Theodore Boone - The Abduction; by John Grisham.

It is not clear if Grisham is trying out a new genre for the pleasure of it, as he did with a couple of other works, or if this is his new career to attract a younger generation or age group, possibly some of his children or grandchildren - either way, he is as good, as perfect as ever.

Especially for the younger age group and their parents, this is practically a textbook of what might happen, with merely a caution in the scare but an entirely satisfactory resolution of problems on all sides.

Having read this, looking forward to reading the next one!

Londonstani: by Gautam Malkani.

One suffers stoically through the pain of the language and the pages which merely - repeatedly - establish that the protagonist is trying to be cool by giving up his A level grades, joining the local gang of second generation immigrants from India (and other parts of India that was before it was divided due to religious fundamentalists requiring to rule a "pure" nation that was washed out of any sign of those that did not confirm), speaking their language rather than a good English, watching them beat up - but seriously, injuries and all - various youths for little or no reason, and hiding his desire to get a girlfriend his gang friends don't approve of. All this could be done effectively in a page or two, three at most - this writer makes a third of this verbose book hiding clued behind the chaff of the verbosity of little content.

One is shocked a little at the needless death and wonders if they have all gone bonkers - marriages across various divisions of society have always happened in the world and especially in India, and this is a story set in UK, with a young couple that does not exactly depend on parents for providing a home, since they both earn well.

But the last page or two take the whole point of reading the book and throw it in a trash bin - the whole point of going through the book so painfully for a literate reader having been to get to understand the immigrants, and tolerating excuciatingly bad writing for the purpose. One feels the author is enjoying this cheating, this in-your-face reversal revealation. It may happen, for all that, in real life. But in real life the protagonist is not suddenly revealed to be someone or something else. One knows who he or she is.

This tale of majority vs minority switching and reverse colonial existence belongs really elsewhere, but putting it where it belongs would get the author a tag of "right wing, non secular" and mucho brickbats. So he plays it safe by placing it where those labels have not been used quite to fit his tale. Clever trick, not much. Low blow, definitely.

How else does one expect a Bartholomew - Cliveden going through so much subjugation and taking beatings and deciding not to report to his own homeland authorities? Not in London, not in England!
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This reverse scenario of a minority turning into majority locally and a majority local youth being or feeling colonised or behaving to conform with his surroundings rather than with his own majority people may, and does, happen - only, it is usually in another part of the world, where it is taken as righteous behaviour according to the pseudo secular code unwritten but dominant in public discourse while logic, facts, history, truth all go for a toss, since the factor that is important is that the minority or two happen to be vestiges of an ex colonial ruling power or two or more.

In UK on the other hand the minority of immigrants may at most be called economically successful by now, but they by no means are so dominant anywhere as to rule out a police complaint and investigation by authorities into a beating up of an English boy by sons of immigrants.

The only sign of any behaviour remotely similar in spirit to this is fairly innoccous, however pervasive - the immigrant culture from India has taken over in terms of dominant cuisine more than anything else except perhaps Yoga and a bit of spread of vegetarian culture, at least to the extent of eateries and supermarkets distinctly labeling food as vegetarian or otherwise and most restaurants sporting a vegetarian section of menu. Some people are fascinated by the immigrant culture enough to wish to watch films from India or learn Indian classical music or dance, and some would like to attend or watch a wedding conducted Indian style. And yes, a celebrity beauty might wed an Indian immigrant in Indian style in full show (but not in spirit - his family and relatives were invited and although very much present but not allowed on the stage where the wedding took place, and this alone goes majorly and horribly against any possibility of calling it a true Indian wedding in any way) - but thereabouts ends the reverse and entirely unintended colonisation.

Most immigrants keep their own culture to the extent they can or wish for sake of their own integrity of spirit rather than any thought of spreading it, although they do not grudge anyone around learning about it or making it their own, unless it is a mockery (such as the German young woman who wore a saree over her trousers and took it off in public during an Indian classical concert in Stuttgart). And if there happen to be physical fights amongst high school youth, it is hard to believe that authorities are not informed about an English boy being beaten up by sons of immigrants of the "wrong" colour.

Anti Social: by Sumer Chand.

For all the authors from India in English language out there, that is to say those that have been writing and publishing during last five or six decades post independence of India (and not counting the truly great that existed during the fight for independence of India and participated in one way or more), this one is the most authentic in two different ways - one, language and storytelling style, and two, story background and details.

Most authors of India when writing in English have either been brought up in a very westernised surrounding - church school, westernised social setting where people go through western dances decorously (but only with spouses post marriage or even engagement) and do whatever else the set thinks is the latest fashion, which includes looking down on some Indian things while adhering to some understood as necessary part of life and solidity (such as dancing only with one's own spouse, performing all the necessary traditions and excusing oneself with a "what to do, one must, parents" excuse if necessary).

Part of this when one of this set (- as opposed to the expat milieu settled elsewhere that writes in English naturally but has lost touch with India necessarily, not that that is bad, unless they do attempt writing about India seeking a booker or so - that is when they may get one but are seriously out of touch with reality of what they are writing about in the first place, and the prize is a mockery of colonial attitudes of author and prizegiving jury alike -) writes about India is that they attempt to write for non Indians, with whom they are really not in touch either, not much, since mostly they have lived in India; and so there is touches of Indian words or phrases here and there as one might patch one's thousand pounds a plate dinners for social causes with a patch of some starving Africans in a photo on one's wall in the drawing room. This language of patches is more natural to them than either pure English or pure Indian language (any one of the well over twenty odd offical languages with rich history of literature in most, some quite ancient, others with roots in ancient languages). But patchwork it is, albeit natural to the half breeds as it may be, since it is after all created by them.

