Q & A (novel)

Q & A

First edition
Author	Vikas Swarup
Country	India
Language	English
Genre	Drama
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	2005
Pages	304
ISBN	0-385-60813-6
OCLC	57564932
Dewey Decimal	813/.6 22
LC Class	PR9499.4.S93 Q13 2005

Q & A is a novel by Vikas Swarup,^[1] an Indian diplomat. Published in 2005, it was the author's first novel. Set in India, it tells the rags to riches story of Ram Mohammad Thomas, a young waiter who becomes the biggest quiz show winner in history, only to be sent to jail on accusations that he cheated. Over the course of the novel, Ram Mohammed Thomas gives flashbacks of his life to explain to the police how he knew the answers to the show's questions - including the corruption he was faced with and had to overcome. The book is about destiny vs luck, and personal dedication. In 2008, the book was loosely adapted into the multiple Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, which features a new main character named Jamal and his brother Salim. The movie is a comment on how poverty and corruption poison the human spirit, and how to retain one's true self in the face of adversity.

Inspirations

The idea behind the story line was triggered by a report in a local newspaper about children living in the Indian slums using mobile phones and the internet - an indication that class barriers were breaking down. At the same time, Charles Ingram, an ex-British Army Major, was accused and found guilty of cheating in the British version of the television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? To quote Swarup: “If a British army major can be accused of cheating, then an ignorant tiffin boy from the world's biggest slum can definitely be accused of cheating.”

Reception

Q & A won the South Africa's Boeke Prize 2006.^[2] It was also nominated for the Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and won the Prix Grand Public at the 2007 Paris Book Fair.

To date, the book has sold translation rights in 43 languages, including Arabic, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Finnish, Slovenian, Croatian, Turkish, Icelandic, Chinese, Polish, Russian (Question — Answer), Norwegian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Hindi, Gujarati (as Jackpot), Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Sinhala, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and Hebrew (both as The Riddle Boy from Mumbai), and Portuguese.

Novel Characters

Ram Mohammad Thomas: The main character, who tells his life story to the lawyer he met in the strip club. He is in love with Nita and believes firmly in destiny. He possesses a "lucky" coin that he uses when confronted with big decisions—but both sides are "heads". Generally, he has a very pessimistic and realistic view of life. His name stands for three religions because it is unknown which religion his parents had. He is an orphan like Shiva.

Salim Ilyasi: Ram's best friend and cousin, who has dreams of becoming a Bollywood movie star. When he was younger, a fortuneteller predicted that he would be more famous than his Bollywood idol, which spurred on his dreams. He is two years younger than Ram and very handsome, with a clear, musical voice. He also believes firmly in destiny. To sum up, his character is coined as young and childish, compared to Ram Mohammed Thomas.

Prem Kumar: The host of the quiz show Who Will Win a Billion? (or W3B). It is later revealed that he is the man who abused Ram's former employer and Nita. Ram joins the show to take revenge. By the end of the book, he has helped Ram win the show and commits suicide in his car, though Ram suspects the show's producers had a hand in his death, since Ram wasn't supposed to win the quiz show.

Smita Shah: Ram's lawyer and childhood friend. She saves him from torture and listens to his story. Though she is skeptical at first, she slowly comes to believe what he is telling her. Her real name is Gudiya, and she was the abused girl he mentioned in one of his stories — he promised to be like a brother to her and protect her so he pushed her drunkard father down the stairs.

Nita: A young prostitute with whom Ram falls in love. It is a tradition within her culture to send the most beautiful girl in the family to be a prostitute. She bitterly tells Ram not to call her beautiful because that is the reason she was chosen instead of her plain-looking sister. Her brother is her pimp, so she implores Ram not to kill him. At the end of the book, she and Ram are married.

Shankar: A gentle friend who has a speech defect and is Swapna Devi's unacknowledged son who is bitten by a mad dog, gets rabies and dies. When he was very young, he caught his mother and uncle in bed together and, as a result, his mother kicked him out. He still has the mind of a six-year-old boy and cries out coherently for his "Mummy", in his dreams, when he is delirious from rabies. He has a blue notebook full of pictures that he has drawn for and of his mother.

Neelima Kumari: A famous actress who plays only female (tragic) lead roles and wants to stay "young" forever. Ram spent some time with her as a servant. She is based on Meena Kumari. Known as the "Tragedy Queen," she is abused by Prem Kumar but refuses to turn him in, saying that a true Tragedy Queen must possess real sadness in her life. She commits suicide, wanting to be remembered as the young and beautiful actress, but the police find her body a month later — after it has decomposed.

Movie Characters

Jamal: The main character, who lives as a "chai wallah"^[1] (tea server) in Mumbai when he reconnects with his brother Salim, triggering his reunion with his childhood love, Latika.

Salim: Jamal's brother, who falls to corruption, gangs, and murder in order to survive and protect Jamal, whom he later estranges. His redemption arc is the close second side-story in the movie, alongside the great love story between Jamal and Latika, as well as Jamal's rise to fame in the show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?^[1]

Latika: An orphan girl that Jamal and Salim met after a raid on their shanty. She stayed with them throughout their journey into the "orphanage" where the head man maimed children in order to get them to earn more when begging. After Jamal and Salim escape, she is left behind by Salim(maliciously), and is later found married to the head of the gang who tortured and harassed them as children.

Themes and Motives

In the novel Q&A,^[1] the themes are: luck, destiny, self-preservation, hope, and personal determination.

