Poverty Power An Analysis Of Q A By
Poverty & Power — An Analysis of Q&A by Vikas Swarup
It is an undeniable and essential fact of life that our society is controlled by money. Those who are affluent flourish in such systems while the poor are deprived. The novel Q&A by Vikas
Swarup serves as an in depth and riveting tale regarding the less fortunate people of India. It follows the protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas as he explains how he knew all ten answers in the game show, Who Will Win A Billion? “My departure from Asia’s biggest slum would make no difference to their lives. There would be the same queue for water in the morning, the same daily struggle to make it to the seventhirty local in time. They wouldn’t even bother to find out the reason for my arrest.
Come to think of it, when the two constables barged into my hut, even I didn’t. When your whole existence is ‘illegal,’ when you live on the brink of penury in an urban wasteland where you jostle for every inch of space and have to queue even for a shit, arrest has a certain inevitability about it. You are conditioned to believe that one day there will be a warrant with your name on it, that eventually a jeep with a flashing red light will come for you” (2). Within the first few pages of Swarup’s Q&A, we learn that impoverishment has put Indians like
Ram Mohammad Thomas in a miserable situation — the poor are completely outcast from society. Like in the days of the Hindu Caste System, they have truly have become pariahs who are assumed to participate in at least one felony in their lifetime. In this particular section of the book, the reader is first associated with the theme of the effects of poverty. The rawness of Ram’s tone as he presents the facts urges the reader to sympathize with those being mistreated. By using more personal terms like “you” and “your” when describing the scenarios, he drops us into the action with horrifying clarity. Through his diction, Ram portrays the monotony of daytoday life and the
It is an undeniable and essential fact of life that our society is controlled by money. Those who are affluent flourish in such systems while the poor are deprived. The novel Q&A by Vikas
Swarup serves as an in depth and riveting tale regarding the less fortunate people of India. It follows the protagonist Ram Mohammad Thomas as he explains how he knew all ten answers in the game show, Who Will Win A Billion? “My departure from Asia’s biggest slum would make no difference to their lives. There would be the same queue for water in the morning, the same daily struggle to make it to the seventhirty local in time. They wouldn’t even bother to find out the reason for my arrest.
Come to think of it, when the two constables barged into my hut, even I didn’t. When your whole existence is ‘illegal,’ when you live on the brink of penury in an urban wasteland where you jostle for every inch of space and have to queue even for a shit, arrest has a certain inevitability about it. You are conditioned to believe that one day there will be a warrant with your name on it, that eventually a jeep with a flashing red light will come for you” (2). Within the first few pages of Swarup’s Q&A, we learn that impoverishment has put Indians like
Ram Mohammad Thomas in a miserable situation — the poor are completely outcast from society. Like in the days of the Hindu Caste System, they have truly have become pariahs who are assumed to participate in at least one felony in their lifetime. In this particular section of the book, the reader is first associated with the theme of the effects of poverty. The rawness of Ram’s tone as he presents the facts urges the reader to sympathize with those being mistreated. By using more personal terms like “you” and “your” when describing the scenarios, he drops us into the action with horrifying clarity. Through his diction, Ram portrays the monotony of daytoday life and the