Sumer Chand on the other hand writes as an Indian not natural in English speaks, translating his words and idioms and phases and the way thought is shaped, translated from Indian (any Indian language - amazing, since they are so different, how very united they are when translated - it is like a body in another garment, merely) often word for word. Reading this does require a thourough comprehension of Indian language (again, any Indian language will do for the purpose), of the idioms and phrases and how thoughts take the shape of words and forms of speech. Even the mistakes in the book are a reflection of this.

Far more valuable is the reality portrayed herein. Unlike various others who attmept to write with a disturbing consciousness about who they are writing for, this one is merely recounting a tale, and the reality of the background of social and political truths of India merely are portrayed as they are, neither with an attempt to cover up nor with the opposite of that with a deliberate slum wallowing torture for the reader.

If there were any honesty in the various prizes - this one deserves more than one of International kind for its honesty in toto. But the prize giving is not as honest as this book or this author - so this might very well be the only eulogy for the very deserving book and author.

Lady Windermere's Fan, and Importance of Being Ernest; by Oscar Wilde.

Lady Windermere's Fan:-

With a name like that you would expect a delightful comedy, and you would be wrong - this one begins to break heart right from the word go. There is the very young Lady Windermere with her new husband she is very much in love with and the friend of the couple who is in love with her, and the whole society buzzing with the woman of disrepute new in town who the said husband has recently taken up with, including paying her very expensive bills; she even almost blackmails him to give her more money, and he is unable to refuse. The woman is audacious enough to make acquaintance of Lady Windermere herself, which might compromise the latter in view of the reputation of the former, and has boldness enough to demand that the husband gets her invited to the party the wife is throwing. The husband is desperate enough to ask, the wife refuses in all rectitude, and the husband sends out the invitation anyway in the wife's name, normally a privilege and a right that belongs solely to her. The wife upon seeing the woman she has not invited informs him she shall strike the woman with her fan, a public insult he implores her not to offer - and she lacks the courage to do so. Then she sees the huge amount he has paid out to the woman, and decides it is time to leave him, and takes support of the very persuasive friend who has been attempting to convince her he will be a far more faithful lover than the husband - of course he is not about to remind her of the life of ignominy she shall live thereafter as either an adulteress or as a divorcée, or worse if the said lover abandoned her.

And then comes the full knowledge offered by the author to the reader (but it is to be kept from the innocent young bride for her own security) and the twists that save her, and too the "other" woman. The end is truly delightful, after all the heartbreaks through the whole play.
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Importance of Being Ernest:-


Delightful and seemingly silly comedy with Ernest being a name, one that more than one suitor of a couple of young women claim, and seem finally to have - what with a nanny who lost a baby by confusing it with a handbag she was going to check in at a safe storage facility, fortunate finding of the said lost baby transformed into a young male, and so forth.

The title however is a clue to the wit of the author, the subtle or perhaps under the circumstances not so subtle commentary on the prevalent norms that penalised him for his lack of reverence for social norms of the day, the tongue in cheek nature of the title being hollow since Ernest is only a name after all.
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The Salamander, and The Shoes of The Fisherman; by Morris West.

The Salamander:-

A phoenix rises out of the ashes alive. But a salamander stays alive through the hottest fire.

Politics and society and church in Italy, and a young official caught in the midst of the whole thing coming out alive by sheer presence of mind and power of thinking, of seeing things and people for what they are, perhaps losing a little of the credulity of the youth but not the essentials needed for trust.
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The Shoes of The Fisherman:-

Informative about inner workings of Vatican especially about the change of Bishop of Rome, that is, election of a new pope after death of a current one, and educational about the role politics - of world and church - plays in the workings.
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Survivor Personality: by Al Siebert.

No great insight here, but generally good cataloguing of traits commonly possessed by those that survive all sorts of things, tragedies and more.

Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility


This one gives the clash of values characteristic of the writer, with wealth and temptation and opportunity versus rectitude and character and propriety as well as prudence playing the major part. How love itself must give way to rectitude and character is the chief theme, with the obvious lesson that giving way to temptation for now might close the door to happiness, love and future in fact.
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Pride and Prejudice


"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So the writer states right in the beginning.

That is because while this is assumed to be a romance it is really a very astute picture of society that transcends time and geography and social boundaries and cultures, and applies universally to any place where there are young women at an age ripe to marry without dowries to bring out grooms out of the woods swarming. This is all the more so when the young women in question are not about to while away time with pretense of careers and attempts at education while the men they school and party with are getting ready, or any other subterfuges of societies they belong to.

Marriage is the beginning of the life they are going to lead with homemaking and child rearing and building of social fabric and of future as their occupation, since time immemorial. It can be said to be the most important occupation in the world, and yet few societies make a provision of how the young women can go about securing their life in it, with few structures and storngholds and little if any security.

Jane Austen writes extensively about this in various settings in her works, and offers much light to guide people - not only young women but men and women of all ages - with good counsel. This is her most popular work and most famous one, and with good reason.

It seems like a romance and at some level it is but only after normal intelligent and prudent women - young and old - use decorum and wise counsel added to commonsense. This like other books by the author is about how to live well and safe and be good and decent, sensible and honourable, prudent and not blinded by illusions, and find love and romance and marriage as well.

