Tuesday, March 01, 2011

For February 2011 -- Q & A by Vikas Swarup




Meeting at Carmyn's place
February 16, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Date was switched to March 1st

I know we should have eaten Indian food, considering I did take those Indian cooking classes way back when but we opted for a soup night... perfect for a cold February night.

We (Pam, Brian, Carmyn & Andrea) did stick to the theme of the book in one way, however. I distributed a few trivial pursuit cards and we took turns asking one another questions. When someone knew an answer definitively, we asked him/her to explain the back story of "how" he/she learned that fact. It was fun to see how we each did have reasons or explanations for where we'd accumulated that nugget of knowledge.

Here's a bit about the book, from Publisher's Weekly:

When Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated waiter from Mumbai, wins a billion rupees on a quiz show, he finds himself thrown in jail. (Unable to pay out the prize, the program's producers bribed local authorities to declare Ram a cheater.) Enter attractive lawyer Smita Shah, to get Ram out of prison and listen to him explain, via flashbacks, how he knew the answers to all the show's questions. Indian diplomat Swarup's fanciful debut is based on a sound premise: you learn a lot about the world by living in it (Ram has survived abandonment, child abuse, murder). And just as the quiz show format is meant to distill his life story (each question prompts a separate flashback), Ram's life seems intended to distill the predicament of India's underclass in general.

Several of us had seen the movie and while the premise is the same the movie is quite different: the flashbacks, the relationships between the central characters, the level or type of violence our protagonist faces. Still, both were worth the time. Not only is the book on which the film is based a page turner and a fascinating look into the impoverished side of Indian culture, but the film was beautifully crafted and inspirational. I think we'd all agree that it's worth recommending.

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