The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi

In Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, we see in the first half of the novel an example of how gender affects hybridity in the character of Jamila, Karim’s oldest friend. Jamila’s father, Anwar, becomes suddenly nostalgic for the family values of his homeland and demands that Jamila have a traditional arranged marriage, despite her upbringing in a culture that does not popularly practice such. In addition to the already-existing struggle Jamila faces in maintaining both an Indian familial background and an English upbringing, she must also deal with the contrasting gender roles assigned to each culture. When her father starts to notice the training exercise she puts herself through, he seems to base his decision to wed her to an Indian man based on her apparent independence as a young woman and out of fear for her meeting boys during her workouts.  The contrast in values is heightened by the fact that in order to get Jamila to go through with the marriage, Anwar models his own personal hunger strike after that of the notable Indian figure Gandhi in order to get his family to act as he wishes.  In a brief conversation, Karim tries to explain to Anwar that “it’s old-fashioned, Uncle, out of date… No one does that kind of thing now” to which Anwar replies, “Our way is firm. She must do what I say or I will die. She will kill me”(60).  This conversation reflects the modern English perspective of young women through Karim's explanation, and the traditional Indian view of how young women should behave through Anwar's stubborn reply.  Jamila finds herself caught between the two, desiring the freedom of independence many women have in England while at the same time harboring pride for her roots (she had been known to stand up for her heritage when she felt it was being attacked, by either her beloved teacher or by a complete stranger).  For Jamila, then, going along with her family's traditional gender roles while also keeping up with her studies and strong-willed behavior is not so much a decision, as Karim thinks of it, but a necessity for the maintenance of her hybridity.

In an interview with The Guardian, Hanif Kureishi discusses how he used writing as his own personal means of creating his hybridity as the son of an Indian man growing up in England, as well as a young person growing up in the suburbs. Kureishi describes writing much in the same manner that his character Karim describes moving into the city--it is a way out of his tradition of the suburban life, and "you didn't have to go to work", or it was not a typical nine-to-five job. He claims that writing was also a way for him to stand out as a minority, and that it allowed himself to stand up for his own background and tell about immigrants in the Western world. Whereas in the novel Karim is lacking in a passion calling him in any particular direction, Kureishi seems convinced of his from an early age.  Kureishi shares many of his own experiences of growing up with Karim, including his parents (an Indian father and an English mother), an interest in music and partying, and his strong desire to leave the suburbs.  This is obviously an intentional change, perhaps intended to examine the exploration necessary by immigrants and children of immigrants in order to find where they fit with the new country.  It can serve as an example of how a hybrid identity for one may not work for another, much in the same way that no two characters in the novel settle on the same hybrid identity.

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

In Adiga's The White Tiger, Balram Halwai's character serves as the primary representation of success in a simultaneously globalized and developing nation that still holds on to its pre-colonial class system, despite claiming democracy.  It is important for the higher-status characters in the novel that this class system be maintained and exploited, as it is a large means of their success.  (While the traditional caste system at this time is technically illegal, it is still an important aspect of the culture, as can be seen when the family Balram drives for asks what caste he belongs to, as well as when Balram and his brothers are hired in tea shops because their caste name Halwai means "sweetmaker." It should be pointed out that only those of a lower class are asked their caste, and not anyone in the higher classes.) It is a similarly underhanded series of actions that allows Balram to break out of being associated with the caste system and achieve his upward mobility - very simply, Balram owes his success as an entrepreneur and businessman to the corrupt side of globalized capitalism.  Had he never killed Mr. Ashok or abandoned his family to the hands of his former masters, as the end of the novel Balram would still be a servant for Mr. Ashok and his family, making very low wages and living in poor conditions.  Adiga seems to be suggesting that in a corrupt power structure, only the corrupt can prosper.  One of the first hints of Balram's own corruption comes at the middle of the novel, when he lists the ways a driver can make a little more for himself by taking advantage of his master's trust in him.  In the third bullet of the list Balram asks "Is my master careless? If so, what are the ways in which I can benefit from his carelessness?" (141).  It is here that we see Balram begin to understand that in order to do will for himself, he must use others the way others have used him, as well as everyone he knows from the Darkness. On the next page, Balram explains: "The more I stole from him, the more I realized how much he had stolen from me" (142). From the beginning of his life, Balram wishes to do well for himself despite being from the Darkness, but only when he realizes the way he is being used (through the way he is using his master) does he become angry at his situation and methodically plan to take some sort of action against it.  This corruption is only seen as a tactic by Balram for survival in the society; even though he openly refers to it as murder, it is simply a fact of life in his world.  Indeed, everyone he sees who is successful has committed some sort of crime.

