Credit Card Blues: Part Three

Its official, all the banks have gone nuts. HSBC, quite eloquently, denied me a credit card saying:

"We regret to inform you that we would not be able to issue you an HSBC credit card as your credit profile is not in line with out prevailing lending policy."

India's liberal elitist guilt

On The Daily Show, senior black correspondent Larry Wilmore said, "The Hispanics are an amazing, hard working people. Their food is delicious, .......". The host Jon Stewart interrupted him, "I think Hispanics would find this very condescending." Larry with immediate glee punched his fist with a "Nailed it!". Larry later explained that with Barack Obama in the White House, the blacks now suddenly felt like "The Man" and were hence entitled to their own black-liberal guilt.

Arvind Adiga's Booker prize winning White Tiger very much follows the same path. Adiga's work is at times funny and gives us a genuine picture of caste and economic exploitation of Bihar (or Darkness as it is referred to). My problem with the novel is not so much the story as it is the portrayal and narrative.

A driver- turned murderer- turned enterprenuer, Balram Halwai, writes a comic letter of self-importance to the visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. In it he tells the "true" tale of Indian economic and social development. The novel's gritty and dark undertone is often undermined by Adiga's own anecdotes and conclusions. He leaves no room for the reader's imagination. There is a genuine lack of subtlety and the writer is too eager to make his point. A story is not told as a story, but in some way as a moralistic tale about the various forms of social exploitation.

Steve Coll, of The New Yorker, admitted as much. That the novel is not so much about social exploitation as it is a mirror for India's elite and the grisly reality around them. The novel is also clearly aimed for a western audience, why else would you explain Goddess Laxmi?

As Larry would put it, read this novel to satifsfy your own liberal elitist giult. If not, well, you know what to do.

Harsha gets a visiting card..............