agog

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga, 2008

A young Bangalore entrepreneur, Balram, learns that the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao plans a trip to Bangalore to learn about the envied Indian talent for entrepreneurship. Balram feels that he is in a unique position to educate the Premier from his own experience. He writes a series of email communications which constitute this novel.

Rural India

Balram was born into extreme poverty into a large family in the Darkness, the great interior of India along the Ganges River. His father was a rickshaw man who dies young of TB. Balram isn’t even given a name by his family who call him Munna which means boy. His teacher names him Balram which means white tiger. His last name, Halwai, is his families caste which means sweets maker. He is forced to leave school after a few years to work in a tea shop and contribute to his family. Balram is ambitious and saves enough to pay someone to teach him to drive. He applies for a job with the local landlord and gets lucky when the younger son, Ashok, has just returned from America and the family now has two cars and needs a second driver.

Rickshaw Man

Ashok and his Christian wife Pinky are sent to Delhi to live where he can bribe politicians to allow the family to avoid paying taxes. Balram is now making 3000 rupees a month, a fortune for his family back home. Balram is driving an air conditioned Honda City and is the envy of everyone in his family. One night Ashok and Pinky get drunk and Pinky insists on driving home. She hits and kills a young girl and isn’t even aware it has happened. Ashok’s family moves quickly, offering a large sum to Balram’s family on condition Balram signs a confession that he was driving at the time and struck the child. He will be arrested and sent to prison. But no one comes forward to report the girl missing and the police are able to dismiss the whole situation, sparing Balram. Balram now hates Ashok and his family. One day Ashok is carrying an Italian case with 700,000 rupees as a bribe. Balram kills Ashok and steals the money. The wanted poster looks like half the poor men in India. He thinks of running the Mumbai but has heard that things are happening in Bangalore so he travels there instead.

Bangalore Traffic

He finds there is a big demand for businesses hiring cars for their employees and executives. At first he can’t break into the business, but then remembers how Ashok bribes the politicians and he does the same to get a few car companies licenses pulled. Balram is then able to start his own successful company.

Bangalore Limo

Along the way we learn about the fate of poor workers (servants) in India. The servants largely remain honest (they can be seen spending hours in line at the airline ticket offices to buy tickets costing many hundreds of dollars without stealing the money even though they themselves make only a few dollars a month). Balram explains that this is largely because the employers know the families back home and the family honor is at stake to say nothing of possible revenge by the employers against the family. Balram also introduces us to the world’s greatest democracy where politicians register all villagers once they turn 18 and vote for them the rest of their lives regardless of where the person now lives. Balram left his village as a boy but has never missed an election at home.

Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino, 1968

Cosmos

A short marvelously written novel follows the evolution of the universe from the big bang through the eyes of seemingly immortal Qfwfq who thinks in time frames of 200 million years. As a child he plays a form of marbles with Hydrogen atoms. We follow the formation of the galaxy and the changes in the world which will allow the formation of life. We see the first life crawling out of the sea to begin life on land. Throughout the eons, Qfwfq is always looking for a mate, usually without success, often with jealous rivals.

In The Kitchen, Monica Ali, 2009

The latest novel by the author of Brick Lane (and movie of the same name) has an English chef, Gabriel, as its main character. Gabriel grew up in a Northern mill town where his father introduced him to the latest technology and techniques in looms and weaving. The mills are now shuttered and one is being converted to a museum, his father has terminal cancer, and Gabriel, now a French trained chef, is about to launch his own London restaurants with his business and political partners. As a final preparation and as a test to satisfy his other investors, Gabriel is spending a year as executive chef at the Imperial Hotel, a Victorian era relic that has been refurbished everywhere but his kitchens. Gabriel has previously served in restaurants in Lyon and a two star restaurant in Paris. His new restaurant will be located near government offices and will serve classic French cuisine.

Thistle Royal Horeseguards Hotel London

Gabriel’s staff at the Imperial are all immigrant foreigners (Ali’s theme subject) of unknown legality. Some of his staff is highly educated (accountants, lawyers, one surgeon) just trying to survive in London. There is much detail about the day to day activities and human interactions in a large busy kitchen. One day Gabriel descends into the labyrinth under the kitchen (used for storage) and finds the body of Yuri, a Ukrainian worker naked and dead on the floor. The police conclude the death was accidental (Yuri slipped on the floor after a shower), that Yuri was secretly living in the labyrinth, and the case is closed.

Victorian Kitchen

Gabriel returns later to the labyrinth and this time encounters a Belorussian girl, Lena, who has been missing from work. She claims to be looking for money she has stashed in the wall. The money in the wall is gone. Gabriel suspects she has been living in the labyrinth as well and somehow invites her to stay at his place after he learn she is hiding from her pimp. This arrangement doesn’t go over too well with Gabriel’s long time girl friend Charlie, a 39 year old lounge singer, especially when Gabriel naively confesses he is sleeping with Lena. Gabriel started having repeating nightmares about events in the labyrinth and he loses sleep. Gabriel has become suspicious of the hotel’s maître d and now becomes obsessed with finding out what he is up to in an unused hotel room. Gabriel finally gets one of his workers to tell him what is going on which turns out to be human trafficking for the sex trade by convincing hotel chamber maids and kitchen workers that better employment can be found elsewhere. This means of “recruiting” sex workers is easier than smuggling girls across national borders since they are already in England. Gabriel descends, not so slowly, into madness and his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. After uncovering the maître d’s trafficking scheme, Gabriel now inadvertently stumbles into the maître d’s brother’s indentured servitude agriculture labor activity. The brother has purchased an old hotel shuttle bus to transport his labor to his vegetable farms and the mad Gabriel gets on the bus to see what other strange activity is surrounding the hotel.

We learn that Gabiel’s mom had descended into madness and Gabriel seems to be following. In the climax, Gabriel assaults his politician partner believing him to be the john of which Lena is terrified. Gabriel is dumped from the restaurant partnership and he loses his investment. Gabriel’s father dies, Gabriel is unemployed and his life savings are gone, to the restaurant and to Lena. Gabriel is living in his father’s house and ready to start rebuilding his life. Charlie may even give him another chance.

The madness comes off better in this novel than the themes of human trafficking and slavery that Ali is interested in exposing. Worth reading anyway.