- Satyawan Sudhakar Rao Hanegave,
Abstract
This paper attempts to comprehend the concept of globalization and its
influence over the English literature with special reference to Aravind Adiga’s
novel ‘The Last Man in Tower’. The socio
economic activity of an individual shapes his values, culture and literature.
Globalisation has affected the social as well as cultural institutions widely.
Mumbai being a commercial and financial hub has emerged as place of varied
opportunities and migration has resulted into congestion of space and the
burden over the basic amenities. To have a pucca house in Mumbai is a distant
dream of middle class because of the corrupt politicians with short sight and
developers and their intimate relations. The inhabitants of Tower A represents
the middle class psyche of Mumbai trying to share the rocketed wealth on
account of globalisation, the retired school teacher a stubborn hero-anti hero and
the greedy developer as villain a symbol of contemporary developers of modern
Mumbai.
The era of globalization is generally viewed by world
economists and social scientists to have emerged after 1989, with the fall of
the Berlin Wall (and, subsequently, in 1991, the Soviet Union) and the rise, in
the 1990s, of the United States as lone remaining superpower. The process of
globalization in India started with the introduction of New Economic Policy in
1991 after pursuing the import substitution for nearly 40 years. The
globalistion and liberalization and privatization are interconnected. Thus, it is typically defined as a period in which
the sovereignty of nation states has declined, and modes of exchange – of
money, technology, products, and people – operate with increasing ease and
speed across national boundaries, producing configurations of power that exceed
the boundaries of the nation state. There are divergent opinions about whether
this situation constitutes global hegemony (a homogenized monoculture dominated
by the US military, the mass media and the US-led IMF and World Bank), which is
the position that Jameson himself, even in his recent writings, upholds, or
whether it opens the possibility, with the radically increased speed of
information flow, for new kinds of cultural production and political resistance
– the optimistic (if sometimes excessively idealistic-seeming) position of such
theorists as Michael Hardt and Tony Negri. Of course, it is not necessary to
choose between these extremes in order to recognize the common ground they
share: the sheer fact of globalization and its impact, potential and already
realized, on all spheres of life.
The socio economic activity of individual decides the outcome of literature
and culture. Therefore, the globalization as an economic activity has not
remained detached with other cultural canons of the society. In fact, deep
rooted influence of globalization is inseparable in modern English writings.
Though, the attachment of globalization and literature is complex matter of
study and research. As Paul Jay claims, “our awareness of the complex ways in
which English and American identities have been constructed historically
through migration, displacement, colonialism, exile, gender relations, and
cultural hybridity has radically restructured our sense of what Paul Gilroy has
dubbed the “roots/routes” of these identities. With this awareness it has
become increasingly difficult to study British or American literature without situating
it, and the culture(s) from which it emerged, in transnational histories linked
to globalization.” After explorations on the core of this connection and as far
as the objectives of the present study are concerned here three correlative
levels of attachment or association become further highlighted. At one
conceptual level, this relationship mainly engages with literary theory,
discipline and criticism. The second level could be called one of tools or
mediums with certain key terms. The Media and specially its new forms is one of
the key terms here. Indeed, modern technologies such as satellite
communications and World Wide Web have made drastic changes in dissemination of
various forms of literature and quite relevantly information explosion has played
a central role in distribution of social and cultural packages all around the
globe. Also we may have a short look here at the globalization of publishing
and literary institutions. The third level in itself includes broad disciplines
and methods through which literary studies has evoked globalization. This is
partly about the reflection of different themes of globalization in literature,
and to another degree about the way the literary texts and the interpretation
thereof have been recruited to support or elucidate conceptual positions taken
by political and social or cultural theorists about globalization.
Mumbai has evolved from being a fishing hamlet to a colonial node,
subsequently to being the cradle of textile civilisation, and in contemporary
times has become the hub of India's commerce and finance. The most widely held
popular perception about Mumbai is that of a city of opportunity for people
from across South Asia, and now even beyond. These opportunities have of course
been distributed unevenly, with Mumbai's rich and poor co-existing, and not
always peacefully, with fundamentally differing entitlements to basic services
– water and sanitation, health care and nutrition. In some of its large slums –
the suppliers of cheap labour – children from poorer homes die because these
slums exhibit malnutrition, morbidity and mortality levels closer to those
current in the states of Bihar or Orissa. About 60 per cent of Mumbai's
population lives in such slum areas, occupying a mere 8 per cent of land, and
their lives are characterized by degraded housing, poor hygiene, congestion,
inadequate civic services and yet expanding peripheries of its slumming
suburbs. In 2005, Suketa Mehta wrote an extraordinary expose of Mumbai, Maximum
City, in which he castigated the greed of the middle class and their disregard
for the breakdown of civil order. He wrote of the slums, the racial divisions,
the corruption, the gangsters, threats, bribes, extortion - that's how you get
things done. And how do you keep your head above the writhing vortex? Money. The
relentless forces of capitalism engulf a poisoned 21st century India in this
troubling follow-up to the Booker-winning White Tiger to the Last man in Tower.
