The tribal mall

MARKET AND COMMUNITY: The Jolarpet haat is not just about buying and selling

Jolarpet’s weekly haat has a striking resemblance to the modern mall – without the frills, of course. Set in a large clearing off the main highway, its temporary lanes and alleys boast a staggering quantity and variety of material. Cheap apparel hangs from wooden canopies, beside an army of mirrors and combs. Tomatoes, onions and all kinds of vegetables rest on the ground, enduring clouds of dust whipped up by shoppers walking by. Cosmetics are another ubiquitous sight, hugely in demand. On the fringes on the market, near the highway, a Vivel stall lurks, waiting to ambush.

S. Kannan, 71, retired as a railway mechanic and receives a monthly pension of Rs 6000. He sells vegetables at the haat, working only one day of the week. The occupation gives him a chance to socialise and interact with other people of the area. “There is not much money in this,” he says. “But I get a chance to meet people and get away from the boredom and loneliness of old age.”

Hafez on the other hand has only recently returned after spending ten years in Bombay. He had shunned the anonymity of urban life fuelled by a desire to lead a more rooted existence. “I wanted to speak Tamil again,” he said. He shares his stall with his next-door neighbour Rafiq, and they sell mostly vegetables. Rafiq remarked that the sales were very good. “It is five o’clock now. By eight o’clock, everything on this table will disappear. For the next three hours, I wouldn’t able to share even a word with you.”

Both Rafiq and Hafez, who were running a middle-size stall, seemed content. Every day, they are able to earn Rs 250 each, and in festival season, anywhere from Rs 400 to Rs 500. Whereas overt government intervention and regulation account for the oppressive plight of the Indian farmer, the freedom of the market was liberating for Hafez. “I could easily set up shop here. There are no restrictions, as long as you don’t encroach on anybody else’s space.”

The Indian intellectual has been deeply antagonistic towards the market. But for Hafez, this free nature of the haat meant he did not have to deal with the bureaucracy. There were no bribes to pay, no sahibs to appease. “It was easy, really. Rafiq needed someone to partner him, and it worked out all right for both of us,” he said. When asked whether they faced any discrimination, both of them replied with a vehement ‘no’. Rafiq said, “When the customer buys here, he doesn’t mostly know who I am. For some of our regular customers, it is not important at all. All they are interested is in good quality vegetables.”

The haat is not just a place for buying and selling, it is also a social hub. Here, beyond the routine monetary transactions and the hustle-bustle, conversations abound and lasting emotional ties are forged. Though the market may not ultimately dissolve identities, it certainly dilutes them. And in places like Jolarpet, the haat is an extremely cosmopolitan place where people from all communities participate.

This piece appeared in the Covering Deprivation issue of The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.

Surging South

Alarm bells are ringing for the Hindi heartland. UP and Bihar face serious questions before they can be relevant on the national stage

LEADING THE WAY: By most yardsticks, the South is way ahead

For the last month, I’ve been travelling across much of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. For somebody who often spent vacations in obscure towns in Uttar Pradesh where the suitability of a town is often measured by comparing crime statistics, the southern part of this country is a revelation. Better roads, decent public transport, a semblance of order, hardly any undercurrents of violence on the street – this is all very far away from the ubiquitous misery and constant state of unrest in the Hindi heartland.

I’ll let the stats do the talking. The four southern states contribute one-third of India’s tax revenues. Contrast this with UP and Bihar who despite accounting for 25% of the population contribute just above 10%. The electrification in Tamil Nadu and Kerala is in the high eighties and nineties. For UP and Bihar, an abysmal 42.8% and 27.7% respectively. Literacy is a no-contest – Kerala 89.9%, Tamil Nadu 74.2%, UP 61.6%, Bihar 54.1%. Any yardstick of social and economic development we take, HIV awareness, media exposure, vaccination coverage, household size, the result is the same – the South is way ahead.

Throughout our Covering Deprivation tour in Vellore district, what struck most of us was the quality of the roads. Even in the remotest parts of the state, as you turn away from the highway, there are paved roads which are easily navigable. While anybody who has travelled way into Eastern UP is sufficiently acquainted with the dustbowls that account for highways. The stats bear us out here too. Tamil Nadu is half the area of UP, yet has 75% of that mammoth state’s highway length.

Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore are a league away from the wretchedness of Lucknow, Bhopal and Patna. Even Chennai’s understated material opulence may perhaps be a sign of greater social equity. The harsh gulf between destitution and obscene wealth that is part of the perennial landscape of Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta is less visible.

This is not to say that the South does not have its problems. Of course, it does. Caste, as we saw on our Covering Deprivation tour, remains a major problem as everywhere else in India. But the fact that very different questions are being asked of the polity here is instructive. Voting patterns on the basis of identity are far from extinct, but the elected representatives also know that a minimum level of performance will have to be shown. The question is of better performance, not of occasional, providential government intervention.

The writing is on the wall – the Hindi heartland is in trouble. Even the xenophobic sentiment exploited by Raj Thackeray and his ilk is a pointer to the stark failure of these states in giving their inhabitants a sustainable livelihood. So what does this mean for those two non-performing monoliths – UP and Bihar? They have a monumental challenge ahead of them, if they are to remain relevant to the nation, not just a festering sore. For far too long, they have been trapped in an endless quagmire of violence and destitution. While railing against Raj Thackeray, they must also radically change their political culture and demand performance from those they elect.

This piece appeared in the Covering Deprivation issue of The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.

Cinema Today

We live in an age in which the culture of cinema has been substantially impoverished by the hegemonic banality of Hollywood. It continues to be the case. The best films are reduced to the ghettos of film festivals, while tasteless dubbed versions of ordinary American films are everywhere to be found.

The review format, in its current form, with the vulgar system of star ratings has only worsened its current plight. Cinema today, is in danger of being annihilated as an art form, and its future existence may solely be in the form of a consumer good.

Hence, the importance of criticism. We have a battle at hand.

All of us, who have spent hours and hours in the company of the great masters, who have loved this mechanical art with the passion of an only love – we have an obligation to rescue it.

In 1967, Jean Renoir wrote about Andre Bazin, “For that king of our time, the cinema, has likewise its poet. That king on whose brow he has placed a crown of glory is all the greater for having been stripped by him of the falsely glittering robes that hampered its progress. It is, thanks to him, a royal personage rendered healthy, cleansed of its parasites, fined down – a king of quality – that our grandchildren will come to delight upon.”

The critic today is faced with a monumental challenge. He must rid film criticism of its slumber, and reinvigorate it with ideas. Every thriving art form has a healthy, impassioned sphere of criticism.

Cinema has lost its way – we have exchanged eclectic cuisine with junk food. We, as critics, must speak of the health hazards of this junk. We must call a spade a spade – we have to restore cinema to the idealistic vision of its greatest innovators, return it to madness and passion. Through criticism, we shall reclaim our endangered art.

It was Fellini who said that “a different language is a different vision of life.” It is what we need to save our king, the cinema, who still sits on the throne, but is beset with grave illness.

This piece appeared on the FIPRESCI website and for the International Film Festival of Kerala.

The endless war in Darfur

The recent announcement of ceasefire by the Sudanese government has failed to bring about peace in the ravaged region

On November 12 this year, Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir offered a ceasefire and promised to disarm militias, in a move to end the nearly 6-year-old Darfur conflict. He announced his “agreement to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire between the armed forces and the warring factions, provided that an effective monitoring mechanism be put into action and be observed by all involved parties.”

This came in the wake of charges filed by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, seeking Al-Bashir’s arrest. Ocampo filed 10 charges – three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder and accused Al-Bashir of masterminding a campaign to get rid of the African tribes in Darfur. Thus, the conciliatory move by Al-Bashir was aimed evading a seemingly imminent arrest warrant, to be issued by the ICC. The ICC has already issued arrest warrants against Ahmed Harun, minister of humanitarian affairs, and janjaweed commander Ali Kushayb, for crimes in Darfur.

The Darfur conflict started in February 2003 and has rapidly developed into one of the most violent military confrontations on the African continent. In the last five years, 300,000 people have been killed, more than 2 million displaced and about 120,000 have fled into neighbouring Chad. The conflict is basically between African insurgents and the government-backed Arab militias.

