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With Aravind Adiga just having won the Booker, I thought Id pull out a short emailinterview I did with him around the time his book launched. Scroll down to read it.

As I indicated in this post, I enjoyed the book. Wont get into the debate about

whether or not it deserved one of the biggest literary prizes in the world, partlybecause such debates inevitably lead to some very tunnel-visioned and elitistdefinitions of Good Literature/High Literature, and that sort of thing bores me.Also, I cant bring myself to take competitive prizes seriously as arbiters ofanything. Given that the judging procedures are necessarily based on acombination of many whimsical factors (including, of course, politics, perceivedtopicality and the vastly differing tastes and perspectives of different jurymembers), you really cant analyse them beyond a point.

Looking at The White Tigeron its own terms, independently of the Bookerbaggage, the novels achievement in my view was that it used accessible, fast-paced fiction to reflect on the many Indias and the many types of aspirations and

frustrations they represent. I also thought it was more ironical and self-aware thanits been given credit for. Anyway, heres the Q&A with Adiga:

Did you consciously set out to write about an aspect of India that has beenglossed over in the press (with the India Rising narratives, etc)? How did you fixon a character like Balram as your narrator?

Lots of people ask me this, and some assume this is so obvious they don't even askme, but the answer is no. There was no conscious attempt to write a counter-narrative to India Shining. I can't imagine any good novel would come of such apolemical enterprise.

I returned to India in 2003 after many years abroad, and rediscovered India orrather discovered India, since I had grown up in the south, in a prosperous part ofa prosperous state (the coastal belt of Karnataka), and was now seeing Delhi andthe Gangetic north for the first time. The fact about India that struck me mostforcefully was this that despite there being such an appalling (and growing) gulfbetween the rich and the poor, and the fact that the poor came into regular,close, and sometimes intimate contact with the rich, there was so little crime inIndia. Think of South Africa, or south America, or even the poorer parts of anAmerican city there is such a link between economic deprivation and socialunrest. But why not in India?

Middle-class Indians think there is a lot of crime, but I would argue that this is notreally true. If a housemaid steals a thousand rupees, it makes the papers. Visitorsfrom South Africa are always amazed by the low levels of crime here. What keepsmillions of poor Indians working in servile positions, and routinely exposed totemptation, so honest? How stable is such a system? Are there signs that it iscreaking? And what would be the nature of a man, a servant, who would defy thesystem? These are the questions with which The White Tigerbegan and which are,I feel, at its heart. The exploration of these issues leads into the question of where

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the servants in Delhi come from from the villages, from Bihar and UP and howthey live, how they are raised, and how they think.

Why the unusual framework of having Balram address letters to the ChinesePremier?

First, there is a real, historical hook to the narrative structure. Wen Jiabao didvisit India in 2005 and I was listening to radio late at night when the news came onthat he was going to visit Bangalore. It was said that he wanted to see andunderstand Bangalore's entrepreneurs.

Secondly, Indians, more than other people I know, understand themselves incomparison to other nations. The "other" used to be the west until recently. Now itis China, which is depicted as a kind of more efficient, evil, and successful versionof India. Its natural that Balram, who is very influenced by things around him hecalls himself a "sponge" would have come to form certain ideas about China aswell. He has a somewhat exaggerated conception of his importance he loves

listening to the radio talk about Castro or the American president and it flattershis sense of importance to talk to the big man of China.

I should point out that these are not letters that he is writing he is talking outaloud, as he lies down in his room and stares at the chandelier. He is just talkingaloud.

There's a perception that narratives about the "other India" aren't fashionablethese days. Do you think that perception is inaccurate?

I can't really comment on this I live in a corner of Mumbai, and have no sense of

the publishing world in general.

Its a dark book, especially in the compromises Balram has to make in order tocross over to the "privileged" side. Is this a commentary on the direction inwhich the country is moving?

Actually, some reviewers feel that Balram's drive and energy suggest great thingsfor India's future. New York magazine said something like, if Balram is India'sfuture, then India is going to kick America's ass.

Look it's like this: in England, The White Tigeris seen by many as a pessimisticbook on India's future, and in the United States it's seen as a very optimistic book

on India's future. It depends on whether you believe that individuals succeedbecause of the existing political structures of the country or in spite of them andthe American view is probably the latter. I'm asking merely that people here beopen to the idea that many abroad see this book as a hugely optimistic book on thefuture of the country.

P.S. NDTV asked me for quotes about the Booker win yesterday specifically about

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the significance of a first-time writers novel beating the veteran AmitavGhoshs Sea of Poppies. Heres my rambling, circular email response:Personally I don't take competitive prizes like the Booker seriously analysing theirdecisions is basically a fun exercise, nothing more. About the two books: I enjoyedthem both a lot, on different levels, but I would find it hard to compare or rankthem. The Ghosh is very much the work of an experienced, scholarly writer whocombines fiction with indepth historical research, whereas the Adiga is a muchlighter, faster-paced read with some of the inevitable awkwardness youd expectfrom a first-time writer but also with insights into the class divide in modern India.

Topicality/fashionability probably has something to do with the Bookercommittees decision: India is very much in the news these days for all sorts ofreasons, and The White Tiger provides a worm's-eye perspective of Indian societythat runs counter to the "India Shining" narrative. A modern-India novel of this sortwould probably be seen as more relevant than a historical (Sea of Poppies) set inthe 19th century.

The other thing is that The White Tiger(which has a driver murdering his richemployer) acquired a higher profile when, shortly after its publication, the real-life Arushi Talwar murder case became a major talking point around the country. Acouple of foreign publications did feature stories about discontentment among theIndian lower-class and mentioned The White Tigerin this context. That wouldcertainly have aided the topicality perception and made the book seem prescientin some way.

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