Often people of a bit less comprehension are likely to make the mistake of a common sort, where they conclude "Elizabeth married Darcy not out of love, but for his money". She - the writer - herself makes a joke of the sort, somewhere along towards the end, but it is clearly a joke for all that. Elizabeth might not have been sighing and fainting with passionate abandon at first sight, but that is because unlike figures of trashy pulp she is a person with a mind and other concerns as well, and for a normal young woman passion does not necessarily come as the blinding flash at first sight any more than it does for - say - a writer or a poet or an artist or a scientist. Which does not reduce the final outcome of a certainty when it does come. Elizabeth married for her conviction of love, respect and rectitude, not for money.

If that were to be true she would not have refused him, or indeed even been off hand, and not fawning or manipulative, even before with all his standoffish behaviour.

But she behaved normally, and refused him with a growing wrath when he proposed - it was not his money, but to begin with the truth of his letter, and then the regard his household had for him, the people who knew him the most, and subsequently his more than civil behaviour towards her relatives who were only middle class, and his obvious attempts to have his sister know her and have her for a friend - these wer the successive steps that changed her more and more.

The final clinching one was of course his taking all the trouble to make amends to the grievous injury caused to her family by his silence, about someone he should have and did not warn people about, and keeping not only silent about it - the efforts he made to make sure about making amends to the injury caused by his reticence - but making sure her uncle would not tell anyone either.

In between was his aunt arriving haughtily to obtain a reassuarance from her to the effect that she would not marry him - which not only made her stubborn but made the three concerned (the two and the aunt) realise that she might be considering it seriously, although his offer had not been left on the table indefinitely.

So if anyone out there still thinks Elizabeth married him for his money - I suppose you did not read the story, really.
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Mansfield Park:-


The writer of the universally popular Pride And Prejudice explores another angle of the conflicts of dealing with life as it is dealt out - wealth and relative status, temptation and opportunities, family and relationships, extended family and relatives, and love that never might be attained. Above all are rectitude and character and values, to be never lost whatever the temptation.
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Emma:-


Perhaps arguably the second most popular of the writer's works vying with Mansfield Park for the title, this one again explores values and conflicts from another angle, with growth of character and perception, and temptation to meddle in social affairs, as the chief theme.

It is more serious than it looks, as is usual with a good deal of her work, where the seemingly most superficial and romantic turns out to be most serious and worthy of note.

More people than would care to acknowledge or admit even to themselves do meddle in affairs of others, especially those of heart, with a fond illusion that they can do good to others and provide their happiness for them. But lacking in perception and maturity and judgement and discrimination they often spoil more than they would like to admit, often ruining lives.

Couples that might change the world with their love are torn asunder by a disapproving bunch of relatives or even religious heads with their "concern" for the "soul" of the one who might bring wonderious gifts but is not one of them (hence the gifts of course), and the miracle that would have been the families and souls generated with such love are nipped in the bud. Of course, it is only the couple that knows the tremendous love and the pain and suffering of being torn asunder, while others merely go about congratulating one another for having averted an unsuitable match with an outsider.

Of course, meddling is not limited to that - couples that could have changed the course of the universe with their love and their gifts combined often get torn apart by meddling others who delude themselves that they were acting in good faith for the betterment of society, and if it is clear they were tormenting a woman or a daughter, well that is what they are for - so they can learn to do the same to others in turn, if so lucky, and so goes the chain. Jackals manage to devour the marriage and the love and even the children on all but physical level.

Meanwhile gifts of heaven go squandered into dust because the couples are either too weak to hold on to each other and to their heavenly gift of creation of a new world, or even worse, because one gets turned against another and hurts until the one hurt is no more, which is when the survivor might realise if lucky of what has been lost, even though it might be too late. Often such realisation awaits death of the one who hurt the other one into death.

None of this happened in Emma - she was lucky, to have good counsel and love guarding her, and her weakness of character of meddling with others nipped in bud and her mistakes of perception corrected by someone wiser and stern about serious faults. She was lucky indeed.
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Northanger Abbey:-



The not so well to do young woman is taken to a resort by comparatively well to do relatives and is invited by the master of the Northanger Abbey, the father of the young and eligible gentleman who has a mutual attracted to her and courting her, to stay with him and his family, under the impression the she is going to inherit the relatives' money.

The character of this father, the rich owner of the home that is the title, unfolds, and there are confusion, test of virtue and character, and separations and misunderstandings.

The young man however has excellent character and fortunately realises what is what, and love triumphs even without money.
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Persuasion:-


The most gentle love story from Austen repertoire, with the usual cache of gentle women and men following a normal course of life for their day while falling into easy traps of faults or follies and realising their mistakes and generally rising above, with their counterpart of men and women of small follies or serious faults of character providing examples of how not to be or behave.

Someone (name escapes me, having read this long ago, two decades or more) had once pointed out that in Austen nothing happens page after page and yet one reads it with great interest, and to that one might only add, time after time again and again with the interest not diminished at all. And the most interesting are those of her tales that have the gentlest of stories, characters, et al.
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The Watsons


One wishes she had had time to write it up as she did others; here is an outline written in her green years.
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Sanditon



This barely begins before it ends. One wishes Austen had lived long enough to finish these few and write some more books as well of course. .......................................


