Constant Reader discussion

"The Sultan's Battery" by Aravind Adiga is the final story up for discussion in our current schedule. It's available online from The Guardian at the following website:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/...

This short biographical information is from his official website at http://www.aravindadiga.com/index.shtml

Aravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Madras (now called Chennai), and grew up in Mangalore in the south of India. He was educated at Columbia University in New York and Magdalen College, Oxford. His articles have appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Times of India. His first novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2008. His new novel, Last Man in the Tower, will be published in 2011.

Aravind Adiga is a particularly interesting author for me after reading The Inheritance of Loss which started pushing my curiosity buttons about India. In addition to publishing this short story, The Guardian also did an interesting interview with him in 2008 which gives you more information about his feelings about modern India.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/...

Adiga talks about the importance of family in Indian culture in the above article. He certainly focuses on it in this story. Ratna justifies his sale of sugar pills to cure venereal disease because he has 3 daughters who need arranged marriages and that requires dowrys. How fitting that the victim of these diseases becomes a potential husband and that Ratna sees close up the end of the life for him. Is the trade off for one's own family worth the destruction of others?

Does Adiga make this circular path from sacrifice of others to survival of Ratna's own family too simplistic? And, what is the vision of the white dome?

I like how the story makes Ratna confront the effects of the false hope he was profiting from. Like you said Barbara, it really illustrates the conflict between individual/family needs and what is beneficial for society.

Also, I think it shows how traditional marriage customs and dowries can be challenged by ills that are often associated with large, dense populations like disease and financial insecurity.

Is the argument too simplistic? Maybe, I'm still on the fence.

What to make of the vision of the white dome? Don't know yet.

This is really going to sound stereotypical, but the only white dome I know about in India is the Taj Mahal. I'm afraid that betrays my ignorance of all these Indian, but there it is. When I looked up the Taj Mahal on Wikipedia, it said:

In 1631, Shah Jahan, emperor during the Mughal empire's period of greatest prosperity, was grief-stricken when his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died during the birth of their 14th child, Gauhara Begum.[10] Construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632, one year after her death.[11] The court chronicles of Shah Jahan's grief illustrate the love story traditionally held as an inspiration for Taj Mahal.[12][13] The principal mausoleum was completed in 1648 and the surrounding buildings and garden were finished five years later. Emperor Shah Jahan himself described the Taj in these words:[14]

Should guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator's glory.

The first 4 lines of the Emperor Shah Jahan's description are what caught my eye. It did feel like Ratna was taking the boy home to atone for his own sins.

Barb, I'm running late on everything this week. I WILL be reading this, so will try and ponder about the white dome thereafter

Any idea why it is titled "The Sultan's Battery"?

Ok I have a theory about the white dome. Most if not all the temples I have seen here are white, irrespective of religion - Hindu, Jain, Muslim. Also a dargah is a mausoleum, and again everyone I have seen here is white. White is the colour of death, widows wear white, white is worn for funerals as it is in most countries outside of our own. So the spectre of death haunts the story. Not just the obvious fatal doctor's verdict on the boy, but everywhere Ratna turns it is the struggle to survive he sees, the beggars and cripples struggling around the dargah, of survival by any means, how to make enough money to survive, how to marry off your daughters well so they don't die a spinster's death after you, etc Perhaps death is the only real thing around in all the fakes items designed to sugar coat people's meagre existences, as Mike says all the false hope.

