The Village

Aravind Adiga’s Between The Assassinations explores an unknown part of rural India and strikes a chord with his readers

By Jacob Thomas

Published: Fri 5 Feb 2010, 9:30 PM

Last updated: Thu 11 Jul 2024, 2:28 PM

When you sit down to write a story, you have to be at one with the characters that you are creating, and tell the story in a way no one would have ever attempted. It is, of late, a literary fashion among Indian writers in English to tell stories of certain towns and villages which, till the other day, lay hidden for many reasons. The veil is lifted when brilliant writers delve into the psyche of the those little-known towns and villages. Some of these Indian writers are being recognised by the Western world. One such writer is Aravind Adiga who won the Man Booker Prize for his book The White Tiger in 2008.

Arundhati Roy set the trend among modern writers, when she wrote about Ayemanam in The God of Small Things — a town in Kottayam district, in the state of Kerala. Roy’s Ayemanan was soon recognised by Western publishers, and this fetched her the Booker Prize in 1997. In the book, Roy takes the reader into the heart of Ayemanam and talks about communism, the caste sytem that prevails in Kerala, and the life of Syrian Christians. Among the earlier generation of writers, one who still stands apart is R K Narayan and his ubiquitous Malgudi Days. Malgudi is a fictional town in the state of Karnataka and the lead character is Swami, or Swaminathan, who skips school and explores Malgudi with his friends.

Between the Assassinations, Adiga’s second work after The White Tiger, is a collection of inter-linked short stories. Journalist-turned writer Aravind Adiga tells the story of Kittur — a town in India’s south-western coast, between Goa and Calicut. Kittur is blessed with rich soil and scenic beauty and a mix of characters — each of them unique in their own ways. The residents speak a variey of languages — Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu, and even English. But these characters do not have the innocence of the young Swaminathan, and Kittur can never become Malgudi.

The town is a mix of people with bright minds and poor morals. Of its 193,432 residents, only 89 declare themselves to be without religion or caste. Caste system and religious intolerance prevail here and Adiga has successfully put to paper the pathos and travails of Kittur. The reader is introduced to upper-class bankers, fundamentalists, capitalists, marxists, rickshaw pullers, Jesuit priests and journalists in Kittur. Adiga is an amazing story teller and takes the reader directly to Kittur. Some of the popular landmarks of Kittur are: the railways station, marketplace, the only cinema hall, Lighthouse Hill, St Alfonso’s Boys’ High School, and finally an ageing Cathedral. The events in the book take place between 1984 and 1991 — between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi — both who served as Indian Prime Ministers.

If you have plans to visit Kittur, Between The Assassinations is more like a tourist guide, the only difference is that the maps are missing, and instead, the writer gives a literary description of the town. The book opens with a description of the railway station. In Adiga’s words, “The station is dim, dirty, and littered with discarded lunch bags into which stray dogs poke their noses; in the evening, the rats emerge.” This is the case with most Indian railway stations, and Kittur is in many respects, the story of any other Indian city.

We are first introduced to Ziauddin who works at the Ideal Store — a shady tea and samosa shop. His boss is Ramanna Shetty who owns Ideal. Then, there is Ramakrishna ‘Xerox’, who has been arrested 21 times for selling illegally photocopied books to students; Shankara, the mixed-caste Brahmin-Hoyka student, who sets off a bomb in a Jesuit school; Abbasi, the idealistic shirt factory owner; Mr D’Mello, an assistant headmaster with “an excessive penchant for old-fashioned violence”; Ratnakara Shetty, the fake sexologist, who sets out to find a cure for a young boy with a venereal disease; the Raos, a childless couple who seek refuge within their own circle of “intimates”; Keshava, the village boy who aspires to become a bus conductor; Gururaj Kamath, the newspaper columnist who incessantly “looks for the truth”; Chenayya, the cycle-cart puller who “could not respect a man in whom there was no rebellion”; Soumya and Raju, the beggar children on a mission to buy smack for their drug-addict father; Jayamma, the spinster who seeks comfort in DDT fumes; George D’Souza, a “bitter man” struggling to establish “the proper radius between mistress and servant”; and Murali, the communist who writes short stories.

Adiga is deeply concerned with the social injustice that prevails in Kittur, the caste system and the idiocyncracies of every-day life in the town. Some common character traits link Adiga’s characters with each other. Ziauddin, who works at the tea-shop for a rude boss is very much like Ramakrishan or ‘Xerox,’ who struggles to make a living, and their frustration is obvious. ‘Xerox’ gets arrested for illegally photocopying textbooks and after his release, goes back to his old profession. He is the older version of Soumya and Raju, the beggar children on a mission to buy smack for their drug-addict father. Shankara, the Brahmin-Hoyka student, full of angst, sets off a bomb in his school, and derives pleasure from it, only because he has been discriminated on the basis of his caste. Gururaj, a journalist, who is always on the look out for the truth, can be identified with Murali, who works as a columnist. Moral complexities give life to Adiga’s characters and Between The Assassinations is the story of India re-told in a lucid manner.

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