Q & A

by Vikas Swarup

  Lajwanti’s release from jail was also secured last month and she is now staying with me in Mumbai. In fact, she returned just last week from her sister Lakshmi’s wedding in Delhi to a top-level officer in the Indian Administrative Service. The groom’s family made no demand for dowry, but Lajwanti still gave her sister a Toyota Corolla car, a thirty-two-inch Sony TV, twenty Raymond suits and one kilo of gold jewellery.

  Salim has landed the role of a seventeen-year-old college hero in a comedy film directed by Chimpu Dhawan, and these days is busy shooting in Mehboob Studios. He thinks the producer is a man named Mohammad Bhatt, but it is actually me.

  The love of my life has joined me in Mumbai. She is now my lawfully wedded wife, with a proper surname. Nita Mohammad Thomas.

  Smita and I are walking along Marine Drive. A pleasant wind is blowing, occasionally sending a misty spray from the ocean where giant waves crash and roll against the rocks. The uniformed driver is following us at a snail’s pace in a Mercedes Benz, maintaining a respectful distance. The rear bumper of the Benz carries a sticker. It says ‘My other car is a Ferrari’.

  ‘I have been wanting to ask you something,’ I tell Smita.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘That evening, when you saved me from the police station, why didn’t you tell me straight away that you were Gudiya?’

  ‘Because I wanted to hear your stories and find out the truth. Only when you narrated my own story, without realizing that I was in front of you, did I know for sure that you were telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is why I told you at the very beginning that I didn’t need you to swear on any book. I was your witness, just as you were mine.’

  I nod my head in understanding.

  ‘Can I also ask you a question?’ Smita asks me.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘That same evening, when I first brought you home, before you told me your stories, you flipped a coin. Why?’

  ‘I was not sure whether to trust you. The coin toss was my decision-making mechanism. Heads I would have told you everything. Tails it would have been goodbye. As it turned out, it was heads.’

  ‘So if it had turned up tails instead of heads, you wouldn’t have told me your story?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have come up tails.’

  ‘You believe in luck so much?’

  ‘What’s luck got to do with it? Here, take a look at the coin.’ I take out the one-rupee coin from my jacket and hand it to her.

  She looks at it, and flips it over. Then flips it again. ‘It . . . it’s heads on both sides!’

  ‘Exactly. It’s my lucky coin. But as I said, luck has got nothing to do with it.’

  I take the coin from her and toss it high into the air. It goes up, up and up, glints briefly against the turquoise sky, and then drops swiftly into the ocean and sinks into its cavernous depths.

  ‘Why did you throw away your lucky coin?’

  ‘I don’t need it any more. Because luck comes from within.’

  THE END

  Q & A

  VIKAS SWARUP

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  About the Author

  Profile of Vikas Swarup

  Interview with Vikas Swarup

  About the Book

  Facts behind the Fiction

  Questions for Discussion

  Read On

  Further reading and website information

  SECTION 1: ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Profile of Vikas Swarup

  Born in Allahabad, India, into a family of lawyers and solicitors, author Vikas Swarup grew up amidst conversations about judges and court cases at the dinner table. ‘One advantage of growing up in this environment was that I was probably the only seven-year-old in Allahabad who could spell “jurisprudence” and “habeas corpus”!’ says the Indian diplomat who has served in Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia and Great Britain. As a child, Swarup dreamt of becoming a pilot or an astronaut when he grew up since the family profession had been ruled out as a possible career by his mother in the form of a curt ultimatum: ‘If any of my [three] sons becomes a lawyer, I will throw him out of the house.’ A career in science was similarly ditched because of discouraging experiences with frog dissections in the biology lab and such thousand-page tomes as ‘The Principles of Theoretical Physics’. The idea of becoming a civil servant gradually took hold and Vikas graduated university with majors in Modern History, Psychology and Philosophy, ultimately joining the Indian Foreign Service.

  By self admission, Vikas Swarup has always been a creative thinker although Q & A is his first published work of fiction. His hyperactive imagination initially manifested itself in an essay on bad luck assigned by his sixth-grade teacher. While other children wrote about such run-of-the-mill occurrences as a black cat crossing their path, Vikas chose to recount the trials of a trio of Japanese thieves that manages to get trapped in an earthquake after pulling off a flawless bank heist. Vikas tried his hand at another story titled The Autobiography of a Donkey in school before finally embarking on the globally successful project, Q & A.