Mike, I did a bit of googling and found an interesting review of Adiga's Between the Assassinations which mentions the Sultan's Battery, so as I have an ecopy of that book with me to read I went browsing. The Day Six is the relevant chapter. It begins with a lengthier description of the Sultan's Battery than appears at the beginning of the short story. Here's the text

The Sultan’s Battery,, a large black rectangular fort, appears high up to your left as you go from Kittur to Salt Market Village. The best way to explore the fort is to ask someone in Kittur to drive you up there; your host will have to park the car by the main road, and then the two fo you will have to walk uphill for half and hour. When you pass through the arched doorway, you’ll find that the fort is in an advanced state of decay. Although a plaque from the Archaeological Survey of India declares this a protected site and speaks of its role in “enshrining the memory of the patriot Tippu Sultan, Tiger of Mysore,” there is no evidence of any attempt to preserve the ancient structure from the onslaught of creepers, wind, rain, erosion, and grazing animals. Giant banyan trees have germinated on the walls of the fort; their roots smash between the stones like gnarled fingers reaching into a mouse hole. Avoiding the thorns and piles of goat shit, you should walk to one of the holes in the walls of the fort; here, hold an imaginary gun in your hands, close an eye, and pretend that you are Tippu himself, firing down on the English army

to my amazement, the text continues as per the start of the short story! which takes us through to the end of the chapter entitled Day Six.

What I can gaather is that this Tippu was a bit of a perennial thorn in the side of the British in southern India in the late 18th century.

Where does that all get us with regard to why the story is so entitled? Perhaps like Tippu one must keep trying to survive all the time, relentlessly, in the hope that change will come.

Sorry about the three consecutive posts :)

What do folks think about the whole fate aspect of the story? There's the astrologer wedding fixer, how much is everyone in it resigned to their allotted fates? Is it fate that brings them together - just how many other prospective fathers in law would know so much about venereal disease, or at least admit to knowing? Is it Ratna's fate to have dismissed the boy as unsuitable for his daughter, and then to end up taking him home? Indian seem to me to be very closely bound by their reliance on fate and they use it to explain many things. When they speak in English they often say I am bound to do this , we are bound to perform puja at this time etc. and it is more than just a I must do that, we must do that, the sentiment is much stronger. And yes astrologers are used in this way and to fix the wedding time.

The Sultan's Battery and the white dome were in the area where he sold his pills.

The first lines of the story: "The Sultan's Battery, which appears on the way towards Salt Market Village, is one of the prime tourist attractions of Kittur. He walked fast towards the white dome of the Dargah, a fold-up wooden stool under one arm, and in the other a red bag with his album of photographs and seven bottles full of white pills. When he got to the Dargah, he walked along the wall, without paying any attention to the long line of beggars along the wall...)"

It is typical in common man to try to look past the people with "deformity and depravity". Only until something occurs close to home, so to speak, do our eyes and hearts open up (as FATE would have it, Sheila!).

Oh Rose, how correct you are!

Thanks Barbara for the Guardian article/interview with the author. Excerpts follows:

"How do you get the nerve, I ask Aravind Adiga, to write (a novel) about the experiences of the Indian poor?"

"At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society. That's what writers like Flaubert, Balzac and Dickens did in the 19th century and, as a result, England and France are better societies. That's what I'm trying to do - it's not an attack on the country, it's about the greater process of self-examination."

By the way his "White Tiger" was a great read!

Rose, what a great concise answer to all of our questions. Thank you! It's amazing how the answers are usually there in the context of the story and yet so easy for me to miss.

I remember that answer to the question in the Guardian article too. Adiga was probably getting tired of the statement that he is one of the priviledged classes writing about the poor. The implication is that he couldn't know what he was talking about. I thought he gave a great answer. And, I'm glad to know that The White Tiger was good. I'm going to put it on my list for the future.

I am glad you researched the Taj Mahal, Barbara. That passage was beautiful! And, yes I absolutely believe the story was based on his atonement!

Very funny and strange to us but probably very important,I googled "India" and "atonement" and found this article!:
Man in India marries dog as atonement [retrieved from msn.com.on 15.11.2007]
NEW DELHI - A man in southern India married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony as an attempt to atone for stoning two other dogs to death — an act he believes cursed him — a newspaper reported Tuesday.

P. Selvakumar married the sari-draped former stray named Selvi, chosen by family members and then bathed and clothed for the ceremony Sunday at a Hindu temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the Hindustan Times newspaper said.

