The Last Man in the Tower

An Evil Masterstroke
didn't like it didn't like it didn't like it didn't like it didn't like it  
 
A human mind like this world is beautiful, intelligent and a miracle only God could create. Adiga cuts open this world and human mind and the innards spattered and smashed, bones and flesh cracked and torn, black red blood squishing and merging with the filth of this earth, creating a grotesque and disgusting feeling inside you. He bares the human body and mind like the inside is out but that doesn't mean that inside is beautiful. His only theory is that given a circumstance, we all are murderers, we are animals.

Mumbai a city which I live in. I have always felt that people here are nice and simple, all they want is a simple life with simple necessities, a healthy family, a good home and a comfortable relaxing life. They do their work and they come home. But what happens when a one in life time opportunity comes knocking at your door, making you richer, giving a better life, bigger house, more facilities and happier families. Would Master ji have been any different if his wife and daughter were living, his son and he shared a good relationship and he needed the money. Yes he would have jumped at it and would have wanted the sweetener too.

This is my third book from Adiga and with every read my respect for him increases. He bares the human mind and makes yourself stare your ugly self in the mirror. He mentions mundane things that we do that are pure evil – a proof that we are no righteous. There were instances that his words and descriptions made me feel guilty and villaneous. Small acts that we do are all adding up to a greater evil which even if we realise, we don't acknowledge. The protagonists of his book are always common men who don't turn evil - but they choose evil when given a choice to accept fate or get what you desire.

He touches that inner evil present in every human being and brings it to the forefront and even to the level of acceptable. Leaving you with words by Adiga.

When you are rich, you don’t have to give people things. They give you things.

He spotted a black moustache above a tuft of goatee.. when he grinned he looked like the Jack of spades

Her son was 18 years old with downs syndrome.. Never growing, yet somehow picking up new things all the time – just like the city he lived in…

The Building was like the people living in it.. middle class to its core.. Improvement or Failure – incapable of either extremity..

She envied him and his happy family life – just as she knew he in secret envied another for owning a car ; just as the other probably envied someone else; andthis chain of envy linked them, showing each what was lacking in life, but offering also the consolation that happiness was presnet right next door, in the life of a neigbor, an element of the same society.

Why when she is worried about your interest in her, will a woman do the very things that will cause your interest to drop further.

He listened to her charge out if the building. Exactly the way his daughter did before she dies. He placed his hand on the warm building. Just as when a drop of formaldehyde falls on a dead leaf in a science class, revealing a secret life of veins, the building throbbed with occult networks pregnant with his past.

A social worker needs a builder. We make each other: she can be so pure only if I am so evil. She will come to me.

The five-second rule. As children in Bandra, she and her sister had played it eacjh time a chicken leg or a slice of mango had fallen to the floor. Pick it up before a count of five and you did not have to worry about the germs. You would remain safe.

Comments

  1. an evil living such a monk life and he philosophized the killing of an innocent, free man in such way that whole story seemed like just a bad dream, no need to worry, because when u wake up, there isnt any dream to bug u,

    check the 2nd line from below, "eacjh"

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  2. @ Srinivas - Interesting perspective...somehow i hav found dreams more scary than reality

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  3. Dreams are fancy. there isnt any tax on them or there isnt anyone stop us to have them.

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  4. Yes dreams r all we have.. Rest life just happens

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