Lady Susan


If one never knew anyone of this sort, one would think the character is entirely invented. At that it is not that uncommon to come across men who deal with their own children, especially daughters, this cruelly or worse, but they are excused or even pressured to be this cruel and admired for it in various cultures (not excepting west or US for that matter) while women are usually this cruel with children of other women, say a lover's wife or a sister in law. But the character therefore is entirely possible, especially in an era when a woman could only obtain wealth and consequence by marriages her own and her relatives'; and the only area she could use her mind however sharp was in fields related to intrigues of social sort, marriages, love affaires, and so on, especially gossip and vile gossip about other women. This unfortunately is what far too many women and even men use their minds for, even now, for sport and not for want of subjects that could use the sharp minds. Sometimes it is the heart of such a gossiper and mud thrower that is at fault seriously in that destroying another person is the pleasure, and use of mind and other facilities is merely a means.

Lady Susan comes as a surprise therefore not because of the subject but the author who chose to write it, since Jane Austen usually is as clear as a sunny day in desert about virtues and vices, and condemning not only the latter but even faults of character that might seem only human today but do lead to follies or tragedies even today often enough unquestionably.

Here Austen chooses the letter form prevalent in her time, and avoids commentary, except in letters of another character, giving equal voice to two opposite characters as it were. The story ends well as all Austen tales do to reward virtue, protect innocent and punish vice or folly only in measure.

A window as always to her time, and informative in that as well.
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Every French Man Has One: by Olivia De Havilland.

Olivia de Havilland had a life full enough before she married a French man - she not only was Errol Flynn's costar in his westerns about Custer and the Melanie Wilkes in the biggest film of that era, Gone With The Wind, but also dated Howard Hughes. Gone With The Wind the film is radically different from the book, not in a small part due to the performers being nothing like the characters they portrayed, and Olivia more than anyone was most unlike Melanie Wilkes - Melanie was timid, brown, quiet, afraid of males, and Olivia is not only beautiful but definitely exudes sexuality and confidence, however tamed.

Then Olivia de Havilland married a French man and went to live in France.

I forget the very innocent explanation of the title (which is why it is funny) but remember the one funny part (it has been an eventful life and a quarter of century post reading this, of which only later few were peaceful if any at all) - it is about her French dressmaker pushing her bosom firmly in with tight controls to tame it down, while she kept pushing it up in the standard Hollywood style to make it look bigger.

Oriental Mythology: by Joseph Campbell.

Informative and often horrifying, but one cannot help reflecting that it takes fringe practices rather than mainstream philosophy of a great culture - perhaps more than one - and such portrayals can make anything at all look ugly.

Silk: by Alessandro Baricco.

A whole new world opening up, and the charm of the perfect spouse can hardly compete with the thrill of the new world and new work and discoveries galore, especially when travel across the world to an entirely different land with very different culture is involved. Add a beautiful, enigmatic person (of the right gender) to this - and voila, you have a complex mystery of life, love, and more.

Here, it is about silk, introduction of silk from Orient to west, of attempting to grow sericulture in west by bringing cocoons all the way from Japan, while travel is by ship and all that such a travel entails.

Lois the Witch: by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Story of an innocent English orphan young girl sent to New England to seek out her only living relative by her dying mother getting caught up in the Salem mayhem due to the prejudiced and ignorant immigrants to the new lands and accused of being a witch due to a young spiteful child's plea for calling attention to herself through accusing someone of witchcraft. Sordid example of religious persecution that would not tolerate, much less understand, differences within branches of the same religion.

The Return of Lanny Budd II (World's End): by Upton Sinclair.

This part, 11th in the series beginning with World's End, covers the beginning of cold war and the disenchantment of Lanny Budd with socialist and communist ideologies, chiefly due to practices of the regimes professing these ideologies rather than any reducing of his belief in rights of individuals, equality of people, freedom, and so forth.

He has opposed the fascist and worse regimes with all he could do, lost a great deal in the process (- one beautiful and loved wife left him due to her conviction that right wing regimes were not wrong in keeping the poor out and the poor were only out to fleece everyone with a soft heart, and another was a German caught by occupation Gestapo in Paris and tortured to death; then there were other friends and relatives galore) - and finally saw their downfall with the end of wwII, testifying against those that were fooled in thinking he was with them.

But the role of leftists has now ('46 - '49, the time period covered in this part) undergone a change from rights of humanity and equality of people to adherence to repressive regimes at all costs including of conviction, thought, mind and soul, not to mention lives of anyone who opposes.

So Lanny and his wife (he married a writer from Baltimore post loss of his second wife to torture chambers in Paris and mourning her in total secrecy of necessity, due to his role as secret agent of Roosevelt) run an independent radio station to air thoughts of those that would not so adhere to any such regimes and champion freedom, equality, thinking.

Mrs. 'Arris goes to Paris and Mrs. 'Arris goes to New York: by Paul Gallico

A simple kindhearted elderly charwoman who serves upper class bachelors in London by keeping their premises clean and is generous to her possible extent to her niece, and is content with her life on the whole. All she wants, if and when she permits herself to think of it, is a nice dress - a really nice dress, not an off the rack or anything in between but a really first rate dress from Paris. And then her adventures begin - first to Paris, then New York ....

The Gold of Troy: by Robert Payne.

