Overall a nice book to read. Witty in language, satirical in style, vexing in the issues it exposes but short enough to finish before you get tired of them. After having read quite a few Hindi satire in Indian magazines and newspapers, the book more seemed like series of such satires. Of course with two major differences- the book is bound together by a single story and very well so and the language is far too irreverent for an Indian magazine to publish.
So while I enjoyed the book a lot (finished in almost single sitting), the book gave me same feeling as I got from Slumdog Millionaire- we might have much better work of talent (even by the same music composer or writer) its the one that is marketed well TO or packaged FOR the West that will get an Oscar or a Man Booker.
The book is organized as series of letters that a Bangalore entrepreneur Balram Halwai writes to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. And in those letters Balram lays open story of his life which starts in a deprived class family of ten or fifteen members in feudal North Indian village- 'the Darkness', becomes a bit better when he becomes car driver for the village's landlord family then finally reaches 'the light' when Balram becomes an entrepreneur in Bangalore.
Over the letters, Balram talks about usual 'issues' that we all Indians are aware of and love to hate. In fact, its almost amazing that in so few pages the story touches up on so many of them- dowry, corruption in normal life, electoral malpractices, lack of education, over population, worshiping of white skin, tendency of middle class to just live with their lot without protesting, naxalism, caste system, urban-rural divide, extreme disparity of income and tens of other such things. Once in a while Adiga shows his anguish over these through the foreigh educated, NRI son of the landlord, who at the same time compromises and perpetuates the evils and thereby shows the superficiality of so called modernity of urban middle/ upper class. Balram, the poor kid, on the other hand talks about these in rather matter of fact way and then uses them remorselessly to climb the social ladder. So while Adiga takes you through miriad problems, he never gets didactic and leaves the judgements totally out of the narrative.
But even though Balram himself say that he is "no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature... a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed—hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters" so that he "can break out of the coop", the message is still unsettlingly clear. The only way for a person from Darkness to come to Light, is to destroy, to steal and to wrest; there is no way society is going to let you come out in some ethical way- either the upper class people, the meneyed class will push you back or the people from the Darkness will cling themselves to you and eventually pull you back in the Darkness. The result- in case of Balram is comes out a murderer of his own employer. In case of others, the spread of Naxals in from Bihar till Andhra.
The similar story was in 'Inheritance..' by Kiran Desai where homeless Gorkhas take possession of Mussorie's homes. So either the foreign awards are going to books only if they show such revolutionary streaks or we are ignoring a big impending problem. One party got surprise when the India Shining slogan was beaten severely in an election, but still as a government India has not taken its lesson. Singur and other such cases of dispossessing farmers of their land, continued spread of Naxals, growing slums in cities they perhaps point towards a problem, which we are ignoring at our own peril. Or... perhaps we can remaing happy that India is not that sort of place where revolutions can occur, we are indeed bit coop of hen where top 0.1 % can keep on using the remaining 99.9%.
Anyway, coming back to the book; I think Aravind is not the first writer to written in this angry tone about contemporary India- young writes, foreign educated and themselves children of priviledge, who came back and saw a lot of things that didn't make sense and then wrote with such irrevenace and wit. Nor he will be the last. But when it remains limited within Indian media and get the lable of 'serious journalism', Adiga and others get attention out of India as well and then the lables such as 'India bashing' and 'Western voyeurism for slums' are thrown.
One thing was not clear- why choice of Chinese Premier as the intended audience of the letters. Two reasons I think- one, only a foreign intended audience would justify some Englishification of Indian-isms and rather simpler explanation of Indian situations which would later make the book easily readable by foreign readership; two, Chinese, as opposed to British or American, premier would be more in line with current way the world is being talked about. But overall, in the story, there doesn't seem to be a justifiable reason for addressing the letters to Premier Jiabao.
But despite such items the book was very good read. It raised very good questions but who care for them? :) It was a good, entertaining read with some quite fun passages. And the overall theme- rags to riches- in a bit different form anyway made for an exciting reading.
Some quotes
"Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English. ...
Let us begin. Before we do that, sir, the phrase in English that I learned from my ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok's ex-wife Pinky Madam is: What a fucking joke."
"The Autobiography of a Half-Baked Indian." That's what I ought to call my life's story.
Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never
allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find
an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school
textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me
assure you)...
The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced.
But pay attention, Mr. Premier! Fully formed fellows, after twelve years of school and three
years of university, wear nice suits, join companies, and take orders from other men for the
rest of their lives.
Entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay."
" understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well off. But the river brings darkness to India—the black river.
Which black river am I talking of—which river of Death, whose banks are full of rich,
dark, sticky mud whose grip traps everything that is planted in it, suffocating and choking
and stunting it?
Why, I am talking of Mother Ganga, daughter of the Vedas, river of illumination, protector
of us all, breaker of the chain of birth and rebirth. Everywhere this river flows, that area is
the Darkness."
"One fact about India is that you can take almost anything you hear about the country from
the prime minister and turn it upside down and then you will have the truth about that thing. "
"At the end of the market is a tall, whitewashed, conelike tower, with black intertwining snakes painted on all its sides—the temple. Inside, you will find an image of a saffron-colored creature, half man half monkey: this is Hanuman, everyone's favorite god in the Darkness. Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion.
These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us, Mr. Jiabao. Understand, now, how hard
it is for a man to win his freedom in India."
Tolerance towards corruption
"No one blamed the schoolteacher for doing this. You can't expect a man in a dung heap to
smell sweet. Every man in the village knew that he would have done the same in his
position. Some were even proud of him, for having got away with it so cleanly."
"The inspector pointed his cane straight at me. "You, young man, are an intelligent, honest,
vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of
animals—the creature that comes along only once in a generation?"
I thought about it and said:
"The white tiger."
"That's what you are, in this jungle."
"Now, I say they took me on as their "driver." I don't exactly know how you organize your
servants in China. But in India—or, at least, in the Darkness—the rich don't have drivers,
cooks, barbers, and tailors. They simply have servants."
"Is there any hatred on earth like the hatred of the number two servant for the number one?"
"These are the three main diseases of this country, sir: typhoid,
cholera, and election fever. This last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about
things that they have no say in... Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters
discuss the elections in Laxmangarh."
"sagging badminton net, so I could stay near them.
But a pair of suspicious Nepali eyes spotted me out: "Don't loiter in the courtyard. Go and
sit in your room and wait for the masters to call you."
"Ram Bahadur glared at me, so I said, "All right, sir."
(Servants, incidentally, are obsessed with being called "sir" by other servants, sir.)"
" .., It's because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys
in the poultry market.
The Great Indian Rooster Coop. Do you have something like it in China too? I doubt it, Mr.
Jiabao. Or you wouldn't need the Communist Party to shoot people and a secret police to
raid their houses at night and put them in jail like I've heard you have over there. Here in
India we have no dictatorship. No secret police.
That's because we have the coop.
Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A
handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as
talented, as intelligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong
that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at
you with a curse."
"... the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop.
The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family
destroyed—hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters—can break out of the coop.
That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature. "
"Do you read English?" he barked.
"Do you read English?" I retorted.
There. That did it. Until then his tone of talking to me had been servant-to-servant; now it
became man-to-man. "
"So I stood around that big square of books. Standing around books, even books in a foreign
language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just
happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans.
Except here what happens is that your brain starts to hum."
