THE STANDARD FIREWORKS RAJARATNAM COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, SIVAKASI.

(An Autonomous Institution Affiliated to Madurai Kamaraj University, Reaccredited With ‘A’ Grade by NAAC)

ABSTRACT.

In June 2006, in an essay titled “My Lost world” Published in ‘Time Magazine’ Aravind Adiga wrote about a personal search he made in the Indian city of Mangalore, nested alongside the Western Ghats on the Karnataka coast. Born in Madras now Chennai, Adiga spent his early childhood years in that city before moving with his family to Mangalore, where his father worked as a doctor. Looking around the transformed city, he also noticed “a group of drifters and homeless: part of the underclass who seemed to have been left out of the story of India’s growth. The main theme of the novel is the contrast between India’s rise as a modern global economy and the working class people who live in the crushing rural poverty. The novel is centered on how Balram Halwai,the son of the rickshaw-puller destined to make sweets becomes Ashok Sharma.Other themes  touched on include corruption endemic to Indian Society and Politics, familial loyality versus independence religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims and the experience of returning to India after living in America. With the focus of the downtrodden, the backwards of India, the novel attracts a wide audience. The servants are invisible in modern India. Adiga made it a point not to obliterate their presence.  It is an epistolary novel, a series of letters written to the Premier of China who is expected to visit Bangalore city.