There are two major rebel forces fighting against the government in Khartoum. One is the politically moderate Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), based mostly on the Fur and Masaleet tribes. The other is the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), based mostly on the Zaghawa tribe and with radical Islamist connections. It is linked with the radical Popular Patriotic Congress led by the veteran Islamist Hassan al-Turabi, who was formerly aligned with the NIF, which came to power in 1989.

The two rebel forces, who claim to be collaborating militarily, have been fighting the Sudanese army forces and the government-backed militia, the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed has conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign in rebel villages throughout the region, destroying nearly 2,700 villages. Sheik Suleiman, a civil community representative, told the Guardian in an interview on 24 November 2008, “I saw the killing with my own eyes. I saw the Janjaweed chain men up, make them kneel on the ground and then shoot them – 150 of them.”

Mass rape is another tactic employed by the Janjaweed to assert its domination within a region. Business Daily Africa quoted a victim saying, “They rape women in front of their mothers and fathers. Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. These things are normal for us in Darfur.” The first step in any lasting solution for peace lies in the disarming and dissolution of the Janjaweed militia, which has been an unwavering demand of the rebel groups. President Omar al-Bashir said the recent ceasefire will include steps to disarm the Janjaweed.

The United States has imposed economic sanctions and asked for support for an international arms embargo to end what President George W Bush called “genocide” in Darfur. Washington has regularly denounced Khartoum for its role in the conflict and lent verbal support to human rights campaigners.

Yet, little has been done by way of direct action. Since September 11, Sudan began increasing its sharing of ‘counterterror’ intelligence with the U.S. The U.S. State Department praised Khartoum for taking “significant steps to cooperate in the war on terrorism.” In 2001, the Bush administration rejected the Sudan Peace Act, which would have financed support for anti-Khartoum forces. Instead, it signed a toothless, watered-down version the next year.

In 2007, a U.S. administration spokesperson said, “The United States will maintain its strong support for countries on the front lines in the war on terrorism, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sudan.” In 2008, the U.S. publicly announced its offer to normalize relations with Khartoum, fuelled by a desire to gain a foothold in Sudan’s booming oil industry.

Oil is the reason why China has sprung to the defence of the Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, expressing “grave concern” at the ICC’s moves to arrest him. 70 per cent of Sudan’s oil is exported to China, which gets one-third of its oil imports from Africa. In a reaction to these policies, five Chinese workers, employees of the China National Petroleum Corporation, were kidnapped and killed, suspected to be the handiwork of Darfur rebel groups. China has financed close to $1.3 billion of infrastructure projects in Sudan, it remains the biggest supplier of weapons to the Sudanese government.

China looks at Africa strategically as a continent that has resources that it needs to drive its economy forward. Trade between China and Africa will grow to $100 billion this year. China broke ground on a $120 million headquarters for the African Union, the chief organization of African nations this month. Wu Bangguo, one of China’s top leaders, called the gift “another example of the growing friendship between China and Africa.”

The International Crisis Group correctly summarizes the operative factors behind international policy in relation to the conflict, “The sad reality is that Darfur simply does not matter enough, and Sudan matters too much, for the international community to do more to stop the atrocities.”

Meanwhile, claims of peace after the ceasefire by the Sudanese government have been contradicted. On December 2, 15 human right organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Save Darfur Coalition, said in a report that continued attacks on civilians showed the emptiness of Khartoum’s promises for the ravaged region. The 22 page report, titled “Rhetoric vs. Reality: The Situation in Darfur,” documents the lack of progress in Darfur in recent months regarding security, the humanitarian situation, the deployment of peacekeepers, and domestic justice. “The situation in Darfur is far from what the world would define as ‘normal’,” said Julia Fromholz, director of the Crimes Against Humanity Program at Human Rights First. “Millions of people are living under daily threat of violence and are dependent on humanitarian aid that is hindered or entirely blocked by ongoing insecurity and endless bureaucratic hurdles.”

The report describes the ongoing insecurity in Darfur. Even in November, following the government’s declaration of a “unilateral, unconditional ceasefire,” the Sudanese army continued to bomb villages in North and West Darfur. “Once again, the Sudanese government is talking peace with diplomats and journalists while waging war in Darfur,” said Save Darfur Coalition President Jerry Fowler. “And once again, civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence.”

