The Man Booker winner needs no introduction. So on a sudden impulse, catalyzed by a longish weekend ahead (Monday being 26th January), I bought a copy of The White Tiger, - with a circular sticker that says “Winner of the man Booker Prize, 2008”. Being an arguably faithful book lover –of good books, I looked forward to the weekend, while trying to dissuade the ‘anally compulsive’ editor within me. The excitement got the better of me, and on Friday night I reached page number 300 (total pages being 324?) before snoring off with Adiga’s child squashed between my face and the pillow. I consider it important to make an important revelation about my reading habit. I took a month to finish Naipaul’s House for Mr. Biswas, and an unbelievable ‘several months’ for each of Shakespeare’s Classics. And as I type with the smell of the burning tire from the high speed reading, I can hear the screaming protests from Khaled Hossein’s Kite Runner, now languishing for a year with bookmarks, like plastered limbs that were never taken off.
A lot has been written about Adiga’s first novel, and none catches the beauty of the book better than the panel of judges that awarded it the Man Booker. They found it as something that shook them off their feet. Well being an Indian, it probably didn’t shake me as vigorously with its depiction of the ‘underbelly’ of one of the fastest growing economies & world’s largest Democracy or with its excoriating and stripping of the veneer of “India Rising” (Neel Mukherjee, The Sunday Telegraph). However, it brings into so many instruments of good writing together, that I couldn’t and probably didn’t want to shake myself off from its spell. Magic Realism, humour and most importantly it talks about contemporary lives in way that it stands away from the crowd of campus writings. The hallucinations that overcome the protagonist before and after the murder of Mr. Ashok find a parallel with Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Certain phrases and metaphors were vividly true and will certainly reverberate for a while or forever; one of them being the image of the Rooster Coop and how the narrator/protagonist goes on to claim amidst the jeering ‘circle of monkeys’ (the drivers), how the servant class of this nation is bound from within, than from outside. The second instance is when the protagonist pays the cop a hefty bribe, and he exclaims how he still complained about the cops. Yet, he was complaining like the rich and not like the poor. I haven’t yet found the time to read Adiga’s next ‘so so’ novel and will hopefully lay my hands on them (well that’s the kind of business, the siblings of good books get, irrespective of their own merits, or what Adiga might call ‘getting to dip the beak’).
So India (Indians) celebrated another republic day, amidst suffocating security blanket and the unfurling of the tricolor! Years ago, during my M.A. days a stray thought passed like a lightning across my thought plate. Those were the days, when thinking was taken as a right, until I started working, neatly demarcating my working hours from thinkable hours. So this thought about the tableaus passed through me; tableaus from across the nation - India’s Republic days and Independence days is perhaps slightly more than the tableaus, extended to barakhanas in Defence establishments. So this thought flashed to me, how the state tableaus have frozen in time and with each passing year as the tableaus rehearse, their idea of perfection is to push back in time as much as they can. So, when amidst the cheering crowd, when a member of the tableau from Jammu & Kashmir pours tea from elaborate silver ware, wearing junk jewellery, I wonder do they really exist! Before I can bundle up my stray thoughts, the tableau from Mizoram crawls by me, a member wearing traditional dress and playing a harp kind of instrument, sitting on a rock in an artificial moving forest. So, this thought occurred to me, how they try to showcase an ‘ideal & rustic’ India through such tableaus, and how they have labeled states for certain traits. So it doesn’t escape my fascination when the dancers from Assam dance on their tableau, as women pluck tea leaves, year after year as thousands die in separatist movements, and for that matter the forest in the Mizoram tabloid gets greener with each passing year, as deforestation continues year after year, and even as Mizoram became one of the most literate state in the country, the book never finds a space alongside the harp in the forest!
No sooner, the sound of the harp was overtaken by the sound of Sukhoi jets, as armored vehicles displayed shining missiles, with uniformed soldiers saluting in full grandeur. How the tableaus stand in contrast, to the State tableaus; while one is pushed back in time, another wants to surpass the timeline. If it’s a visible, protruding part of the state policy of deterring, anti-national forces from messing with India, or considering it as a ‘Soft Nation’, it could have been well taken. However, the ceaseless cycle of violence, mocks at the shining missiles and the Nukes. As indrajit Hazra rightly says; how soft we are depends on how comfortable are we in bending traffic rules – the more comfortable we are, the softer we are as a Nation.
Coming back to Adiga’s novel, a small flaw didn’t escape my helplessly compulsive eyes. Although what I see, is not a grammatical or a structural formal issue. I quote from the book, (page. 226)
…”Good, I thought, just as he was turning off the lights. He’ll never suspect that I’m planning anything.
An instant later, my grin faded.
What was I planning?
I began to sweat. I stared at the anonymous palm prints that had been pressed into the white plaster of the wall.”…
Now, looking at the palm prints on the wall, after the lights have been turned off, seems a bit tedious to me. However, that’s all, just an instance of how anally compulsive editors can be, more than any other thing and least about Adiga’s writing prowess. On the contrary, its his writing and narrative intensity that made me try to sleep on the same cot as that of the narrator/letter writer/driver and watch the palm prints through the cockroach infested mosquito net.
