MALCOLM SENreviews Between the Assassinationsby Aravind Adiga, Atlantic Books, 351pp. £14.99
HANNAH ARENDT'S arresting phrase "the banality of evil" could be reincarnated today as "the banality of poverty", a phrase that captures the repetitive labour and unthinking existence demanded of the destitute. It also shows how the recurrence of images of poverty in modern culture makes impoverishment seem vapid. Aravind Adiga's second book, Between the Assassinations, evokes the endless labouring well. Unfortunately it is also an example of how descriptions of poverty, both material and psychological, can be turned meaningless.
The book is set in a fictional town called Kittur in the western coast of India between 1984 and 1991. It is a collection of separate stories that seek some vague unity through their shared geographical setting. While some of the stories are well written, the overall schema is often pointless and detrimental to the entire book.
The stories or episodes illustrate how in the past "India had been ruled by three foreigners: England, France, and Portugal" but that now "their place was taken by three native-born thugs: Betrayal, Bungling, and Backstabbing". A motley cast of characters (some say Dickensian) is Adiga's trademark. Examples in Assassinationsinclude the mixed-caste (and middle-class) Shabbir Ali, who plants a bomb made of fertiliser and detonator in his school; Keshava, a villager unaccustomed to the vile ways of semi-urban Kittur, who ends up working for the local mafia; and the studious Girish, who unwittingly fails his teacher's high morals by peering behind a black curtain that hides pornographic posters. Adiga writes convincingly about the persistence of the caste system in rural and semi-rural India, the street-smartness required for survival, and the slow death of idealism that results from political corruption. The book is at its best in its cynical moments.
Unfortunately, an embarrassingly complex latticework of historical and anthropological detailing precedes each story. We are told, for example, that a Syrian Christian merchant in 1091 wrote about the natural harbour of Kittur. In the 14th century “a dervish named Yusuf Ali began curing lepers” in the town etc. These travel-guide commentaries are at times too self-aware of their own ideological relevance, as subversions of early European travel literature about India: “You are on a road surrounded by ancient banyan trees; the smell of neem is in the air, an eagle glides overhead.” Such addenda have no bearing on the stories and are often disruptive to the point of boredom. If there is some sense of irony in these asides it is well hidden. A character from the book puts it well: “Human eyes were not meant to stare . . . at designs this intricate.” Even the historical period, between 1984 and 1991, dates that mark the assassinations of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, two prime ministers of India, seem ornamental.
Adiga's otherwise noir style is much needed in Indian fiction. But the book is a far cry from Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, the quintessential fictional representation of 1980s India in English. It is also a diminutive version of Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games, an epic narrative about the Indian mafia, political corruption, and Miss India competitions. As far as fictional towns in India are concerned, RK Narayan's Malgudi remains unscathed by Adiga's Kittur.
Adiga's language in his earlier novel, The White Tiger, which was a surprise winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2008, was described as an Indian Railways train, determinedly trudging along. It is often derailed in his collection of stories because of the undue weight of its ornamentation. Between the Assassinationswas written concurrently with The White Tiger, and the language also sounds borrowed – repetitive rather than similar.
Are we doing a disservice to the author here? Perhaps the whole point of the book, and its filigree notes, is to show the lack of communion between deep history and shallow existence, between cultural richness and deficient, individual lives. Adiga’s hard-edged realism is not meant to please the reader; there is no possibility of lyrically cushioning facts about social injustice. This is a commendable quality in his writing. But realistic mirroring by itself seldom makes a work of literature meaningful. George Orwell, who was born in India, wanted to turn “political writing into an art”. Adiga’s aim is the obverse, and while the politics is spot-on, the overall aesthetic is dishevelled.
No reader wants an artisanal antidote to poverty in the pages of a book. Nothing is more warranted than a clear-eyed portrayal of “slumdogs”, especially the ones who cannot even dream of becoming millionaires. However, the banality of poverty may well need a richness of narration to carry its sombre message.
Malcolm Sen teaches in the department of English, NUI Galway