In his Booker-winning first novel, The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga began
his fictional exploration of the less attractive face of modern India: a
densely populated urban society in transit, in motion, and on the make. An
India where temples arrange express-entry lines for paying customers, and money
trickles from the glassed shards of the finance centres into the slums
"like butter on a hotplate… enriching some and scorching others". The
eponymous White Tiger, Balram Halwai, was at home here. Poor but ambitious,
Halwai saw himself as an entrepreneur, a man made "from half-baked
clay". He meant that his potential wasn't yet fulfilled, but the phrase
also carried baggage that Halwai might not have cared to haul, with its echo of
Richard III's complaint about being born "scarce half made up". India
today, especially in its great cities, notably Mumbai, the setting of Adiga's
novel, is in a comparable position, a comparable state of development.
"Development" is, in one word, his subject. Mumbai is being
transformed; it is a city where great fortunes are being made, especially in
the construction industry, a city where the prospect of sudden and previously
unimaginable riches breaks social bonds and corrupts relationships.
‘Last Man in Tower’ is a state of the nation novel or more accurately a
state of Mumbai novel. The novel of 421 pages published by Harper Collins
Publisher, New Delhi begins with the dedication to the fellow commuters on the
Santacruz Churchgate line and a map of Mumbai showing the location of Vakola a
western suburban region of Mumbai and the descriptions of the flat owners’ of
Vishram Co-operative Housing Society Limited. The title of society as ‘vishram’
contradicts to its meaning on translation as ‘rest’ by leading the entire
society in restlessness in the hope of remaining ‘in rest’ for the rest of lives.
The immoral and corrupt builders that operates in Mumbai today is represented
through a tale of a struggle by Dhiren
Shaha a wealthy developer approaching the members of society with Rs. 1.52
crore to acquire a land occupied by three towers of the lower-middle-class,
crumbling Vishram Co-operative Housing Society for flashy redevelopment and it lies
a colourful and ambitious story of the so called progressive, modern India
struggling to acquire the share of poisoned as much by the rocketing wealth all
around to change the standards and habits of the citizens of Mumbai with a
desire of a standard of life in terms of the globalised India is attained. The
sum offered by the developer Shah is so high that the middle class could never
have acquired the total in their life time earnings. It’s such a simple plot,
yet one redolent of Adiga’s concerns and Shah seems symbolic the new India, a
callous, unstintingly ambitious man who apparently arrived in ‘bare foot’ from
the north of Gujarat with ten rupees in his pocket. Adiga succeeds in
portraying the acute problem of these ambitious builders having self looks who
have poisoned the distant dreams of middle class to have a pucca house in
Mumbai. The Shah’s success as developer on the backdrop of his lungs with swamp
of poisoned mucous on constant exposure to the toxic dust from the demolition
of projects displays the greediness in developers. His announcement of
converting the Vishram Society into ‘Confident Shanghai’ satirizes the repeated
announcements by successive heads of the state of their intention to convert
Mumbai into Shanghai and exposes their failures resulting into ‘Lunghai’
(a city of dust, pollution, corruption, malnutrition, crime, unhygienic living condition,
slums and etc.). This novel with its crystal clear journalistic style in
depicting the problems of corruption, politician builder nexus, lack of
standard life, unhygienic conditions of living, slums and the age old chronic and
infected perpetual problems of visionless politician which have been remained unsolved
by successive governments since 1960 and also after the globalization in
special reference. Hence, ‘Development in terms of globalised India’ being the
subject matter of this novel reflects unimaginable riches who breaks social
bonds and enters into corrupt relationships marks the clear divide in India of
have and have nots. The tower was built in 1950 where it is described on a
plaque in hour of Pandit Jawaharhal Nehru as ‘Good Housing for Good Indians’ with
an intention to serve as an example but the intention remained in initial stage
and remained absent in progress of the course of developing India. It reflects
the citizens having worries, concerns and lack of pleasures. The location of
tower is a symbolic example of progressing India in the midst of wretched slums
ridiculing a utopian dream of ‘Developed India’.
On the one side of the divide is a group of friends and neighbours who
live in Tower A of the Society. The most respected of them is Yogesh A. Murthy
aka masterji — a retired physics school teacher and recently widowed as hero or
anti hero representing the frustrated orthodox and stubborn middle class psyche
resisting change. But all the inhabitants of this tower are proud of having
possessed of a ‘Pucca’ house in a crumbling world around them. Their
perceptions of their prized possessions stands for something — standards,
decency, and old-fashioned rules of their professed culture. In addition, the
old tumbledown building represents more than land value and Adiga’s skillful direction
ensemble cast to access to a range of voices and experiences. Slowly, under the
pressure of intimidation and lure of hard cash, the ambiguous principle of
pride fades and breaks down their unity except Masterji remaining last all
alone in Tower. Masterji’s fight is noble, futile, willful and daring holding
post modernity on globalization at bay as he desires no demand of
fulfillment. In words of Christopher
Cyril, “But it is also the nobility and willfulness of one who has nothing more
to lose”. The Dickensian style of narration tours around Masterji’s hanging on
for nothing and not simply to blight Shah and the globalization he represents
but only for the sake of his memories of his dead wife and a train accident
victim his dead daughter. In course of the story we come across good but rather
poor Mumbaikar going to be unhinged by the pressures of the outside world,
which is applied by the developer, Darmen Shah. His huge offer of unimaginable
sums of money to all the inhabitants with the help of his creature and
enforcer, Shanmugham is just the figures the residents either have read, heard or
imagined. Shah explains his dream to build something like the extravagances of
Shanghai of marble stones and all sorts of unheard of modern conveniences, like
air-conditioning and reliable 24-hour water. The initial refusal of the
residents to discuss selling reflects their love of the place, warmth, if
rather penumbral, social life; they like the antiquity of the Society (built in
l950), the old trees, the dozy guards, the exploited cleaners and their outdoor
parliament, where they practice a kind of arthritic democracy.