A lot has been written about Adiga’s first novel, and none catches the beauty of the book better than the panel of judges that awarded it the Man Booker. They found it as something that shook them off their feet. Well being an Indian, it probably didn’t shake me as vigorously with its depiction of the ‘underbelly’ of one of the fastest growing economies & world’s largest Democracy or with its excoriating and stripping of the veneer of “India Rising” (Neel Mukherjee, The Sunday Telegraph). However, it brings into so many instruments of good writing together, that I couldn’t and probably didn’t want to shake myself off from its spell. Magic Realism, humour and most importantly it talks about contemporary lives in way that it stands away from the crowd of campus writings. The hallucinations that overcome the protagonist before and after the murder of Mr. Ashok find a parallel with Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Certain phrases and metaphors were vividly true and will certainly reverberate for a while or forever; one of them being the image of the Rooster Coop and how the narrator/protagonist goes on to claim amidst the jeering ‘circle of monkeys’ (the drivers), how the servant class of this nation is bound from within, than from outside. The second instance is when the protagonist pays the cop a hefty bribe, and he exclaims how he still complained about the cops. Yet, he was complaining like the rich and not like the poor. I haven’t yet found the time to read Adiga’s next ‘so so’ novel and will hopefully lay my hands on them (well that’s the kind of business, the siblings of good books get, irrespective of their own merits, or what Adiga might call ‘getting to dip the beak’).
So India (Indians) celebrated another republic day, amidst suffocating security blanket and the unfurling of the tricolor! Years ago, during my M.A. days a stray thought passed like a lightning across my thought plate. Those were the days, when thinking was taken as a right, until I started working, neatly demarcating my working hours from thinkable hours. So this thought about the tableaus passed through me; tableaus from across the nation - India’s Republic days and Independence days is perhaps slightly more than the tableaus, extended to barakhanas in Defence establishments. So this thought flashed to me, how the state tableaus have frozen in time and with each passing year as the tableaus rehearse, their idea of perfection is to push back in time as much as they can. So, when amidst the cheering crowd, when a member of the tableau from Jammu & Kashmir pours tea from elaborate silver ware, wearing junk jewellery, I wonder do they really exist! Before I can bundle up my stray thoughts, the tableau from Mizoram crawls by me, a member wearing traditional dress and playing a harp kind of instrument, sitting on a rock in an artificial moving forest. So, this thought occurred to me, how they try to showcase an ‘ideal & rustic’ India through such tableaus, and how they have labeled states for certain traits. So it doesn’t escape my fascination when the dancers from Assam dance on their tableau, as women pluck tea leaves, year after year as thousands die in separatist movements, and for that matter the forest in the Mizoram tabloid gets greener with each passing year, as deforestation continues year after year, and even as Mizoram became one of the most literate state in the country, the book never finds a space alongside the harp in the forest!No sooner, the sound of the harp was overtaken by the sound of Sukhoi jets, as armored vehicles displayed shining missiles, with uniformed soldiers saluting in full grandeur. How the tableaus stand in contrast, to the State tableaus; while one is pushed back in time, another wants to surpass the timeline. If it’s a visible, protruding part of the state policy of deterring, anti-national forces from messing with India, or considering it as a ‘Soft Nation’, it could have been well taken. However, the ceaseless cycle of violence, mocks at the shining missiles and the Nukes. As indrajit Hazra rightly says; how soft we are depends on how comfortable are we in bending traffic rules – the more comfortable we are, the softer we are as a Nation.
Coming back to Adiga’s novel, a small flaw didn’t escape my helplessly compulsive eyes. Although what I see, is not a grammatical or a structural formal issue. I quote from the book, (page. 226)
…”Good, I thought, just as he was turning off the lights. He’ll never suspect that I’m planning anything.
An instant later, my grin faded.
What was I planning?
I began to sweat. I stared at the anonymous palm prints that had been pressed into the white plaster of the wall.”…
Now, looking at the palm prints on the wall, after the lights have been turned off, seems a bit tedious to me. However, that’s all, just an instance of how anally compulsive editors can be, more than any other thing and least about Adiga’s writing prowess. On the contrary, its his writing and narrative intensity that made me try to sleep on the same cot as that of the narrator/letter writer/driver and watch the palm prints through the cockroach infested mosquito net.
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5 comments:
thank god now i know someone who treats books the way i do - bookmark and dog-ear them to eternity and procastinate reading!
yup, i agree adiga is a compelling read, but then shishir - so is your blog post! :-)
Your blogs are not only an eye opener but are very informative for the reader too.. the observant eye always takes people places .. wish you all the best in your forthcoming aspirations..
shishir,a gentle reminder, time for another post?!
:) been trying to stitch the scrambled thoughts, for the next post. No prizes for guessing...the thoughts have been provoked by the 'no escape from slumdog' kind of scenario for most of us. Apologies for being a bit lazy.
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