Son of a lower class family from Germany who emigrated to US as many did in that era, Heinrich Schliemann lacked schooling beyond rudimentary but read a great deal due to his hunger for knowledge not satisfied with the day to day need to work hard and earn to survive. He grew a conviction contradicting that of the era about Homer's work being not fiction but historical, and when he had amassed enough riches to begin his dream project he went with a determination to look for Troy and Agamemnon's gold. For this he had to first marry a Greek girl since he would otherwise not have permission to dig in Greece, which he did with an honest explanation to her after searching for a suitable wife - he was in his fifties, she at the end of her teens - who married him for sake of her nation apart from finding his mission attractive. It so happened they finally succeeded in finding the gold and Troy, but it was in then Turkey, and had to steal it out illegally. He however changed his mind about restoring it to Greece and after much swerving back and forth gave it to Germany, rather than US or Greece, which did not find approval with the wife who had been with him in all his travails.

The gold, then on in a museum in Berlin, vanished post wwII and surfaced only recently with opening up of the iron curtain. It was safe in Russia all these years post wwII.

The Cradle Will Fall: by Mary Higgins Clark

About a doctor who transplants embryos, and a woman who cannot come to terms with loss of her perfectly healthy fetus for no known reason and with no pain or accident discovering to her horror that in fact her baby had been transplanted in another woman without knowledge, much less consent, of either of the two.

Then it was futuristic, perhaps. Today there is a lot done that is perhaps a little less crude but could have more devastating impacts on society tomorrow.

Medical practices meanwhile have improved little in treating patients, especially women, with any respect more than a useful object for study of science and a source of income that demands little and can be browbeaten into any treatment or whatever. Most changes in this attitude that need to be evolved have mostly changed attitudes of what needs to be said or thought as window dressing, and a deep hypocrisy, much like racism or gender discrimination in general ("you should not say that" or "don't think that way" is usually a pat response).
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World's End: by Upton Sinclair.

This is the beginning of a series of books, about the world with Europe centre stage with time spanning from end of world war I to cold war.

A young boy who is coming of age as the first war, then called the great war, is ending, and he happens to be in place where he can be useful as an interpreter - his father is from a US family with a gun manufacture business, and the mother - Beauty Budd, Budd being the name of the family that no one can be sure she legally does have a right to, but most find it more convenient not to challenge her on the point - living in southern coastal France is from US too, a beauty and an ex-model who worked with artists including her own brother in Paris before having a son.

Lanny Budd is growing up with Riviera for home and Europe for a playground, and the education he receives from various sources - his New England austere and wealthy Budd family, his mother with her genial and loving, kind and compassionate character and her coterie of friends who are wealthy and of upper class; his friends from England and Germany, whom he has mutual visits with, and his extended family with various half brothers and sisters, is all giving him a base from which he grows to be a man of education and learning and a good conscience and a good heart. He is the protagonist and in some sense the soul of the world he inhabits where much is to happen - and the future of humanity is at stake.

This is the first volume of the series that has ten volumes or eleven in all - I always forget the number but do wish one day to have them to read again. It was fortunate to stumble across them in the first place, in a library that was a refuge and a retreat all those years, and incidentally is now a landmark and a preserved heritage structure.

The White Tiger: by Aravind Adiga.

Once upon a time Dostoevsky wrote about a poor man murdering a rich one, and then the rest of the work was about his - the poor killer's - suffering due to his very alive conscience not letting him rest with his intellectual justification of the murder he had committed.

One of the best works of Alfred Hitchcock a few decades later in another part of the world, Rope, showed the dilemma from another angle, that of a theoretician about supremacy of some part of humanity recoiling in horror when his pupil commits a murder as a practical application of the teacher's theory. The teacher could not approve of this result and his mind working faster than ever found the serious flaw in the pupil's interpretation and explained why his act was severely wrong.

Both did this with little if any - none if memory serves right - reference to any religion or human authority, including law, whatsoever. Morals are universal in humanity.

Adiga, however attempts to avoid this question by putting forth facts of life of the murderer protagonist and almost pushing the reader to the conclusion that the poverty of multitudes of a particular nation - Adiga's own - and riches of the few are justification for this murder for profit, new identity, new life. This is left unsaid but again pushed silently forth as a populist agenda, a leftist ideal leading to revolution.

But fact is fascist and nazi regimes of the twentieth century began with lower class goons with no moral agenda and no theoretical support that could withstand any scrutiny of serious nature, paraded as leftist while shaking hands with rich that were coopted by blackmail and subsequently dealt with as fit for the moment, and on the whole had no agenda other than the regimes and their goons proliferating at expense of not only rich but all that was good, all the achievements of humanity through history. It was power of physical sort used by evil for no other possible goal than complete destruction of civilisation.

Adiga's work - this one, anyway; and if this one is any indication one would hate anyone to be punished with reading of another work of this author, no criminal except a child abuser would deserve it - is closer to fascist than to leftist regimes of yore, and is as far a cry from the gentle Dostoyevsky as Emily Bronte is from porn.
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While one cannot say there is no truth in the picture painted here so garishly, various incorrect details of fact and more make it obvious it was written with a readership other than home billion; that it got a Booker is no surprise any more than the Oscar that slum dog millionaire did, that merely makes the politics of the prizes obvious to all but willfully blind - after all Gandhi did not get a Nobel prize for peace (imagine the massacre if he had approved of finishing off the rulers, and the capability of people in this matter was proved amply during partition but only against one another, not the rulers - and it could have been channeled easily enough for all that towards the ruling few after all), and someone who converted under guise of help did.

