A diatribe against the great Indian middle class is blunted by the author's skill to show, not judge; to depict, not condemn. Aravind Adiga's new novel, Last Man in Tower, explores middle-class ethics and righteous indignation

Booker Prize-winning author Aravind Adiga's second book Last Man in Tower tells a story that would be familiar to Sunday MiD DAY readers: Builder buys old co-operative housing society building to re-develop the plot (that is to say, break it down and build a bigger, more glittering facade); Builder uses strong arm tactics to get residents to move; residents use strong arm tactics to get recalcitrant neighbour to comply.


Aravind Adiga photographed after winning the 2008 Booker Prize in
London, which he received for his debut novel, The White Tiger.
Pic/ AFP photo

In his 419-page novel, Adiga revisits these stories with Tower A Vishram Co-operative Housing Society in Vakola, Santa Cruz (E), a building that may be located in the "slummy" vicinity of Va-KHO-la and flanked by the flashier and more recently constructed Tower B full of "young executives who have found work in the nearby Bandra-Kurla financial complex" but is, as the first few pages inform us, "pucca", "a dreadnought of middle-class respectability."

Housed in it are 15 families (including Felicia Saldanha in 0C -- your first clue that something isn't quite right with this building) that have lived together for several years and routinely keep tabs on each other through weekly meetings and by rummaging through each other's rubbish to find out what's really going on.

(Used condoms from 3B: "Ms Meenakshi, possibly a journalist, single woman of about 25" is up to no good.)
Then comes the wolf in the form of Dharmen Shah, a builder, who wants to blow the building down and the piglets inside are more than happy to help. The modern middle-class dream of a bigger home and a higher rung in the class ladder is a truth universally acknowledged, it would seem, for Adiga certainly doesn't question it.

Tower A residents are the people who thought India isn't Shining only because the sentence didn't have 'enough' at the end of it. So middle-class apathy congeals into middle-class greed with Shah's offer, and that leads to the breakdown of middle-class ethics. All begin to pull their walls down except one little piggy, the grand 61 year-old Masterji, or Yogesh Murthy, resident of 3A, whose resistance begins as a show of support for his old blind neighbour, who'd be lost in a new place, but solidifies in the face of pressure that his other neigbours put on him.

But here's where Adiga's prowess comes in. If Masterji carries on in the knowledge that he's fighting for the cause of freedom, his ethics are equally challenged by his son's assertion that he was neither a caring husband or father. The hero is flawed, because the hero belongs to the same system that's out to bring him down. The last man standing fights for a freedom that is circumscribed by legalese and the very ethics that it emerges from. But if there's one thing that you do take away from Adiga's novel, it is this -- even though you can not fight the system, it's the only ethical thing to do.

Last Man in Tower is published by Harper Collins and available at bookstores for Rs 699