        In the White Tiger, the reader is shown a different side of underdeveloped and developing cities, and Balram as a narrator admits freely to the audience that this side is covered up by the corrupted leaders running the country.  This novel was received with mixed feelings in India, as it is claimed to be outlandish, cartoonish, and to portray India as a country that it is not.  One reader, Amitava Kumar,comes from the state of Bihar where Balram was born, and says, "As I continued, I found on nearly every page a witty observation or a fine phrase, and on nearly every page inevitably something that sounded false.  I stopped reading on page 35." Whereas this writer hails from the state represented in the first part of the novel, or "the Darkness" as Balram refers to it", Adiga comes from a middle class family and was born in a major city in the state of Tamil Nadu.  This difference causes problems from Kumar and it is obvious throughout the novel that Adiga is not wholly familiar with the place he is writing about. 

 Adiga has defended the difference between his own upbringing and Balram's, claiming that he saw this as a story worth telling whether or not he had a native insider's perspective. In an interview with The Guardian, he says, "the challenge of a novelist is to write about people who aren't anything like me" and later in the interview states that "This is the reality for a lot of Indian people and it's important that it gets written about, rather than just hearing about the 5% of people in my country who are doing well."  Much in the same way Slumdog Millionaire was attacked and defended by its director, The White Tiger is Adiga's attempt to tell a story that is often willfully overlooked by Indian society, and not one the public particularly wants to hear.  However, in trying to show his readers another side of India's culture, he may have actually made the matter more confusing--should we believe the nuances of Balram's life, behavior, and change in character, or should we question these based on Adiga's lack of personal experience? Our mental representations of India might shift, upon reading this book, from an image like the one at the top to an image more like the one at the bottom--we may begin to see India as a wholly corrupt place instead of one that is wholly lacking in corruption, in which case Adiga's aim may become futile.  By writing The White Tiger, Adiga is trying to expand our current understanding of his society, but may in fact be flattening it by choosing to show only the corrupt as the powerful and successful. 

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy explores the issue of ambiguous classification through many routes, one of which being the character of Ammu.  Ammu herself is not incorrectly categorized, but she is an example of a character in the novel who denies classification all together; she is willing and capable of transcending the established boundaries of her culture in Ayemenem. She most obviously expresses her indifference towards classification when she approaches Velutha, an Untouchable, and consummates their relationship.  She, unlike her Touchable family of Syrian Christians, is unconcerned with the division created by the caste system and does as she pleases.  But this indifference, or independence, of hers is shown much earlier in the text at a couple different moments.  For example, it is explained that Estha and Rahel temporarily had no surname because Ammu was still unsure about which name she wanted to claim: "She said that choosing between her husband’s name and her father’s name didn’t give a woman much choice” (35).  This lack of classification in turn creates a lack of identity for her and her children, though it is not identity to a family or category that she is taking into consideration, but her independence as an individual.  After she offers a sarcastic response in the company of Margaret Kochamma, it is explained that Ammu “walked away to her room, her shoulders shining.  Leaving everybody to wonder where she had learned her effrontery from” (148).   This passage goes on to explain that “Ammu had not had the kind of education, nor read the sorts of books, nor met the sorts of people, that might have influenced her to think the way she did” (146).   This passage suggests that Ammu belongs to a different sort of mindset than those around her, though nobody in the novel is quite sure from where she inherited it.  The novel supply reason for Ammu’s breaking out of her assumed classification, but the fact that she does plays with the novel’s greater concepts of illustrating how breaking people into categories can be detrimental to individual lives (Ammu, Estha, Rahel, Velutha) as well as whole communities.

