Import fastbook gives SystemError: s whetheq&() method: bad call flags

Part 1 (2020)
1

I am using below for my environment:

OS: Ubuntu 20.4 LTS
Python 3.8
My env name is also fastai

I am trying to run the notebook for second lecture to test if my environment is working. I am getting below error:

SystemError: s whetheq&() method: bad call flags

I tried searching and it seem to me an issue with c extension for pytorch. Attaching the stacktrace if it helps.

SystemError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-2-a0702264bbea> in <module>
      1 #hide
      2 ##!pip install -Uqq fastbook
----> 3 import fastbook
      4 fastbook.setup_book()

~/miniconda3/envs/fastai/lib/python3.8/site-packages/fastbook/__init__.py in <module>
      1 __version__ = "0.0.16"
      2 import matplotlib as mpl, pkgutil, requests, time
----> 3 from fastai.vision.all import *
      4 from pandas.api.types import CategoricalDtype
      5 from scipy.cluster import hierarchy as hc

~/miniconda3/envs/fastai/lib/python3.8/site-packages/fastai/vision/all.py in <module>
----> 1 from . import models
      2 from ..basics import *
      3 from ..callback.all import *
      4 from .augment import *
      5 from .core import *

~/miniconda3/envs/fastai/lib/python3.8/site-packages/fastai/vision/models/__init__.py in <module>
----> 1 from . import xresnet
      2 from . import unet
      3 from .tvm import *

~/miniconda3/envs/fastai/lib/python3.8/site-packages/fastai/vision/models/xresnet.py in <module>
     10 
     11 # Cell
---> 12 from ...torch_basics import *
     13 from torchvision.models.utils import load_state_dict_from_url
     14 

~/miniconda3/envs/fastai/lib/python3.8/site-packages/fastai/torch_basics.py in <module>
----> 1 from torch import multiprocessing
      2 import platform,os
      3 if platform.system()=='Darwin':
      4     # Python 3.8 changed to 'spawn' but that doesn't work with PyTorch DataLoader w n_workers>0
      5     multiprocessing.set_start_method('fork', force=True)

~/miniconda3/envs/fastai/lib/python3.8/site-packages/torch/__init__.py in <module>
    188     if USE_GLOBAL_DEPS:
    189         _load_global_deps()
--> 190     from torch._C import *
    191 
    192 # Appease the type checker; ordinarily this binding is inserted by the

SystemError: s whetheq&() method: bad call flags