India’s melting pot of paradoxes

October 20, 2009|Alexander Theroux, Globe Correspondent

‘Between the Assassinations’’ comprises a series of interconnected short stories that, taking place over seven days, form a mosaic of life as it is lived in the Indian coastal town of Kittur. It is familiar terrain to any reader of Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel of last year, “The White Tiger.’’ Each story, invariably one of corruption as well as class and caste struggle rendered personal, follows a different character.

The book’s title derives from the time-scheme between the slayings of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and that of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. “Everything’s been falling apart in this country since Mrs. Gandhi was shot,’’ laments one disaffected fellow in the story, “The Sultan’s Battery.’’ “Buses are late. Trains are late. . . . We’ll have to hand this country back to the British or the Russians or someone, I tell you. We’re not meant to be masters of our fate, I tell you.’’

The town centers the action the way “Winesburg, Ohio’’ did for Sherwood Anderson and Aracataca did for Gabriel Garcia Márquez in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.’’ It is a colorful if impoverished backdrop, with its ancient fort, mosque, temple, and busy main thoroughfare, Umbrella Street, the commercial center of town. Here is a melting pot of people, Hindu, Sunni Muslims, Bunt, Hoyka, and Portuguese - they built the famous lighthouse - and spoken here is Tulu, Urdu, English, and of course Kannada, the official language of the state of Karnataka, in which the town of Kittur is located.

Coping is paramount here. In “Angel Talkies’’ the smug little journalist Gururaj learns in a shocking and undermining epiphany that it is an old Gurkha who sits outside of a bank all night alone, and sadly not himself, who truly knows the real events going on in town. In the story, “The Cathedral of Our Lady of Our Lady of Valencia’’ there is a terrible comeuppance for ambitious George D’Souza, the mosquito-repellent man, who, although he finds lucky employment with Mrs. Gomes, also has to discover that, no matter how hard we try, our fate is not in our hands - and that the old ways of India are hard-wired into modern culture.