adult life and having a much higher sexual content, have been omitted from this novel, and is therefore accessible to a larger audience of both men and women who are reasonably cosmopolitan and well-read.
"The Telegraph," a major Indian newspaper, described "One Little Indian" as "a surprisingly delightful novel by a genuinely irreverent Indian from Mangalore." Commenting on how the novel does not fit the priggish mold of most other Indian writing, it adds: "Crasta's raunchiness is a mix of Khushwant Singh and Laurence Sterne. The unstoppably copious funniness is Shandian."
"A superb Mangalore-centric novel"-DP Satish writes in an "Outlook" magazine blog: "Mangalore Diary: Highrises, Malls & Beautiful Bunt Women."
Author Mark David Ledbetter writes: "An achingly beautiful book on the inner world pathos and outer world absurdity of growing up - both inner and outer, sometimes outrageously funny. It applies to all humans anywhere, since we all experience growing up, but is set in India in the late 1950s and 60s. What really makes this a work of genius for me is not only the way it recaptures growing up, but the pictures it paints of India on virtually every page."
