Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adiga
Aravind Adigais an Indian-Australian writer and journalist. His debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth23 October 1974
CountryIndia
language study columbia
Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.
country disaster
I’ve lived in several countries and been a disaster everywhere.
sleep stills just-one
Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.
white no-friends dangerous
A White Tiger keeps no friends. It's too dangerous.
trustworthiness economy servant
The trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy.
country drinking men
I gather you yellow-skinned men, despite your triumphs in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don't have democracy. Some politician on the radio was saying that that's why we Indian are going to beat you: we may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy. If I were making a country, I'd get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy, then I'd go about giving pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, but what do I know? I am just a murderer!
fun office routine
In a sense, being a full-time writer is less fun because there's no office to go to anymore, there's no set routine, there's no schedule. It can be quite isolating.
reading writing trying
In a sense, journalism can be both helpful and detrimental to a writer of fiction because the kind of writing you need to do as a journalist is so different. It has to be clear, unambiguous, concise, and as a writer often you are trying to do things that are more ambiguous. I find that writing fiction is often an antidote to reading and writing too much journalism.
government safe heroism
What keeps India safe really is the heroism of millions of poor Indians who every day reject the allure of terrorism. What keeps India safe is just the courage of poor Indians, not the actions of its government.
mother powerful war
Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed...she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India.
corners divide notice servants society standing
If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.
countries several
I never did very well as an immigrant. I've lived in several countries and been a disaster everywhere.