How things …

Arvind Adiga has won the 2008 man booker prize for his book, the White Tiger.

Adiga has put into writing what everyone already knew but didn’t want to acknowledge – that the Indian poor exist, that they have a mind of their own and that they are in pain because of their poverty.

The book is anachronistic. It has been written at a time when most Indians are uncomfortable talking about their poor. They want to talk about the shining malls of Gurgaon and the tall buildings of South Bombay. They will tell you about their new mobile phones and their imported alcohol parties but they wont tell you about their overworked drivers and underpaid house hold helps. In years to come, when Indians are more comfortable talking about these unsettling things, this book will be remembered, bought, read and appreciated.

Even before Adiga came along, I worried about how much my driver has slept and whether I was sweet enough to my cook to not spit on my food. I cared enough for them to give them an extra hundred or two and worry about their children’s education. I hope, sincerely for this country, that this book makes a lot of people worry about their drivers and cooks. Indiahas a lot of poor people and I believe that this poverty is not going to go away by NGO-work and by donating money to the poor. The poverty will go away when each of us talk to and help the poor people in our everyday lives. Although I don’t think that philanthropy was the point Adiga was making. He, instead, says that socio-economic equality or at least a semblance of it, is in our self interest.

One reason why I am glad that Adiga won the booker is the same reason that I was upset that Arundhati Roy won the Booker and Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer. Sure they had great grammar and all that, but apart from that why should those books be remembered? What was the big deal in their books? Give me free time like they’ve had and good education and I can write those books. And writing about India was the in-thing back when these authors won. It was more about being at the right place at the right time. (Er, little harsh criticism perhaps. They did win and I cant even write a 2-pg story properly.)

Adiga’s book, on the other hand, is something out of the ordinary. If you’ve been driven by chauffeurs, you’ll realize what an accurate picture Adiga has painted. If you’d bothered to look, you might have seen those trashy porn story books in tea shops too. And if you had been friends with your drivers, they might have told you of when the back seat was being wet by forbidden juices, if you know what I mean. If I had all of Adiga’s experiences, and I could write such a book, I’d probably chicken out and sit in an air-conditioned office doing something else. But not Adiga. The man has gone out their, taken a picture of the dark side of India, put it in words and thrown it in your face.

And see how our literary critics have reacted to it – by claiming that the book is a ‘fake’. Ha! What a joke the Indian literary circle is. In India, my friend, Shobaaa De sells more than Arvind Adiga. That shows how much we avoid talking about the dirty secrets of our existence. But the Indian poor exist. And to some extent, we exist because of them. Because, at the end of the day, you do realize that the Indian economic boom is because we have cheap labour, don’t you? And we have cheap labour because there is excess supply, i.e., we prosper because there are so many poor people in India who don’t prosper and keep the rates low.

My take on this book is that this is a book that calls for social change. This is a book that you MUST read and this is a book you must gift to your parents and to your kids and to everyone you know. I’ve already gifted my copy to my parents.

That’s just about the content part of the book. What is even nicer about Adiga winning the booker is that it is not written in Queen’s English. It is not prim and proper. It is not straight out of Wren and Martin. It is rough and simple. And it is exactly the language the protagonist in the book might have used. It is a role play and it is perfectly so. It wouldn’t have been hard for Adiga to put the whole book in third person and introduce Indian niceties and use Queen’s English and write the same book in a different way. But he resisted that temptation to play to what the audience is used to and what the audience will happily lap up and shower with eloquent praise. Isn’t Midnight’s children written like that? And that is the best part about Adiga winning. It will encourage Indian authors to stop writing like what the perceived audience likes and start writing like how they want to write.

And that brings me back to the top. Adiga, you bitch. You won and you won writing something that I am sure you enjoyed writing. And I bet you didn’t worry about the audience too much. And yet you won! How lucky are you! (At the same time, thank you for your book and how nice of the booker jury to select your book.)