Selvakumar, 33, told the paper he had been suffering since he stoned two dogs to death and hung their bodies from a tree 15 years ago.

"After that my legs and hands got paralyzed and I lost hearing in one ear," he said in the report.

The paper said an astrologer had told Selvakumar the wedding was the only way he could cure the maladies. It did not say whether his situation had improved.

Deeply superstitious people in rural India sometimes organize weddings to dogs and other animals, believing it can ward off certain curses.
The paper showed a picture of Selvakumar sitting next to the dog, which was wearing an orange sari and a flower garland.

Barbara, I loved The White Tiger, but it is packed with dark, dark humor. Very different from this piece.

I felt like there was some underlying religious conflict in this story. Did anyone else get that impression? From my reading, the Dargah is a Sufi shrine. My impression was that Ratna Shetty (Shetty being a traditional Bunt name, the vast majority of whom are Hindu) was exploiting young Muslim men who were torn between their temptations and teachings of asceticism. Perhaps Ratna doesn't care who buys his sugar pills(his only expression of faith in the story is "Oh Krishna!" when he gets home and takes off his shoes), but these young men would seem to be the easiest mark for his con. His pitch is as much about atoning for your sins and starting over as it is about healthy genitalia. Maybe by superimposing the image of the religious shrine on the fort (a secular shrine to Tipu Sultan and a symbol of the fight for Indian independence), Ratna is acknowledging that the Dargah has been under an attack of sorts?

I do think Adiga wants us to question the roles of fate, karma, and free will in the story. Ratna uses the astrologer as matchmaker, but he isn't interested in comparing horoscopes or picking ideal wedding dates - he wants financial stablility for his daughter and makes his choices accordingly. Hard to know if the meeting of charlatan sexologist and secretive STD sufferer is fate, karma or coincidence.

Ratna pleads with the boy, who has shadowed him to the water's edge, "What choice do I have?" To me, he already seems to be coming to grips with the harm he is causing, even before the visit to Happy Life clinic.

The man waiting for the bus has a strange take on "fate." Delayed public transportation (and maybe a few other things) has him convinced that Indians should leave their collective fate to the free will and control of those who would make better decisions for them. Now that reads like a taste of The White Tiger....

Jeff, Yes I caught the religious tensions too.
"The young men who had come to pray at the Dargah, or to eat lamb kebabs in one of the Muslim restaurants" could be read as quite dismissive of lamb eaters. It is something that bubbles just under the surface in India still, and every now and then erupts violently. The religious, caste and creed distinctions do exist.

ll the praise for White Tiger is justified. I liked the book. It suffered for me because I read it very soon after listening to an extremely good audio of Q&A, the book that was made/changed into Slumdog Millionairre. If you haven't read that one I'd recommend it as well.

Interesting, Jeff. This makes me think more about the idea of free will vs. the strictures of religion and family control in the story. Or, are these boys sexually frustrated and/or reckless in their sexual exploration because of this control? I really think you're on the right track though.

I mentioned in the Inheritance of Loss thread that the New York Times Book Review has just reviewed a book called India Calling by Anand Giridharadas. The author has been writing articles for the NYTimes and the International Tribune about India and has just published this book. I listened to a podcast interview with him and was impressed. I'm hoping I can find time to read it and begin to remedy some of my ignorance about this country.

Barb, I suspect that in any society where virgin brides are still valued and the norm, where sex before marriage is rare, where the whole range of types of arranged marriages still happens, from love arranged, consensual arranged to non-consensual arranged take place, that use of the services of prostitutes is a common way for the young to explore their sexuality prior to marriage, and for men to continue to afterwards. The official statistics for the incidence of STD and of HIV in India are that around 2.5 Million have HIV, but I have heard much higher figures talked about as well as many doubt the reliability of all figures for such large populations, even the Census figures - my NGO works in villages where no government official has ever visited