Adiga draws a clear cut fault line in a society in Mumbai, his conscious
Dickensian style novel, that of slum dwellers, criminals, police, immigrants,
lawyers and fruit-sellers who do have their rich say. The fractured patriarchy
on rise of nuclear family and emerging force of women are often more forceful
than their husbands and the cosmopolitan culture of Mumbai in the rising Indian
tradition after the onslaught of globalization is vividly presented. His
Dickensian style of narration has approved his interest in the whimsical figure
of speech consist of wonderfully witty, even glorious, like his description of
the station: “Stone mastiffs flew out from the central dome; rams, wolves,
peacocks, other nameless hysterical beasts, all thrusting out of the station,
scream silently above the traffic and clutter. Multiplying the madness, a
cordon of palm-trees fanned the building — frolicking. Sensual, pagan trees,
taunting, almost tickling, the gargoyles.”
Adiga uses a sort of second division of imagery which he over-indulges:
‘This place with sea view had palace-of-sin plushness’ doesn’t make much
sense and ‘the ocean — storm swollen, its foam hissing thick like acid
reflux, dissolving gravity and rock and charging up the ramps’ seems to
contain four not very precise metaphors. Also, sometimes the jokiness of his
imagery is at odds with the underlying seriousness of his project. This is
remarkably a dynamic trend in use of metaphors after the successful acceptance
of Indian English Writing over the American and British English.
The evocative astonishing descriptions of temples, churches, mosques,
shrines, public buildings, markets, shops, stalls, hawkers display the life of
Mumbai and makes it as the central theme of novel and therefore, Mumbai is the
central character in ‘The Last Man in Tower’. The changing cultural values on
accounts of rise of materialism and consumerism as side effects of the globalization,
weak political system, capitalist economy, exclusive growth, vote bank politics
and importance to influential rich economic class which has given the most
significant place for money in deciding over the principles, cultural values,
morality and patriotism. This in turn has given rise to tremendous greed as
almost everyone wants something i.e. a piece of wealth destroying the sense of
community sharing and responsibility. Only Masterji wants nothing at all. When
he is asked by gangsters and lawyers, a Buddhist priest and even schoolboys,
what he wants, his answer is always the same: nothing. Nobody believes him.
Soon his former friends and admirers turn on him. Even his son and the lawyer
he hires try to trick him.
The comical, lyrical turns of the novel nags the sense of readers
reflecting the Mumbai with an exotic cast of crooks; so susceptible to greed
are they that his fellow residents would like him murdered, because under the
rules of the Society, every single member must agree to sell. It’s interesting
to note that even the property developer, admires Masterji, even though he has
had many recalcitrant tenants injured or bumped off. In his view ‘deep down,
everyone admires violence’. He has a very young mistress and a spray-painting
teenaged son. This is the new Mumbai of ostentatious wealth hard by teeming
slums and grinding poverty.
Conclusion
‘Last Man in Tower’ is a clear reflection of globalization and socio
economic culture of contemporary Mumbai and its narration is rich in detail and
the evocation of everyday life. Its periphery encompasses the Mumbai and its
estate market and the builder-politician nexus, the unhygienic condition of
living in Mumbai, slums, the middle class psyche, the appalling crime and the
problem of immigration.
Works Cited:
1. Adiga Aravind, ‘The White Tiger’, New Delhi:
Harper Collins Publishers India, Year
2009
2. Adiga Aravind, ‘Last Man in Tower’, New
Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers India, 2011
3. Allan White, The National: Book Review, June
29, 2011
4. Appadurai A., Modernity at Large: Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996
5. Bhabha, H., The Location of Culture London:
Routledge, 1994
6. Christopher Cyril, The Age: Book Review June
25, 2011
7. Greenblatt, Stephen. Learning to Curse: Essays
in Early Modern Culture, London: Routledge, 1990
8. Justin Cartwright, ‘The Spectator: Book Review’
June 25, 2011
9.
Spivak, Gayatri
C., A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing
Present Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999
Note: This article was presented in National Seminar held at Nashik, Maharashtra, India on 30th April, 2013
Note: This article was presented in National Seminar held at Nashik, Maharashtra, India on 30th April, 2013
An excellent scholarly article underscoring one of the most serious issues of Mumbai depicted in the 'The Last Man in Tower'. Swiftian style is also notable in this article of Prof. Satywan. Many congratulations!!!
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