The setting of The God of Small Things is in Ayemenem, Kerala, India when Rahel and Esta are adults and through flashbacks to when they are children; the Ayemenem we see when Rahel and Estha are children is very different from the Ayemenem we see in the flashbacks when they are children.  In the past, the town seems to be active, and the family seems to belong to a community, whether it is in conflict with that community or not. Furthermore, at this point in time there is much conflict within the town between classes/castes, as well as with groups that wish to alleviate the effects of the caste system (such as the growing Communist party).  In the present, however, when Rahel returns to Ayemenem she finds abandoned or dilapidated houses, a river run dry, a silent Estha, and the only sign of growth or development in a five-star hotel chain that has built a wall around itself to keep out the rest of the city. The only one that seems to remain unchanged is Baby Kochamma, though she allows the family house to fall apart around her.  For Rahel, the whole town stirs up memories like dust and seems forever altered by time the same way her family has been. The city of Ayemenem, then, reflects the state of life after a past filled with conflict--it is relieved of its conflict, but also emptied and almost lifeless.
         Arundhati Roy bases her story around a the state of India in which she spent her childhood; in an interview with The Progressive, Roy discussed her life growing up in Kerala without the traditional "lenses" of family roles, gender roles, religious identities, or caste identities that many in the state find themselves influenced by.  From her interview, she seems to be a mixture of Ammu, Rahel, and a bit of Chacko in her behavior and political activism--she tells David Barsamian, "I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever" , and continues with "The problem is that we [Roy and her mother] are both women who are unconventional in their terms" (Progressive).  These descriptions bring to mind both Ammu and Chacko, who live unconventionally in Kerala, taking action in what they believe to be important issues (shedding light on the injustice of the caste system, for example, is an issue both Chacko and Roy are passionate about). Unlike Adiga's The White Tiger and the film Slumdog Millionaire, The God of Small Things contains autobiographical elements about the setting, the culture, and the larger societies of Kerala and India that Ayemenem belongs to; it should be noted that this book was much less contested in India than either of the two listed above. Ayemenem, then, both as a town and a fictional setting proves to be subtly central to the novel and ends up accounting for how both Ammu and the author behave against tradition.

Slumdog Millionaire

   

   
The film Slumdog Millionaire places its story of the common rags-to-riches frame of many fairy tales in the postcolonial global city of Mumbai. This story is told through the lens of persons born and raised in the poorest areas of Mumbai who have been most affected by the global economic and political practices set in motion by Western colonialism and imperialism. In many traditional folklores, the rags-to-riches fairy tale is extended in a brothers tale, in which two (or more) brothers strive for success, riches, and/or acceptance, but only one (usually the youngest) comes out on top.  In Slumdog Millionaire, Jamal is the successful brother because he does, in a sense, “buy into” the system set in place by the globalized, postcolonial power structure.  While the older brother, Salim, chooses to stick with gangs (those working outside the globalized system) for his survival, Jamal works in a call center (a standard example of a globalized service) and ends up going on a game show.  Not only does he participate on a game show that is, in origin, British, but he does very well on the show by answering structured questions, several of which focus on Western or global topics. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Jamal knows these answers from living in the East.  He doesn’t need to have traveled outside India to know who is on the American one hundred dollar bill, or have been educated in a formal system to recognize Indian poetry, but simply having grown up at even the very lowest tier of postcolonial India has prepared him to know most of the answers.  The film, then, places this narrative within the post-colonial context of a global city, and also seems to suggest that through this system comes success—whether that suggestion is made out of observation or critique.

In a film blog posted on the Guardian UK, Nirpal Dhaliwal discusses the reception of Slumdog Millionaire in India and argues with critics that the film is not a poor representation of India as a stereotypical developing city, but that it depicts India with a sort of warm truth that is very much ignored in mainstream Bollywood films. Dhaliwal claims, "Poor Indians, like those in Slumdog, do not constitute India's "murky underbelly" as Bachchan moronically describes them. They, in fact, are the nation. Over 80% of Indians live on less than $2.50 (£1.70) a day; 40% on less than $1.25. A third of the world's poorest people are Indian, as are 40% of all malnourished children. In Mumbai alone, 2.6 million children live on the street or in slums, and 400,000 work in prostitution. But these people are absent from mainstream Bollywood cinema."  (The CIA World Factbook gives some similar numbers on the population, though some of Dhaliwal's numbers are unaccounted for.) Dhaliwal has titled his post "Slumdog Millionaire Could Have Only Been Made by a Westerner" not because he feels an outsider has a skewed perception of the nation, but because he thinks only an outsider would have the nerve to represent the struggling, still developing side of India that continues to live in poverty and outside the mainstream Indian media.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who objected to the film's representations of the poor in India. While some focused on the use of the derogatory name "dog" in the title, others were upset that the film continued to show to the world the same old poor, crime-filled India that it has always seen. These critics believe when the Western world watches the film they will see India as the villain standing in the way of the two young lovers; they claim the film does not accurately portray India because it focuses only on the slum Dharavi, but not on the middle class or upper class societies in India.  While these critics have a point about the representation of India, one could argue that the point of the film is not to cast a representation of India as a whole nation (though it should be careful, as this is what it does for many Western viewers with no attachment to India), but to show the struggle of poverty in the country. The claims from the critics of the film seem to back up Dhaliwal's claim that many Indians would rather ignore the problems of the slums for  As Dhaliwal claims, the people living in Indian slums are all but absent in the mainstream Bollywood culture, and Slumdog Millionaire attempts to show a success story for this walk of life.  If, instead of the slums of Mumbai, this film were set in a middle class suburb this story would be even remotely the same, as their history of being born in a slum impacts every part of Jamal, Salim, and Latika's lives.