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Adiga’s Booker win thrills friends, kin

— Photo: By Special Arrangement

IN HAPPY COMPANY: Aravind Adiga with his cousins Rishabh and Rithika during his visit to Mangalore in 2005.

MANGALORE/BANGALORE and CHENNAI: It’s celebration time in two cities separated by time zones and the vast seas – Mangalore and Sydney – as Aravind Adiga emerged winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize for 2008 for his debut novel “The White Tiger.”

Mr. Aravind hails from Mangalore and did a major part of his schooling here. His extended family still lives in Mangalore. Sydney is where his father, a surgeon, is now settled.

The telephone in Dr. Madhav Adiga’s home in Sydney has not stopped ringing from the moment it was announced that his son had won the prestigious prize. Friends in the city and relatives back home in Karnataka have been calling endlessly to congratulate him. “Right now I am receiving calls, we will think of celebrations later,” said the proud father, speaking to The Hindu from Sydney.

Mr. Aravind winning the coveted prize may have come as a surprise to many, considering that it is his debut novel and the competition was tough. But the father was always sure of his son’s potential. “He was no doubt pitted against people who have already achieved a lot. But I knew merit was on his side,” said Dr. Madhav, a general surgeon. “He was a voracious reader since he was a school boy,” he added.

Dr. Madhav had not read “The White Tiger” in its draft form, but read it only after it was published. “I thought it was a blunt and realistic portrayal of the Indian reality,” he said.

Mr. Aravind’s cousin Ramesh Kumar Mohan Rao said the writer, who was born in Chennai, was very good at academics. “His house was next to ours on Poonamallee High Road, we grew up together and went to the same school, Don Bosco, Egmore. He studied here till 9th standard after which he moved to Mangalore where he completed his schooling.”

Dr. Rao, said the Booker Prize winner was a very quiet person and an introvert. During Mr.Adiga’s last visit to Chennai about eights months ago, he had mentioned that he was writing a novel. “He kept writing something. But he didn’t tell me what he was writing,” said the elated cousin.

In Mangalore, his teachers and friends were eager to reveal all they know about him. Mangalore-based bloggers have already started uploading entries on the “son of the coastal town”. Mr. Aravind’s teachers in St. Aloysius School and college, from where he passed his SSLC, recalled his passion for reading, active participation in quiz, debate, essay competitions and science club activities and his “beautiful handwriting.”

Mr. Aravind’s uncle who lives in Mangalore, K. Raghuveer Adiga, an orthopaedician, described him as a reserved but friendly person who is always “level-headed”. He had visited Mangalore in 2005, when he was writing a story for Time Magazine on the terror attack on the Indian Institute of Science. He is happy that Mr. Aravind broke the tradition of “doctor’s son becoming a doctor” and has gone on to win a major writing prize.

He comes from a family of doctors and his maternal grandfather, Dr. Mohan Rao, was a well-known surgeon in Chennai.

Mr. Aravind did most part of his education at St. Aloysius group of education institutes, barring the two years of primary education at Canara English Higher Primary School, Dongarakery.

After his family moved here from Chennai, he joined the Canara School in 1981-82 for standard II. He joined St. Aloysius primary school in 1983-84 and completed his SSLC in 1990. He secured the first rank in the State in SSLC.