Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga is an Indian author and journalist. He is the author of The White Tiger, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2008. Aravind was born in Madras, currently known as Chennai, in 1974. He was raised in Mangalore, attended Canara High School, and later joined St. Aloysius College, Mangalore. After moving to Sydney with his family, he joined James Ruse Agricultural High School and later joined Columbia College of Columbia University, where he majored in English literature. 

Aravind began his professional career as a financial journalist and interned with Financial Times. Some of his articles published in Money and the Financial Times covered the stock market and investment. Aravind also worked as a Times correspondent and interviewed former US president Donald Trump. He was also hired by Time, where he worked as a South Asia correspondent for three years before becoming a freelancer and writer for The White Tiger during this Time. Aravind is a resident of Mumbai, India. His debut novel, The White Tiger, was adapted into a movie by Netflix. He is the 4th Indian-born author to win the Booker Prize.

Although published in 2008, Between Assassinations was written before his first book, The White Tiger. The book’s title is reminiscent of a time frame between the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and her son’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991. Indira Gandhi was a prime minister when she was killed, and her son Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister in 1984 until his defeat in the general election of 1989. This collection of short stories reveals the beauty of the rural coastal south of India where it is set and gives us a glimpse of the injustices, pathos, and ironies of Indian life. The book initially had 16000 print copies which is something on the higher side for fiction in India.

The stories are set in the fictitious Indian town of Kittur, located in the state of Karnataka in the country’s southwestern region. It was initially based on Adiga’s birthplace of Mangalore, but modifications were made to accommodate more diverse narratives and characters. The stories focus on India’s various divisions, castes, and religions. A new cast of protagonists is introduced in each story, but specific locations and names appear throughout multiple stories. 

Even though it was released after The White Tiger, Between the Assassinations had likely begun and completed before The White Tiger. Both Between the Assassinations and The White Tiger feature characters from both books, including a servant who is tempted to steal his master’s Money, a villager transported to the city, Nepali guards, and a rich guy who causes a hit-and-run accident that dishonest police officers then hush up. 

The novel features an extensive cast of characters. You come across individuals from all spheres of life. Everyone is represented on this canvas, including all religions, castes, and social classes. Although the stories are political, they are not polemical. Adiga intends to demonstrate the ills of severe poverty, social hierarchies, religious prejudice, and corruption. His outstanding prose and ability to create realistic and intricate characters with only a few flicks of the pen become evident, and this will have you hooked on the story right from the first page to the last. 

Adiga achieves an improved balance, depicting the vast disparities and imbalances in Indian society while enabling his characters to experience at least some of the joys of life. In this one, his characters are brutalized in every way conceivable. Employers beat their employees, women are treated as servants, and children are compelled to beg on street corners. There are lepers and people of all types of impairments pleading with a society that is happy to look the other way, sometimes due to terrible working conditions. 

Some lonely people lead lives deprived of love and happiness. There are alcoholics, drug addicts, men with sex-related illnesses, and people digging through trash cans for bites of food to survive another hellish day. There are both parents and children who lack parental affection. Additionally, there is extremism, terrorism, and mortality.
Between The Assassinations is an exceptional accomplishment. Through a collection of connected stories, the author has crafted a well-crafted tale with solid philosophical strands. This level of sophistication and enjoyment in writing is rare, given that sarcastic humor is always on the surface.

The White Tiger is the story of Balram Halwai. Balram Halwai is a multifaceted soul. He is a servant and a philosopher, a businessperson, and a killer. Throughout seven consecutive nights, Balram tells us, by the dim illumination of a chandelier, a horrible and fascinating tale of how he became successful with only his brains to help him.
Born in the impoverished streets of India, Balram’s breakthrough comes when he is employed as a chauffeur for his village’s richest man, two house Pomeranians, and the rich man’s son. He reveals a new world he’s never seen before from behind the wheel. While his friends browse through the pages of Murder Weekly, drink liquor and fight over girls, Balram watches as his boss bribes foreign ministers for tax breaks, among other things. He learns how to deal with corrupt mechanics, siphon gas, refill, and resell Johnnie Walker Black label drinks through such encounters. Surprisingly he also finds a way out of the Coop in a way that no one else inside it can comprehend.
The White Tiger is a modern fiction story about ambition in a chaotic, corrupt Indian culture where an unbending social class controls which options are available. It depicts India in its most primitive form, and its polarized social structure demonstrates how ambition, corruption, and life’s values are so unique. 

As India transforms from a developing nation to a global leader in technological and scientific output, it struggles to modernize in terms of equal opportunities and the standard of life for most of its citizens. According to an intriguing statistic, India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation by 2025.

Transformations in India’s technology, population, and equality are on the verge of a significant societal conflict. A collision in which heartless and immoral exploitation and suffering incubate and grow.