It is about seeing a nation, a culture one does not comprehend and hates for its qualities galore, as something less and pulling it down by insisting they leave off being what they are and follow the line set by the prize giving who can withhold it from the superior and give it to trashing portrayals.

Adiga might have been less incorrect in the details if he had only stuck to his own background rather than imagining he knows all the billions in every corner. As it is he gives a clue to begin with in the name of the protagonist, translated very loosely from his own last name (- Adiga is cook in region Adiga is from, Halwai is sweetmaker in north, it is a bit like someone translating boulangerie to patisserie except no baking is involved in the adiga or halwai bit while the French words are all about baking), but he imagines India to be a uniform seamless society where regional differences can be overlooked by a writer aspiring for fame overseas - who cares if readers in India find faults, first they don't give a booker and second they usually fall in once he has achieved his fame and money with overseas base.

For example, he takes a now frighteningly common occurrence - a servant murdering a member of his master class - and gives it a hue of almost communist revolution (Tsar and family being murdered by starving proletariat!) what with the lurid descriptions of poverty of the murderer. But reality is very very different.

Murders in various large cities have occurred in middle class neighbourhoods (and middle class of India would not be so classified in west, economic levels being entirely different, but as poor) including upper and lower middle class, but victims are mostly either old couples living alone murdered by the servant in the know, or middle aged housewives who are kind enough to go fetch a glass of water for the known or stranger asking for it in the middle of the day. Sometimes there has been a rape of a younger woman dressed in western attire but the attire is irrelevant and the woman being alone, unlikely to be heard by neighbours, is more the point for the opportunist who subsequently kills his victim for his own safety.

In all this the victims are not - most assuredly Not - anywhere near the level of wealth described by Adiga for his victim, the younger son of a coal mining owners who buy politicians for their perpetuated ownership of the coal. That level of wealth is usually quite conscious re their need of protection from those that would rob them and in all likelihood attack them, and don't go about without bodyguards galore. With a multitude of servants kept in place at various degrees of hierarchy a unified attack on a master - and a male in his prime, at that - is as unlikely as someone walking into white house with a bazooka.

No, in reality most women or old people who do get murdered are not much richer than the killers. It is only that there is likely to be some money to be had from murdering people in their own homes by looting whatever is around, which is likely to be more in middle or lower middle class homes, since they are likely to keep their gold and silver at home. Westernised upper class is very unlikely to be profitable for attack in this way - if they keep such stuff at home they have guards, and those living as single males or hep couples away from extended families don't go about keeping gold and silver at home, or much cash. They spend on other things and use plastic like normal western middle class.

Another factor in his tale is about a murderer being one who ferries the employees of the new prosperity harbingers, the IT and call centre employees, especially women. Male employees are less likely to keep depending and more likely to get a motorbike or car for transport, while women still tend to save money and depend on being transported with other colleagues. At least one such woman has been murdered post rape by a substitute unauthorised driver, but the case is not clear - the driver who committed this murder was caught immediately and claimed he was paid by the murdered woman's husband who had been separated with her wanting a divorce and his family being dependent on the loan she had taken in her name.

Naturally the drivers of the city (Bangalore this time, although the other murders are equally divided between three prosperous cities of Bombay, Bangalore and New Delhi - Old Delhi being still quite old fashioned in many respects including neighbours being far too close to allow a murder to progress without danger to perpetrators) were quite upset since everyone looked askance at every driver for quite a while, and they in truth are a decent lot. As are most poor of India, no different from the lower middle or upper midddle class for that matter in any way except fortune, which is seen as a temporary condition rather than something that can be remedied only by murder a la French or Russian revolutions.

Another small incorrect detail is about anyone in north - anyone traditional, that is - allowing a mix of two actual professions, a driver entering the kitchen and touching anything would be taboo enough much less actually cooking for the masters and mistresses. Those that don't care about caste still care about someone who has been dealing with cleaning a car cooking for them. Cooks usually are expected to be cleaner than the household they cook for, whether employed or related to those they cook for.

In fact in proper traditional homes of north India (which term includes east, west and central India, since it is nomenclature invented in south India, a peninsular quarter, to counter the term South India that they identify with) a cook has a chalk boundary around the cooking area within the kitchen which not even the owner of the household may transgress without proper bath and clean clothes. Needless to say the cook begins the work only post bathing and fresh clothes, and with a cleaned kitchen, before the chalk boundary and subsequent cooking.

And employing more than one person is de rigeur unless it is a woman employed to generally serve with a variety of household work, but that again is amongst the distictly non traditional households. A driver in particular does not cook, period.

South is more, not less, stringent on this issue. I have seen old women starve rather than adjust to circumstances on a long trip if they do not approve of the food due to some irregularity in the person or whatever of the cook, and sustain on fruit through times until a proper approvable meal is possible, even though normally "adjust" is the requirement especially from all women of India, to most circumstances. If Adiga has simultaneously cooked and chauffeured both for some master, it would be a surprisingly lax sort of employees with neither old traditional nor new awareness re cleanliness about kitchen.

As for the accident, that is a real danger for any driver in India and especially one used to rules, regulations and clear roads of west. Most so called highways, no matter if they are one lane or divided six lane or more, no matter what region, are likely to trip any driver with a pedestrian of any age or gender whatsoever crossing the highway or even walking on it, as leisurely as if it were a stroll by a queen in her own private garden with no disturbances expected. Accidents do happen, and if the vehicle happens to be a car rather than a truck driven by a poor truck driver, hell breaks loose with villagers sitting on highway and stopping traffic for miles and hours until their ego is satisfied.

