Q & A

This weekend, my drive to Henley and the reoccurrence of insomnia saw me catch-up with some listening. Churned through morass of podcasts and audio books including episodes of Front Row, Now Show, Media Talk, Guardian Technology, Harvard Business Review, The Command Line, The New Yorker, The Economist and The New Scientist. Many hours of great listening but it was the Sony Award winning drama Q & A that really caught and held my attention.

From the producers of A Suitable Boy, Fatherland, and The Handmaid's Tale and based on the best-selling novel by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, the production was recorded on location on the streets of Mumbai with an Indian cast.

Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated street kid from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a live TV quiz show. But as Ram explains "the brain is not an organ the poor are authorised to use". His account is an extraordinary adventure through every strata of modern-day India, from orphanages to brothels, gangsters to beggar-masters, into the homes of Bollywood's rich and famous, a well meaning, but ineffective British Missionary, and a seedy Australian diplomat.

A heart-moving story, woven around an inventive format, constantly punctuated by soundscape of an India metropolis. Worth staying up all night for.