Reverse Swing

Zeyaur Rahman

For all it is worth, the Man Booker Prize is still one of the most eagerly awaited events on the literary calendar, at least in the Anglophile world. Like every other institution that has captured and retained public imagination, the Booker also has had its share of controversies and disappointments. With the appetisers of long list and short list already out, we are now awaiting the main course in a few weeks from now. Ever since Midnight’s Children ignited the Booker-scape two and a half decades ago, the Indian literati does wait for the announcement with a sense of purposeful participation, not just passive expectation. Pretty similar to our change in attitude towards Olympics, where we can now step out from the clapping multitude and take a bow on the podium as well. Not this year though as none of the Indian writings made it to even the long list. Arvind Adiga is going to remain the last Indian Booker recipient for another year at least. That brings me to the topic of why “The White Tiger” was such an interesting choice which divided opinions sharply. It is not surprising at all, for the book is about the divide existing in India. Or to put it more aptly, it is a reminder about the divide which still exists despite the combination of lip service as well as sincere measures taken for decades. Like everything else in India, it is the scale and diversity that leads to one’s own version of the Truth. For some the divide has been successfully done away with, for others the bridging has just begun, and for others still the truth is somewhere in between. More than winning the Booker Prize, the achievement of the book is that it has reintroduced and reignited the debate in the mainstream about the underprivileged India. It’s a kind of reality check, a rude jolt to the self congratulating architects of modern India that for every upmarket coffee shop that has obliterated the shanty dhabas, the dhabas still exist, just that they have been removed from the direct line of sight. This is precisely why for the India which is drowned in the din of India Shining, Adiga is a cry baby who refuses to bury the India of bygone era and move ahead. The generation of Indians which has been brought up by Ad & PR Gurus so convincingly that they now find the real India almost mythological – something that is from the past, something to which we can trace our roots, but surely enough it doesn’t exist, certainly not anymore. More damning is the expectation that even if some of it has survived, it cannot be left to survive in the open and tarnish our image on the global platform. The most that we can do is to allow it to exist suitably modified in ‘heritage villages’ and thus solve the dual purpose of ensuring preservation and not assaulting the general sensibilities where we do not wish it to. True enough we have had major developmental landmarks in the past decade, in Information Technology and Communication to name two fields and their effect has trickled down. Down enough to touch the lives of every Indian rather than just a select few. Even rickshaw pullers can be seen carrying mobile phones, which are functional and not an ornamental accessory for them. But is that enough or is a mobile set the number one priority on the “need list” of a rickshaw puller? A mobile set connects you to the wider world, but it doesn`t disconnect you from the "Rooster Coop" to which one is inexorably connected, just to use Adiga`s analogy. To borrow another analogy, this time from our national passion, the game of cricket: economic development in the past decade has gathered a swinging momentum which has propelled a sizeable section of Indians to hitherto inexperienced levels of prosperity. But what about the other side, the rougher one. It has got roughed up more and it is a matter of time when the reverse swing will come into play and shatter the stumps, catching the batsman unawares, the way the protagonists` employer was on the Ridge Road. Having said that, the book itself isn`t great by any yardstick, neither in the choice of content nor in the treatment of the subject. If at all it is too real to be adequately termed as a work of top class fiction. For folks belonging to the cow belt, the plot of the story is mundane, to the extent of being banal. Not many would even raise an eyebrow if the story were to be narrated to them as they are used to the drama playing out everyday, with a new character every time. This to me captures the chasm, the divide between the two Indias, more clearly than anything else. One India would not find any literary merit in the work and the other India would be heaping prizes on the book for being an eye opener. Interestingly, one can discern similar contrasts of reaction to ‘Slumdog Millionaire’s’ Oscar triumph, which coincidently happened in the same year. If one can describe India, its people and their attitudes in two sentences, one is not describing but generalising India inadequately. Somewhere in between you also have a section which gives a Sphinx like smile, having seen both the sides of the coin. The Sphinx knows fully well that the two classes of India have been flowing together for millennia, will continue to flow for more millennia, but like the sides of the same river, from the source to the mouth, will never meet. Now it also carries a huge mass flowing along, radically different from either shore, no less Indian nonetheless. (Zeyaur Rahman is freelance writer and writes on contemporary issues. The author is a post graduate from JNU and the views expressed here are his own. )