Accidents on highways happening in this manner are routinely blamed on "speeding" with no reference to rules being completely ignored by anyone including victims - for example, it is common to see a vehicle of any shape or size, bikes and trucks and auto rickshaw and oxcarts and pedestrians, not only traveling in the fast lane but coming at you opposite to traffic which is with you - they are saving a few precious drops and money, and if you object can inform you that the road does not after all "belong to your papa" and if you are not dead, what is your problem? And anyone who complains is treated as someone "who makes noise" - meaning, shut up and adjust.

One has to sympathise with Pinky who went back, and cheer her for doing so. Many who wish they could in reality cannot. Her relatives protecting her (- for a policeman might just take it into his head to book her and lock her up, and this is unspeakable horror for any poor male, not to mention a delicate female, in these parts of the world where a whim of the authority matter more than actual rules much less considerations -) is normal in every way, except the driver being made to take it upon himself (with his family back in his village in accordance, since they gain prestige and money as well) which is a total horror. It - such drivers taking (or having to take) the blame for money and more - probably does happen all too often (- one suspects in some famous cases, famous due to fame of a person involved), but likely the perpetrators of such accidents are drunken rich males rather than a woman whose only wish is to return back home west.

Adiga probably chose Pinky the young wife desperate to return to US for this master class involved in accidents, rather than a powerful male (usually single and "young") drunk in small hours, the usual one at wheels of such accidents, in his tale due to his need to avoid trouble with questions about who he meant. Although if only one reads a newspaper, accidents by drunken drivers - young, well employed, single, as often as poor truck drivers supporting large families, male in both cases - do happen so commonly one can safely say they are several every week in Bangalore alone. Deaths of the said drunken drivers is quite common too. One only has to drive a bit to see trucks upended on side of highways, and read the newspaper to find out about the well employed biking or car driving young males of middle class or well to do origins.

Adiga in short has used material from reality to paint a very pseudo version of reality where details are incorrect and hence the whole picture seems false, but that does not spoil the enjoyment of the tourist variety readership that is only too happy to see some more muck (a la slum dog and so forth) thrown on the land revered for spiritual knowledge in past and seen askance with surprise for a decade now for its prosperity based on technology and intelligence, rather than cheap labour a la other poor nations that have taken away manufacture of goods - try any department store in US and try to find a dress, shoes, bags, anything at all, that is not made in Asia, particularly in China (and the label that says "Malaysia" or whatever might just mean a trade off that amounts to the label as well as the object being in fact made in China), and you might find that the only possibility is to buy fresh food (fruits and so forth might be imported, but usually donuts are made locally).

Which explains the booker, the fame, the awed reverence from readership far removed from realities of India for this work and its author.
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The title - and its explanation thereof in the work, too, - is not without its questionable nature - which is being generous in allowing for doubts, rather than calling it outright incorrect politely or plain wrong for those that prefer a spade being called a spade. (I had some colleagues who prefer to call it a bloody axe in name of frankness, but that is another level of dialogue, one too like Adiga's work and not my way.)

Adiga may or may not have grown up in Bangalore, which does have a white tiger in the zoo brought all the way from Siberia, but it is nowhere near as impressive or frightening or angry as the Bengal tigers in cages in Delhi zoo - Delhi does have better enclosures, large and with trees, water, stone houses for the particular animals - but the outdoor tiger enclave is either not suitable for new males of the species or is crowded already, in any case the indoor facility with half a dozen cages or so is filled with a tiger alone in each pacing furiously, and obviously very very angry unlike the royal lions in their spacious outdoor enclosures, or the friendly (posing for camera) bears, or the silent cheetah whom one discovers right above one's head suddenly in their fully enclosed cages unlike the other species' vertical enclosures with opening to sky.

If there is a white tiger there now, it is less than famous. Even in Bangalore it is the officials that keep pointing at the white tiger, the viewers are merely taking it as yet another design of nature. Which is true across India about colours of eyes or hair in general - colours other than the normal dark do exist even without a mixed race, and are accepted as a variation, with no relation either way to beauty.

A boy from a rural area in northern poor parts of the country is as unlikely to be impressed by much less think of a white tiger as something special. This equation of pale tigers or colourful eyes and light hair with special or beauty belongs to the regions where they exist. Which is as it should be. Orientals prefer small nose, hair free males and almond eyes - others, especially those from European ancestry, are called "foreign devils" or "barbarians" by Chinese.
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Lurid descriptions of poverty are an effective weapon to shame the place, the land, the nation and culture that one is referring to, effective as long as the intended target can be shamed and won't hit back. Few are as convenient in this as India is - poverty in US is seen by those in power as proof of laziness of those that are poor even if the real fault is with various prejudices against the race or gender or non-wasp origin of the poor, poverty of various other nations is either ascribed to similar factors or to leftist regimes.

Truth is poverty exists everywhere including in most prosperous cities of US, and few nations of central Europe have been able to keep it in check but it is due to various reasons apart from the equable distribution of wealth. And poverty is never so dire in warm or rural places as it can be in cold urban ones - someone old, sleeping with a newspaper to cover oneself against cold of January on a bench out in the park in a northeastern city of US is far more pathetic than someone on a sidewalk in Bombay. This is also why one sees far more poverty in warmer lands than in colder - in former poor can survive and do so even out in open, in latter they have to find shelter and death from cold is far more likely, starving is far more dire.