UN’s top humanitarian official admitted that Darfur was getting more dangerous. “The longer this conflict goes on, the more dangerous it becomes in terms of the ability to return to normality as it was before,” John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator, told a news conference after a six-day visit to Sudan.

UN officials estimate that up to 4.7 million people receive aid in the world’s biggest humanitarian relief operation, set to cost one billion dollars in 2009. UN officials say security in Darfur has worsened considerably in 2008, with 11 humanitarian workers killed, 172 assaults on humanitarian premises, 261 vehicles hijacked and 170 staff temporarily abducted so far this year.

The United Nations/African Union peacekeeping force (UNAMID) remains at less than 50 percent of its mandated strength and has repeatedly come under attack. The Sudanese government has once again recommitted to fulfilling its obligations to facilitate the force, but these commitments have yet to be tested. At a local level, government forces and authorities consistently hamper the ability of the force to protect civilians, through obstruction, bureaucracy, and even violent attacks.

Sudanese authorities have also announced a series of steps ostensibly designed to improve domestic justice for crimes in Darfur, including a new prosecutor for Darfur.  However, to date the prosecutor has only considered three cases, and no fresh prosecutions in relation to major atrocities have begun.

“Above all what we need to see in Darfur is a rapid political progress, a rapid political settlement… only that will enable the kind of progress we want to make in terms of development in Darfur,” Holmes, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said.

This piece appeared in the op-ed section of The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.

Cricket and 9/11 in Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland

Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland is an extended reflective essay, an exploration of the tumultuous New York of 9/11 and the Iraq war.

It is the story of Hans van den Broek, a banker who spends two strange, forlorn years in the bohemian Chelsea Hotel after his English wife Rachel leaves him along with their son Jake, in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center. Early into the novel, we are introduced to the emotional vulnerability and pervasive fear that gripped the city’s inhabitants. As Rachel leaves for London, Hans wonders,

She had fears of her own, in particular the feeling in her bones that Times Square, where the offices of her firm were situated, would be the site of the next attack. The Times Square subway station was a special ordeal for her. [...] Throngs endlessly climbed and descended the walkways like Escher’s tramping figures. Bare high-wattage bulbs hung from the low-lying girders, and temporary partitions and wooden platforms and posted handwritten directions signalled that around us a hidden and incalculable process of construction and ruination was being undertaken. The unfathomable and catastrophic atmosphere was only heightened by the ever-present spectacle of a little Hispanic man dancing with a life-size dummy.

Thrust into despair by the abandonment by his wife, Hans seeks comfort in the thriving and invisible world of New York cricket, which we are told, has a unique history. (‘First modern team sport in America; played in New York since the 1770’s. First international cricket matches were between the USA and Canada and watched by thousands of fans.’)

Hans grew up in Holland and got hooked to cricket as a young kid as one day while walking in the woods he saw ‘through the trees the white flashes of boys mysteriously organised in a green space.’ In New York, the game is played mostly by immigrants from Asia and the West Indies, and in this sub-culture, Hans finds relief from the inertia of his quotidian existence. Hans reflects, “What we talked about, when we did talk, was cricket. There was nothing else to discuss. The rest of our lives – jobs, children, wives, worries – peeled away, leaving only this fateful sporting fruit.”

O’Neill is at his best in Netherland when he writes about cricket, threading prose with such elegant beauty and perceptive vision, which makes you wish the novel would have made cricket the sole object of its enquiry. At one moment, Hans says, “For what was an innings if not a singular opportunity to face down, by dint of effort and skill and mastery, the variable world?” In another burst of poetic rumination, he reflects,

But I still think, and I fear will always think, of myself as the young man who got a hundred runs in Amstelveen with a flurry of cuts, who took that diving catch at second slip in Rotterdam, who lucked into a hat trick at the Haagse Cricket Club. These and other moments of cricket are scorched in my mind like sexual memories, forever available to me and capable, during those long nights alone in the hotel when I sought refuge from the sorriest feelings, of keeping me awake as I relived them in bed and powerlessly mourned the mysterious promise they held.

It is through cricket that he meets Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian, who talks “incessantly, indefatigably, virtuosically.” Chuck has ambitions of building a grand cricket stadium in New York, which would lead the revival of the game in the United States and would make America a proper civilization. He explains, “All people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket.”

