Tiger, Tiger burning bright
The White Tiger
– Aravind Adiga (Harper Collins, Rs. 395).
“He’s a Chennai boy.” “No, he’s Manglorean.” “But he lives in Mumbai.” “Actually he’s from Australia”… Well, he’s from all these places but, most importantly, he’s Indian. That’s what makes the Chennai-born, Australia-bred Mangalorean Aravind Adiga the latest poster boy of the Indian literary world. Not just that. The 33-year-old has won this year’s prestigious Man Booker Prize for debut novel, White Tiger.
Adiga beat favourites Sebastian Barry and Amitav Ghosh to win the £50,000 award, for a work which takes a hard and brash look at the dark side of the modern India. By winning the Man Booker, he joins the illustrious Indian ranks of V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundati Roy and Kiran Desai.
Adiga, who states that it was his Australian upbringing that lent a fresh perspective to the way the book shaped up, gave up his career as a journalist to write White Tiger. The rags-to-riches story of the ‘hero’ of this novel. Balram Halwai, could have been pulled out of a Bollywood script. But it’s a tale that represents modern India in more ways than one. Says Adiga in an interview, “Class is a boring topic to write about. Big divides are not what people are interested in. But it’s the most pressing concern because other things spring out of it, like terrorism and instability… Something extraordinary is happening between the rich and the poor. Once, there was at least a common culture between rich and poor, but that has been eroded, and people have noted that.”
The book, which got mixed reviews when it was released, makes for compelling reading. And even though arguments may fly over whether the book deserved the Man Booker or not, it will become a must-read for many now after winning the prize!
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Compulsive confessions
You are Here
– Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan (Penguin, Rs. 199)
This slice-of-life tale is perhaps one of the voices of the ‘modern’ Indian woman. The protagonist is the young, single and economically independent Delhi-based Arshi, whose love life is going nowhere and life in general looks a series of furrows and ridges through her alcohol-and tobacco-affected eyes.
Meenakshi’s debut novel, termed as ‘an answer to Bridget Jones’, is bold, all right. The book is a candid account of the life of a young, single woman in India, who tries out everything from drinking and smoking to sex in an attempt to figure out what she wants for herself.
Arshi’s sexual escapades and the binges may be the symbol of a ‘liberated’ woman, but how far it will appeal to a still-conservative Indian audience is worth discussing.
Funny at times, a bit too bold at others, this bit of chicklit is sure to grab the young readers who belong to Meenakshi’s age group. But beyond that? Well, you could take a risk!
Meenakshi, a Mumbai-based journalist, is, incidentally, a well-known blogger at ‘The Compulsive Confessor’ site, where she has recorded her thoughts on various Gen Next issues, such as dating, relationship with parents, and
lifestyles.
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A Beat in Calcutta
A Blue Hand: The Beats in India
– Deborah Baker (Penguin, Rs. 499)
Deborah Baker chronicles in A Blue Hand the life and times of American poet Irwin Allen Ginsberg, who, along with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, was the main mover of the iconic Beat Generation. The members of the Beat Generation wrote on subjects considered taboo in the America of the 1950s and 1960s and soon developed a reputation as “new bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.”
Baker’s book is devoted to Ginsberg’s journey from New York to Calcutta, where Ginsberg came seeking love and spiritual enlightenment. He was also looking for Hope Savage, a girl whom he happened to meet fleetingly in San Francisco and Paris. The book also talks about the other Beat poets.
“It was during a meeting with Bengali writer Tarapada Roy that I got the idea to write this biography,” said Baker, a Pulitzer prize finalist, in an interview. Roy, who knew Ginsberg quite well, used to talk about the poet and that set Baker thinking about doing a book based on Ginsberg’s life. Undiscovered letters, memoirs, articles and personal interviews with Ginsberg and his various associates provided enough material for the work.
The gripping saga not only throws light on the life post the World War II years, but also on an India which was synonymous with its pantheon of gods and goddesses, and which was witnessing a rapid change in the fields of politics, art and literature. Ginsberg, who is most famous for his poem Howl, and his friends made headlines by just talking about subjects that were considered taboo in the 1950s and 1960s.
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