So these shaming, embarrassing descriptions of poverty are a bit like attack on virtue of a woman - it works when the woman in fact has any virtue, honour, integrity, but not if she is without principle and manipulative and likely to deny it all.

That said, fact is when one is without something that people may have across the world on the other side as a matter of routine - or for that matter next door - that is not necessarily a cause for pain or unhappiness or feeling of deprivation, whether it is parents or wherewithal. Children take for granted whatever is around, and unless there is starvation or abuse of severe nature or something really unfair in dealings of adults with them, that which they are used to is how they see and expect normal life to be. A car and a bathtub is a necessity when one is used to it from birth but really is far from a need even for transport or bathing. Most Europeans manage fairly well with public transport and most in India bathe every day with no tubs.

This extends to other circumstances such as those described by Adiga in taking this shaming of India as far as possible in descriptions of urban squalor and especially of public open toilet practiced in urban slums. Which is not to say it is pleasant or desirable as a normal part of urban life. But it is only that these poor are people that have migrated from rural areas in search of work due to landless nature of their circumstances, and if they have land in rural areas they may continue there with no plumbing with no deprivation or filth. Disposal of waste or practices of toilet in rural areas according to old fashions worked for centuries and it is only a dismal picture when the two, westernised cities and rural traditional poor, come into contact and clash. One only has to see plastic waste on sides of roads in villages as one gets closer to towns, but then plastic islands in Pacific dumped by US and now grown to size of Texas are not exactly the way to go either. It is a problem of development, in fact.

One can experience very different interpretations of "normal" across the world even within developed nations, such as US and Germany and UK, so all the more it is understandable that a readership used to two car homes is shocked with Adiga's descriptions and sees murders as justified consequence. That there are poor far closer to their own homes is easily forgotten, as is the fact that murders for no reason are common in US (massacres in schools, an old husband shooting dead his equally old wife of well over half a century one fine day due to a small quarrel, freeway shootings in spring in LA, just some factual examples over some three decades) - it is forgotten that human is not that different across the planet and just or unjust is not that diverse. Yes, often people do get mugged in US for money, and while pickpockets proliferate in Paris and Mumbai alike mugging is less common.

The unique factor to India is common or similar instead with (what one reads about) mafia of Russian new free variety, those organised gangs that hire killers for little - the objective being looting the wealthy and murders to keep them in line. The two sets of gangs are separate of course, those from Russia operate presumable in US and France (again, from what one reads or sees on television) and those that operate in India being maneuvered as puppets from other lands far closer to the Mumbai wealth. And in neither of these is poverty a factor unless one counts the killers for hire and considers how little they earn in poorer lands. Those that order the killings and manage the extortion money are not poor, by any standards.

So Adiga has in fact created a fairy tale populated mostly with demons of various sort - fairy tale in the sense that his objective is to get a reader to pity the poor servant murdering the master, if not admire and sanction morally. This in fact is what nazis did with two pronged approach - mass killings post robbing (whether rich or poor they did get robbed of all before they were killed), and propaganda against them. And seemingly he succeeds, too - he did get a booker!

Really, is booker given by people with their minds closed? To facts, to principles, to history?

Do they not realise that this being lauded might just encourage poor Hispanics or indigenous populations to massacre the wasp masters of north, and Africans to do so to Europeans - and what is more, provide them with a semblance of justification as well, since a prize winning work cannot be seen as immoral or criminal but will of necessity be seen as providing justification for murder of all comparatively well to do by those that would exchange places by any means fair or foul? And just as past begins a nano second ago, that comma there is past already, so "comparatively well to do" is anyone with a shirt more than another, a child with one piece of candy more than the next.

If awarding this work is not seen as justifying such murders, is that indicative of morality of those that gave it, with might or physical power justifying it all, and one who takes it (land, money, Kohinoor, "Elgin" marbles, whatever) away from another being in no need of justification and the act of taking it away being its own justification, murder being the sanctioning of the surviving murderer by the act itself?

Perhaps - or how else can any colonialising, occupational power live with its existence?!!

Ben Hur by Lew Wallace.

Roman occupation of Judea was no more benefic than occupations of various nations of other continents by nations from Europe in modern times, it is only that attempts to wipe out memory of that older occupation - or if not wipe out then bury it under a plethora of lies galore - is older, and conquistadores write history while wiping out that of those occupied and enslaved even in the later era. Here one sees the occupation as it was, and the crucifixions (- not only one, that of a Divine Being, but doubtless plenty of good men amongst those that were criminals against humanity and not merely against the occupying rulers -) as a part of it, unlike the later lies forced on those that chose to believe them.

This story focuses on one that was amongst the wealthy and on equal footing with the occupying Romans due to his status and education, and was enslaved during that occupation due partly to the jealousy of the rulers and particularly one that called him a friend, and partly to his having taken side with his poor people rather than the cruel occupational forces in the injustices they committed. In this he was not unlike any other freedom fighter, Divine or otherwise, but unlike his more famous contemporary (since then appropriated by the occupying colonial rulers while driving out, persecuting, falsely blaming and all but wiping out his people) persona, he was not crucified outright, but rather enslaved personally and tortured on and on. His fate and his personal qualities were his only help in freeing him - and bringing back his family to life was another matter, that of divine intervention.