Hans finds in Chuck an escape from the dull and tedious rhythm of his own life. They develop an unusual friendship as Hans chauffeurs Chuck on his business dealings as preparation for his driving test. He becomes keenly aware of Chuck’s world – his ambition, his recklessness, his guiltless affairs while having a devoted wife.

It may seem baffling why Hans feels a sense of solidarity with Chuck – why, for example, could he not feel such affinity with someone else, someone closely bound in terms of interest and lifestyle? It becomes to easier to fathom this once you realise the breadth of O’Neill’s transnational vision – New York being a place where geography both expands and contracts. Hans is a product of this vision, growing up in Holland, married to an Englishwoman and living in New York. Chuck, like Hans, does not feel any sense of oneness with any national entity, but an obligation only to oneself.

One of the strengths of Netherland is how effortlessly it navigates from the recesses of memory to the fierce urgency of the present. The account of the virulent anti-Americanism following the attack on Iraq in the novel comes as Hans is marooned in thought, sitting in his balcony, when a call from Rachel informs him that she’s not moving back to New York. She says “she would not expose Jake to an upbringing in an ‘ideologically diseased’ country, a ‘mentally sick, unreal country’.”

Chuck, in early 2006, is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal, handcuffed to the back. His death is an apt reminder of the limitations of the boundless myth of the American Dream, which led Chuck to harbour grand delusions about the result of his New York Cricket Club. As one character, a business associate of Chuck, remarks after his death, “There is a limit to what Americans understand. That limit is cricket.”

The brutal death of a man ‘who had more life inside him than 10 people’ is a subtle metaphorical retort to the delusions America harbours and encourages within its inhabitants about the ability to control one’s destiny, the totality of individual control over agency and desire. 2006 is not an entirely co-incidental timeline, as the Iraq war becomes a quagmire and forces a nation to question its assumptions of self-worth.

Yet, 9/11 and Iraq are terms that are used sparingly, never to overtly exert on the reader the nature of the political climate in which Hans exists. The big, external conflicts are examined through the inner tumult of the protagonist. This makes Netherland a deeper and more meaningful exploration of that time and space than a novel like Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. The fundamental flaw of DeLillo’s novel, and others like John Updike’s Terrorist, is that they strictly view 9/11 through the prisms of exclusion, and frame their plots and narrative around the sequence of subsequent political events. Netherland is a more honest document of that fateful September, and its repercussions, because it artfully delves into the psychological cost through which came to define individual lives.

This review first appeared in The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.

President Barack Obama

It is impossible not to think of Martin Luther King today, as the dream that he so powerfully articulated finds its realization in reality.

I offer two excerpts from his speeches in Oslo after winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

On the ability of individuals to influence the course of history -

“I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

And the prophecy with which he saw the significance of the Civil Rights Movement -

“In the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of nonviolence. By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white, have temporarily left the ivory towers of learning for the barricades of bias. Their courageous and disciplined activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice. They have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements.”

On days like this, it is possible to believe again in essential human goodness.

Undecided Voters

As the US presidential campaign reaches its final stages, David Sedaris in The New Yorker wonders whether they exist -

“I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

Taking into account that they elected Bush twice, it is not wholly implausible that Americans have a taste for shit and broken glass.

Darkness and the ‘new’ India in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger

( I wrote this review for The Word, the paper at the Asian College of Journalism.)

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai, who addresses a series of letters to the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. The novel is in the form of a dramatic monologue, in the tradition of Albert Camus’ The Fall and more recently, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Over seven nights, Balram narrates the story of his life. Born in a village in northern India, son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. Nursing a dream of escape, his big chance comes when he is hired as a chauffeur by a village landlord. The narrative follows Balram’s journey to Delhi, where after murdering his employer, he finally becomes a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore.

The dust jacket describes The White Tiger as the tale of two Indias. It is exactly where its problem lies, by reducing the multiple, complex layers of Indian life into a simplistic, binary opposition. Early in the novel, Balram says, “Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two countries in one: an India of Light and an India of Darkness.”

