Aravind Adiga is a deranged man. He needs serious psychiatric help. Read... (actually dont read) his books to see what I mean. The fellow portrays people in such shades of black and white, with frothing evil... actually on an after thought... there are no characters with any shades of white.. the good people are losers... the murderers and perverts are characters shaped by circumstances... and these are the "hereos" from him??!
He portrays the country with such seething black.. he shows a virtual breakdown of a system and the timelines in the stories are as recent as the early 2000s... i really dont think its that bad... in fact, it cannot be that bad in the third worldest of the third world countries.... leave alone india... he brings in this typical attitude that in India anything... ANYTHING can be done with some money arranged... and that we are a nation teeming with abject poverty..... I agree we are a poor nation.. i even agree that corruption exists.... but come on.... theres more to the country than just that... in his wiki entry, theres a statement that says:
"...it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society (Indian). That's what I'm trying to do -- it is not an attack on the country, it's about the greater process of self-examination."
to borrow a line from his own novel.... "WHAT A FUCKING JOKE"... first i think hes a very ameatur writer... there are factual fallacies... black bags become brown by the end of the chapters...
this guy is a joke... and giving him a booker prize for the white tiger is a even greater joke...his second book is aptly name between the assasins... assasination of any quality reading I am sure...
so disappointing to have read his book in the kindle (courtesy TAMU "educational" media services :))
5 comments:
Hey Kaushik,
I beg to differ from you on this article. Corruption exists in India and it is blatant. All of the problems and corruption portrayed in the book are true facts. All of them still exist in villages, which ofcourse constitutes 75% of India and to where all of us have some sort of connection.
The bottom line is almost anything can be done in India with Money. I am still seeing cases where anything can be done with money and there is no other way to get things done. I sincerely wish and hope, just like you, that things would change. The starting point to solve a problem is to acknowledge the problem and that is what is addressed in the book.
It's a long process and taking into consideration that India got it's independence not so long ago, I believe India is in a right path to success.
Karthik.
Hey Karthik,
I am not saying corruption does not exist or is not common. All I am saying its probably wrong to treat these guys as evil personified or as someone who work only when they are bribed. You could pick up examples from our own lives. We would have paid a bribe to get things done many a time, but friends/relatives acquaintances would have showed you that the same thing could have got that done without paying the bribe too, only it would have meant lot more effort and many rounds to the sarkaari offices. The point is, although these guys are a sell out, they probably wouldnt get to the point of working ONLY as a sellouts.
Even more striking is the way he portrays the way the illiterate are treated by these babus. Agreed they are all looked down upon. Agreed they are taken advantage of, but I dont think it can get to the point that they connive with the local powerful people to have actually exterminate them out. These could be stray cases, but definitely not a normal way of life. The country would have rotted had that been the case.
Like you said, all of us have roots back into the villages, and each of us see glimpses of whats written in this book but the book itself is like a bollywood movie. Overly hyped/exaggerated. And I repeat, his way of portraying the characters only reflects a psychotic mind that needs medical attention.
:)
Probably, but he is no activist, he might have exaggerated things.
But, look at the good things. Good or bad way of portrayal, it made people think. Same is the case with the movie "Slumdog Millionaire". There was an increased inflow of much needed charity into the darkest corners of the long forgotten places. If it's taken in a positive way, it would change how each person start to treat their subordinates in India, to question injustice, authority instead of accepting them as a way of life.
Anyway, thanks for bringing it up. It's important that everyone have their own respective views about this topic.
Hmmm... Interesting. I'm not qualified to agree/disagree with you, in that, I haven't read any of his books. I've read some of his articles in Daily Beast and there it ends :)
I can guess what kinds of problems you and "maximus" are discussing. Yeah, corruption and social issues are rampant in India. But the question is, where isn't that true?! Rich-poor divide is widest in US, race killings are still happening, I never had to be scared of going out during the night when I was in India and now I have to be!
I understand your point that it's wrong to portray those problems as the face of the country itself.
Hey Somasundaram,
Ya, you are correct in saying that every country has its own problems. Hyping them up through media/books would only lead to a wrong paint of color. For the kind of Western image (read American) we had in India, its like, theres no family system here... all the girls are sluts... everyone sleeps with everyone and all... but the reality is far from it.... why did we have this image of US? Because of the infinite pounding of B grade hollywood movies (the same hollywood movies US calls its soft power), not to mention the large collections of playboys and stuff that are peddled by the road side book vendors... its extremely important to choose the right language and tone when you are trying project a society.... its implications go far beyond what you can imagine.... just like how Karthik said, thanks to Satyajit Ray, Danny Boyle and his chamcha Anil Kapoor, Arundhati Roy and this new kid Aravind Adiga, the world as a whole has this image of abject poverty in India. Why is it that Lagaan made it to the Oscars and not Dil Chahta hai? Its also probably because thats the kind of image the world likes to see.
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