  Interview with Vikas Swarup

  Vikas, even though you are not in the hot seat here and there’s no jackpot at the end of it, here’s your slice of the 15-questions pie:

  1. Is Q & A your first work of fiction?

  I have been telling stories since childhood but, sadly, didn’t write anything beyond my school days. It was only during my diplomatic posting in London that I had the urge to write. I tried my hand at a full-length novel about a contract killer, but didn’t really show it around to publishers. I used it as a learning experience to work on Q & A, which I finished in two months flat. And that’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

  2. Was there a particular ‘aha’ moment that gave you the inspiration for this book?

  It was a series of ‘aha’ moments. I wanted to write something off-beat. I did not want to write a generational family saga or a magical realist fable with talking monkeys. And then it struck me: Why not tap into the global phenomenon of the syndicated televised quiz show? After all Who Wants to be a Millionaire? was a top rated show in a number of countries the world, including India. The issue was: Who would be my contestant? It was around this time that a scandal involving an army major broke out in England. The man had apparently won a million pounds on the show but was accused of cheating. I thought to myself, if someone as well educated as an officer of the British Army can be accused of cheating, why could I not have a contestant who would definitely be accused of cheating? Incidentally, I had also come across a news report of how street children in an Indian slum had begun using a free mobile internet facility entirely on their own. So I decided to juxtapose these two themes – of a game show and of a contestant who has had no formal education, who has ‘street’ knowledge as opposed to ‘book’ knowledge. That is how Q & A was born.

  3. The structure of the novel seems to be one of its strengths; how did that evolve? Were these chapters always meant to be individual episodes strung together to form a coherent whole?

  The novel essentially move on two planes. There is the life story of the quiz show contestant Ram Mohammad Thomas, and there are the goings on in the quiz show itself. To my mind, the pace of the novel stems from the fact that there is this dualism, this contradiction, this tension between these two strands of the novel. What links these two strands is ‘memory’. Having been an avid quizzer myself, I was interested in the ideational and psychological processes that are at work in a contestant’s mind. As one of my characters in the book says, ‘A quiz is not so much a test of knowledge as a test of memory.’ And our memories are produced by various things: by our experiences, our dreams and desires, not just what we are taught in school. Q & A is built around a series of stories that the protagonist tells his lawyer, which eventually link up to the questions on the quiz show. Some are his personal stories, some he has heard. My aim was to make each story complete in itself, to make it stand on its own, even wit
hout the larger context of the novel. The difficulty was doing this while following the conventions of a quiz show where the questions follow a certain progression: easier questions come first, difficult questions come later and the topics have to keep changing. Since Ram Mohammad Thomas’ life could not follow the order of the questions in a strictly chronological sequence, the additional difficulty was to ensure that the reader does not lose the thread when my protagonist goes back and forth in time. Above all, I wanted to ensure an organic connection between the stories and the questions – they needed to appear natural rather than gimmicky and forced.

  4. Have you ever visited Dharavi or come in prolonged contact with a resident to be able to paint such a vivid picture of the (in)famous slum, its inhabitants and their lifestyle?

  I have never lived in Mumbai for any sustained period of time, and I have never visited Dharavi. But then India is a country where no one leads the life of an island. The lives of the rich and the poor, the high and the low, intersect every day. And if one observes, and learns, then one can also project. One may not have seen Dharavi but one has seen slums. You just have to magnify the slums you have seen ten times, or maybe a hundred times, to visualize the scenario in Dharavi.

  5. How much effect, if any, do you think your own exposure to Mumbai’s film industry has had in directly or indirectly shaping the overall theme and pace of this novel?

  I admit there is an undercurrent of Bollywood running through the novel. That is because Hindi films are an inescapable part of popular Indian culture. You cannot conceptualize an Indian matrix without bringing in Bollywood. The potboiler Hindi films have traditionally been considered escapist entertainment, perhaps highlighting their appeal to the masses. They almost become an alternate reality for the poor. So, through-out the novel, you have my protagonist contrasting ‘reel’ life with ‘real’ life. But the real treat for me, personally, is that Q & A itself is likely to become a plot for a Bollywood film! Though Film Four have optioned the film rights, several top Indian directors have approached me for the Hindi remake.

  6. For viewers of KBC, or for the general Indian audience for that matter, most of the characters of the novel might seem thinly disguised. Did the possibility of celebrity recognition ever become an issue while writing Q & A?

  A few reviewers have commented that they found some of my characters – the action film hero, the famous cricketer, and even Neelima, the tragedy queen – to be tongue-in-cheek caricatures of real people. All I can say is that the characters I have drawn are entirely fictional but I wouldn’t be surprised if some people find familiar echoes in them.

  7. What were some of the research methods you used while writing the book?

  The book required considerable research. The maximum investigation was undoubtedly needed for ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ in which I had to document the India-Pakistan War of 1971. I read a number of books on the famous battles of that war, delved into actual soldier accounts of the course of the war in Chhamb and received some excellent feedback from my colleague, the Military Attaché in the High Commission in London. I undertook similar painstaking research to get fully acquainted with life in juvenile homes, betting on cricket matches, the practice of selling tribal girls into prostitution, the modus operandi of contract killers, voodoo, the Taj Mahal, and even Australianisms. My neighbourhood library in Golders Green gave me access to a number of useful books and the Internet also proved to be a mine of information.

  8. Throughout the novel one of the major themes that arises repeatedly is the rampant apathy in India – the slum dwellers, the game show authorities, the cinema industry, for example. Do you think this feeling somehow characterizes modern India itself?