In its overtly Manichean perspective, its characters and situations are shorn of complexity, and reduced to archetypes. Balram’s narrative, at times, recedes into a patronising lament towards people of the social class he himself belongs to. Balram remarks, “The children ran along with me outside, little dirty brats born to one aunt or the other whose names I did not want to know, whose hair I did not want to touch.” So, in the Darkness, the poor are filthy and dirty – and yet it is impossible to imagine Balram sharing this view. What is happening is the constant overlap between the narrator Balram’s view of the world and Adiga’s own perceptions of that class. The resulting superficial tone, with its lack of nuance, serves to highlight the author’s distance from the subject and who cannot fully inhabit the world of his protagonist.

Further on, in the Darkness, the elections are always rigged. Balram remarks, “It’s the way it always is,” my father told me last night. “I’ve seen twelve elections – five general, five state, two local – and someone else has voted for me twelve times. I’ve heard that people in the other India get to vote for themselves – isn’t that something?” This abrupt dismissal of electoral democracy naively interprets the machinations of electoral politics in northern India, where for the last two decades subaltern communities have actively sought empowerment through the ballot. The depiction of the politician known as The Great Socialist and the politicians bribed in Delhi are reduced to clichés, with their sexual amorality and lust for wealth.

The primary reason why The White Tiger is engaging is because of the energy of its prose and its swift, crackling wit. The conversation directed at the Chinese Premier works to great effect, though the connection may appear forced. The oppressive social structure of the village with its feudal hegemony is adeptly dealt with. The lack of basic amenities in the rural hinterland – the heart-rending death of Balram’s father by tuberculosis due to the absence of trained professionals is an indictment of the moral corruption that has come to dominate those who have a duty towards the under-privileged.

The tone is slick and fast-paced, and it charts new territory in its depiction of the aloofness of the rich towards the poor and the dangers this poses to social cohesion. Gurgaon, with its absurdly named high-rise apartment blocks, such as Buckingham Buildings and Windsor Estate and ever-growing number of malls is vividly described as a brutal, concrete jungle whose salient feature is the crude exhibitionism of wealth. The emergence of this new social ethos, whose roots lie in vulgar materialism, wreaks psychological conflict on the people who are excluded from the riches of the globalised economy.

By refusing to subscribe to a clichéd, exotic version of India, The White Tiger is the victim of another one – the new India. The rhetoric of the new India has acquired the status of a mythology in Western media reportage. The Booker Prize has always swayed in the direction of the prevailing, dominant perception of the Indian subcontinent. The disappointing part about The White Tiger is that instead of focusing on the uneasy co-existence within the contradictions of Indian urban life, it adds to that lazy classification – new India, as separate from the old.

The petit-bourgeois classes, stirred by visions of material utopia and alienated from their present condition by their contact with consumer culture, whose psyche was brilliantly examined in Pankaj Mishra’s Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, form a glaring absence. The entrepreneur Balram, who now runs a taxi service in Bangalore from the stolen money of his employer, with his naiveté and delusions of grandeur, is one more example where a close examination has been abandoned in favour of an exaggerated, theatrical posture to press hard upon the reader the ‘new’ landscape of globalised India.

The White Tiger ventures into areas of darkness, but is lost in its abyss of easy generalisations and cliches. It aims to act as a mirror to the transformative changes that have taken place, but is unable to convincingly answer the questions it sets out for itself.

The Only Special One

Heckled by the press after his Inter side lost the Milan derby, Mourinho replied,

They scored a goal and we didn’t. That is the story of this match.

Scolari may have brought some colour and character back to the Premier League, but Mourinho’s wiles in the Serie A show why there’s no one like him.

Urban India, 2008

Eric Hobsbawm about Europe in mid-nineteenth century in The Age of Revolution -

The middle-class world was freely open to all. Those who failed to enter its gates therefore demonstrated a lack of personal intelligence, moral force or energy which automatically condemned them; or at best a historic or racial heritage which must permanently cripple them, or else they would have made use of their opportunities. The period which culminated about the middle of the century was one of unexampled callousness, not merely because the poverty which surrounded middle-class respectability was so shocking that the native rich learned not to see it, leaving its horrors to make their impact on visiting foreigners, but because the poor, like the outer barbarians, were talked of as though they were not properly human at all.