The Last Honest Man
After a collection of short stories, Between the Assassinations, Adiga comes back to the novel form, setting Last Man in Tower in Mumbai, where real estate can be the fast track to riches. 
In Last Man in Tower, India has not changed much in the three years following Adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger, which garnered him the Booker Prize. The story takes place in the buildings (known as “towers”) of the Vishram Cooperative Society. Set in the suburb of Vakola, the residential complex becomes a target for developers as the area gentrifies and appreciates in value.
When Masterji resists the overture of the developers, he dies under mysterious circumstances. The cover-up by the perpetrators and their attempts to label his death as a suicide makes the reader question if the moral compass of modern Mumbai is completely broken, though one must admit that there is plenty of cinematic precedence for that kind of behavior.
Adiga does not leave us with this bleak conclusion. There is at least one other man who refuses to barter his freedom to choose where he wants to live. Adiga’s portrayal of his characters shows them as flawed but not without humanity. Ajwani, the broker, feels guilty even though he does not participate in the murder of Masterji. The Puris are good citizens who accept the deal because they have an 18-year-old son with Down Syndrome, and need the money for his medical care. Money corrupts these ordinary people with normal lives and aspirations even as they experience feelings of guilt and sorrow over the death of the last honest man in their midst.
Unlike the cynicism of White Tiger, here Adiga seems to suggest that one individual can make a difference, even if it is only in the hearts and minds of the people he leaves behind.
Lakshmi Mani writes on American and Indian-American literature, and is a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow.
Stay Connected
Comments
Lakshmi, thanks for doing your writing...with the kind of old fashioned sensitivity and modern cosmopolitan thinking that are rare.
I was going to ask Bhrati Mukherji why she did not write about these expats, who might have moved out initially for job, money and wealth to later return for 'more money, wealth, comfort and privilege', and what exactly do they change in their "gated communities".
Many of these morons have never stepped outside New York, New Jersey, Silicon Valley...and then got their passports (swearing allegiance to anything that fed their ego, pocket books and convenience, forgetting how Gandhi fought for their third rate backsides to remain uncolonized), now go back to re-colonize their land (for who...some BIA and Hexagon)?
I'd like Ms Mukherji to write about these people!
One poor driver said to me, "Madam, they never stayed to fight for us, do anything for us or even learn about us. Then when they make their money, or when somebody is kicking them there, they come here to throw their weight around. Escaping is all they do! You understand your community beyond your upper class life. These people went from nothing and now talk to us as if they returned from Buckingham palace".
I'd love to see Ms.Mukerji write about this. And why not these writers step outside California and visit "their" country beyond California?
Morons...go from one country to another: collecting real estate, collecting cooking, caring or pretty wives, collecting passports...and then throwing it around in poor countries.
Where is the pride of these countries? Even an average Indian in India has no pride. These morons are more interested in telling me how many green cards, citizenships they collected, and how much their munna loves Sesame street. They read their history primarily through people living thousands of miles alway (without diversity), or they only want compliments or they only criticize women like me.
Go for it Lakshmi! I want these inside colonizers, who'd happily exploit their own people, and will work for BIA or Hexagon to be thrust out!
One can migrate anywhere in the world...and do so for any number of reasons. But if you do it for shallow reasons...admit it. And if your priorities are to your ego, wealth and somebody else with more power than admit it.
Next time I walk around throw some rose petals too...because I knew these guys inside out long ago...Short of eliminating me they tried everything else. And their loyal women are no different. I'd like that Indian female doctor in Bangalore who gave untested pills to Indian girls because of her greedy contract with a pharmaceutical company be sent to prison for life.
Some women in India, like anywhere else, can be evil too. Patriarchy, classism and greed also affects them. Many will over feed their munnas, while poisoning or mistreating others' children.
I am coming after all of you morons!
Would not people in Iraq ask, "How come you protest only when you cannot feed your SUV, pay your mortgage (for the second house) and get the same bailout as the rich in your community? Are you looking for ultimate reform and justice...or a mere bailout? If you got your car, fuel, house and money...would you go to war again?"
My last critique on real estate developers in India, living behind gated communities, elicited an interesting reponse. Already?
Let me say this to guys who are so insecure that they think because I disagree with classism and sexism in India that somehow I am in agreement with Saudi Arabia, or the US domestic policy or foreign policy, that they are being silly, ridiculous and wrong!
It is like morons who assume that if I am critical of capitalism then I must be in love with communism. Are they that dumb?
I do admire Marx's analysis on power, control over reproduction and production that elites practice, and that we see happening in the US South now.
It should not have to be "we work to survive and then we pursue our passions and avocations to 'live'." On the other hand should we work for those who make bombs and wars? Should we say, "Its a job, its an income and its good money, therefore its okay"? Should some cultures only work for others all the time? Inside and outside their perpetually colonized space?
The very core of de-colonization was "distribution of land"...so those who did not have any (hence the landless and the homeless), and those who merely worked or slaved on it, now received the land they could call their own. They built a home on their land, they tilled it and they controlled it.
Now there is new kind of attack on the homeless and the indigent. Look at the US. Many minority and immigrant Americans live like cockaroaches, one on top of each other, fighting over fifty cents or fifty dollars, in the cities and the coastal states, but are too afraid, weak, confused or unsupported to go to Idaho, Montana, Minnesotra, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Utah...so many places where there'd be less than 4% or 2% of them. It is their land...should they not be able to own some? But who owns it?
Subsidized farming, corporatized welfare and bailout...rich guys who buy 200 or 2000 acres of land and then put signs that say no trespassing. It goes on in the United States right under our noses.
My husband and I, with two PhDs, own nothing. We are officially homeless. If fascism comes to America, it probably will, we'd be driven out like Idi Amin or Hitler did to his minorities.
I said to Mark, "If they can do this to a White boy who is hard working, sacrificing and played by the rules...imagine what they'd do to a loud mouthed Asian woman like me...who does not even wear sexy red on TV?"
Imagine that!
Step outside California, go visit the rest of America and do some critique...
Post a comment