  There is a quote in the book. When Ram Mohammad Thomas approaches the administrator of his chawl, asking him to intervene before Shantaram does something terrible to his wife and daughter, he is told: ‘We Indians have this sublime ability to see the pain and misery around around us, and yet remain unaffected by it. So, like a proper Mumbaikar, close your eyes, close your ears, close your mouth, and you will be happy like me.’ So apathy does exist in the nation of a billion people, but one also sees evidence of tremendous compassion and solidarity, such as during the recent tsunami disaster.

  9. You have tackled difficult issues – incest, rape, torture – in almost every chapter of the novel. What was your experience writing these passages?

  The novel opens somewhat bleakly and then continues in the same vein for the first few chapters. This bothered me a bit when I had finished the novel, but the structure of the novel was such that if I changed even one story or altered the timeline, the whole edifice would have collapsed. In the end I just trusted the reader to find light at the end of the tunnel. By the same token, I had to find my own illumination in writing some of the darker chapters. The writing of ‘A Brother’s Promise’ and the section in the Agra chapter relating to the death of Shankar were the toughest. Even finding the right words to describe those emotions was gut wrenching. But the fact that I myself had tears in my eyes when I re-read the Shankar episode convinced me that it had been written with heart and soul.

  10. Any interesting anecdotes behind writing/researching Q & A that you’d like to share?

  I wrote Q & A in complete secrecy. No one, not even my closest friends, knew that I was working on a novel! For two years I kept my professional world as a diplomat and my private world as an author completely apart. But now everyone knows.

  11. We know that you were born in Allahabad and were a champion debater and an avid quizzer at school. Tell us some more about your formative years and your family’s influence on your literary aspirations.

  I come from a family of lawyers. My grandfather had a magnificent library full of leather bound, gold embossed volumes of legal books. But he was a man of eclectic tastes and his interests embraced history, philosophy and art as well. Thus a first edition of Hitler’s Mein Kampf would be nestling next to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I learnt a lot from him, most importantly, a love of books. Since I grew up in an era without cable TV and the Internet, my favourite pastime was to read, and I devoured everything, from Aesops Fables to Albert Camus, from Enid Blyton to Irving Wallace. And, I believe, a good writer is first and foremost a good reader.

  12. What are some of your favourite books (fiction or non-fiction) of all time?

  Till I joined the Indian Foreign Service, I used to be a very big reader. I have read many authors and many books over the years. I have been a big fan of the thriller genre, but I have enjoyed contemporary literary works as well such as Coetzee’s Disgrace, Alan Hollinghurst’s A Line of Beauty, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and the novels of Haruki Murakami. Some of my all-time favourite works are:

  Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

  The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

  The Trial by Franz Kafka

  Animal Farm by George Orwell

  Dracula by Bram Stoker

  The Story of Philosophy by Will Durrant

  13. Which faction of creative thinkers might you belong to: One that thinks that good writing is one that pleases the reader? Or another for which writing is a personal process unhindered by audience pressure?

  As they say, ‘Any fool can write a book; it takes a genius to sell it’. So readers remain critical to the writing process. Writing is, indeed, a personal process, but I feel that what a writer writes must, in the final analysis, be accessible to the reader. If the writer cracks a joke which the reader doesn’t get, then what’s the point? The key to a good novel is to ensure a degree of congruence between the subjective vision of the writer and the objective reaction of the reader.

  14. How has your experience been with the world-wide publishing industry?

  When I set out to write this book I had no idea it would appeal to readers in Brazil and Barcelona, in Seattle and Sydney. The book is now being translated into 25 languages so it has enabled me to interact with publishers and readers in five continents. The experien
ce has been uniformly positive. The reason for the novel’s global appeal, I imagine, is that though it is set in India, the themes and the emotions evoked are universal and the underlying message is one which applies to every community and culture – of creating your own luck, of the underdog beating the odds and winning!

  15. Is there a follow-up novel to Q & A in the works? If not, might there be one in the future?

  I have a number of ideas, so, yes, there will be another book. Perhaps in a year or two.

  SECTION 2: ABOUT THE BOOK

  Facts behind the Fiction

  In September 2000, when Harshvardhan Vinayak Nawathe answered the 15th question correctly on Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Millionaire), little did he realize that he had changed history – not only television history but also his own. An unknown youth hailing from a middle class family residing in one of Mumbai’s middle class neighbourhoods, he suddenly became a media sensation. Overnight, a person for whom traveling incognito in public buses was no big deal had to temporarily change residences for fear of being hounded by paparazzi. Harsh Nawathe, the new face of the teeming Mumbai millions, had arrived.

  24 September 2000. Kaun Banega Crorepati Episode number 64. More than 50 million eyes stare unblinkingly at their TV screens. Hot seat contestant Harshvardhan Nawathe is on the precipice of the million-rupee question. The random question flashes, he doesn’t know the answer. He phones a friend who doesn’t know it either. Without an alternative, Nawathe makes a painstakingly wild guess. And wins.

  As 300 people from the audience descended on the disorientated winner, and his building residents back home lit up the evening sky with fireworks, the boy next door became an instant celebrity and one of India’s most eligible bachelors. Nawathe, who, before the competition, was preparing for his entrance exams for the Indian Civil Services, is now studying business management in London, England. His family still lives in their modest apartment in Mumbai.