It has been thirty five years(!) since I performed oboe recitals in Mumbai and Poona and a mob tried to lynch our taxi in Delhi, India yet this wondrous, magical and dystopian culture continually returns to haunt me.
And over twenty five years ago I was playing my oboe for belly dance classes taught by my better half, a descendant of Lebanese-Brazilians.
So, India and the Eastern customs have been pursuing this Western-born observer.
Today, Sunday, at 3:30 pm at a bakeshop here in Copacabana my Internations literary group will be discussing one of the best –and most frightening—novels I have read recently which happens to be authored by Indian author.
Entitled “The White Tiger” by Indian author Arvind Adiga, the novel won the 2006 prestigious Booker prize and was made into a 2021 film by Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani.
Its main character is the son of a rickshaw carrier, the former chauffeur turned murder-turned high tech executive Balram. Highlighting an unjust culture which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, castes never seem to go away, bribing and dishonesty rule over hard work, crimes and criminals are never punished if you know the right people and have enough money and following the honest path leads nowhere, the novel reminds me …of Brazil.
And from what I read about my homeland, the United States these days, Adiga´s first novel well represents what is currently going on in a land once ruled by would-be dictator Donald Trump and his band of dishonest marionettes.
Anyone who has ever visited India will always recall besides the haunting music, ancient religious culture and endless variety of spices and foods, the extreme poverty which make some of Brazil´s favelas seem like luxurious areas in comparison.
The “White Tiger” was a nickname given to Balram when he grew up in the “darker side” of India where as a child he was considered “cleverer and more intelligent than others with an instinct to survive.”
And so, as the plot thickens, he “develops “from a humble chauffeur to a high-tech executive recently returned from the USA to a murderer who bribing police and politicians rises to the top of Indian society. But this rise to the nation´s top echelon has its price and Balram could face his punishment any day …if his bribe money ever runs out!
In an interview, the Indian author who studied in the UK and Columbia University in New York and resided in Australia before return to reside in Mumbai (Bombay), India says he was include by Afro -American novelists James Baldwin and Ralph (The Invisible Man) Ellison.
But even though he may never have heard of or read him, Rubem Fonseca(1925-2020) seems to this reader Adiga´s Brazilian equivalent. The former police delegate turned author who grew up in Juiz de For a, Minas Gerais but resided in Rio de Janeiro writes about the blood, violence and dishonesty which rules another (forever) developing nation.
A New York Times critic suggested in a 2008 review of “White Tiger” that the novel is “polemical but an incomplete picture of a complex nations trying to modernize itself.”
The India this observer encountered almost fifty years ago was one of the Taj Mahal, cows being treated as a spiritual elite and Bollywood movies.
The “new “India, as portrayed in “The White Tiger” is one of high tech, innumerous shopping malls and high-rise luxurious condos and corruption which rules every aspect of Indian life.
Probably nothing has changed in India –despite everything seems to have “upgraded.”
But next to these influences from the USA, are the putrid slums, unfair caste system and diseased areas which seem to be accepted as part of India´s “destiny.”
As a musician with Brazilian musical groups this observer “returned “to Poona, India in 2021 to “perform” online for the Poona Music Society and our “Oboe in the Choro “is due to return 17 July 2022 again virtually to the same society.
My yoga class is also due to visit in 2022 this appealing and yet not so appealing ancient culture to visit again the Taj Mahal and visit other parts of this vast land.
Whether I will return personally to visit this fascinating but complex nation called India is a matter of will… and courage .