Arvind Adiga’s Booker award winning debutant novel is a whiff of fresh air. I have found that some Indian authors have an inclination to wrap the real story in a mesh of imagery, similes and complex characterization in an effort to project that they can also write pompous prose. (It could be attributed to some kind effort to prove to the world that we’re educated and can write too!)

But Adiga…he’s got the skill of telling an interesting story, from a hitherto unheard from source and telling it with the simplicity and homour that can only come from the most talented craftsman.

Balram Halwai, an unlikely entrepreneur, tells his story from the depth of the darkness of rural India to the chandelier lit brightness of Bangalore. An unlikely recipient of the story, the Chinese premier, Mr. Jinbao is offered the narrative as a letter in a simple and aimlessly unwinding sort of way.

From the darkness of rural India, the cruel reality of generations of servitude, to the lives of Dilli drivers and their entertainments, to the internal dark struggles of Balram and finally his break from the roosters coop.. Adiga unfolds the story beautifully. One is left waiting with bated breath page after page and wondering how finally the break from the coop is going to happen. Along the way, Adiga also manages to make some entertaining and yet pertinent digs at Indian Politics, Religion, Police, Indo – Chinese rivalry and the declining influence of the white man. (And how the next century is going to belong to the yellow and brown man.)  

The only thing I was left wondering about at the end was moral behind it all… was the story about breaking the coop and treading the unchartered path or one of selfishness and crime rewarded?