Men are perceived as evil and corrupt, and women are perceived as innocent and weak. There is only one exception to this. A good man allows his gold-digging voodoo girlfriend to corrupt him, and they make a voodoo doll of his brother, which allows them to inadvertently kill him. The man regrets this, only seeing the truth after his brother's death, and the woman is perceived as the corrupt one.

In the movie Slumdog Millionaire,^[3] the themes are: true love, determination, corruption vs subservience, poverty, and ultimately greed.

Jamal loves Latika from the moment they meet, and does everything he can to find her after Salim allows her to be left behind at the orphanage. He sneaks into her house when he finds her again years later married to the head of the gang, and declares his love for her. Latika is bitter and jaded by this point. She knows that life with her husband is horrible, but it is better than a life of poverty. Jamal eventually convinces her to leave him, but she is caught, scarred, and later escapes to see him on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? when Salim allows her to escape, finalizing his redemption arc by sacrificing himself in order for them to be happy.

Chapters (named after how much he earns from answering each game show question right)

1,000 The Death of a Hero - The novel opens with Ram Mohammed Thomas being kidnapped by the police at night. This is a normal occurrence for Indians, apparently, and he has been terrified of it for years because of the fact that over the course of his life, he has taken lives and committed crimes in order to survive. The police torture him, and question him about the quiz show he starred in, Who Wants To Win a Billion? Ram won the quiz show before the producers had enough money to actually award a first-prize winner, and the police are trying to get Ram to admit that he cheated in order to say that he does not deserve the prize.

2,000 The Burden of a Priest - Salim's hero is (Armaan Ali). Salim idolizes Armaan Ali and refuses to believe any bad rumours about him. The plot summary was about how they go and watch an action movie about Arraman Ali. Then a man comes into the movie halfway through and trys to touch Salim in the Cinema. Salim reacts when he tries to touch his crotch and runs after him; he pulls off the mans fake beard and realizes that it is the movie star Arraman Ali. This is how Ram knew the first question.

5,000 A Brother's Promise - This chapter covers the early years of Ram's life. It is explained that Ram was abandoned at an orphanage shortly after birth. His dark skin means he was not popular amongst adoptive parents. Father Timothy takes him in after Ram was adopted and shortly after abandoned by his foster parents, who divorced. He gave him a Christian, Muslim, and Hindu name to protect him from the civil wars raging in India. There he learned to speak English. Ram also learned everything about the Catholic church, which is how he knew the answer to the second question.

10,000 A Thought for the Crippled - In this chapter, a family run by a husband who has lost his job moves into the chawl where Ram and Salim are staying. The father beats and sexually harasses his daughter Gudiya. During the chapter the daughter gets sent to the hospital and Ram promised her that he would look after her cat Pluto (who is killed by the father). At the end of the chapter, Ram thinks that he kills her father when he pushes the older man off of the highest floor of their building. He flees to avoid persecution. This is how he knows the third question (which is about the smallest planet in the solar system: Pluto).

50,000 How to speak Australian - This is where Ram is explaining his life to his lawyer, Smita, who has come to his rescue. In this chapter, Ram is a juvenille in an orphanage where he was taken after the death of father Timothy who took care of him. he meets a lot of boys like him and many with different backgrounds. Later in this chapter he and his new found friend Salim are chosen by Sethji, a man known to change young peoples lives. In Mumbai, Ram discovers what Sethji real plan is and also learns about how he maims helpless children in order to make money. It is also in this chapter where Ram is given a lucky coin. Ram and Salim run away from the orphanage and move to Mumbai.

100,000 Hold on your Buttons - This chapter is all about when Ram is living in Dharavi, Mumbai, and he is working as a barman at Jimmy's Bar. Ram learns how to up his tips by taking advantage of peoples drunkenness by getting them to buy more. However, through this learning experience, Ram meets some unusual characters; one in particular, who tells him all about his Haitian wife and his brother who died of a heart attack. The poor man is in despair as he pours out his story to Ram that he stole money from his brother, and his wife, who is a voodoo priestess, makes him, Prakash Rao, a voodoo doll of his brother. Prakash Rao admits to Ram that he had the guilty pleasure of taking all his troubles out on the voodoo doll of his brother, giving him painful headaches and small heartattacks. Prakash Rao soon found out that his brother died a week ago of a major heart attack that he had caused through the voodoo doll. This is how Ram knows the answer to the fourth question.

200,000 Murder on the Western Express - ^[4] Ram has to travel to Mumbai to see Salim after working for the Taylors. He travels with his 50,000 rupess he had earned form working. He meets a family, tells their son about the money, then a robber comes in and the son rats him out because he was jealous of the money Ram had. Then Ram ends up killing one of the robbers by shooting him in order to protect the beautiful daughter of the family, but the other robber vanished with his money. This is how he knows the answer to the fifth question.

500,000 A Soldier's Tale - Ram is living in a bunker: there is a war starting between India and Pakistan. An old servant tells heroic war stories about himself that inspire everyone. When the army comes to speak to the people in the bunker, it turns out that the story-teller is a liar. It leads Ram to the answer at the sixth question: which distinction you get if you did great deeds in war. The Param Vie Chackra.

1,000,000 Licence to Kill^[5] - In this chapter, Licence to Kill, Ram talks about meeting his best friend Salim after five years. First he didn’t really want to see him. But then, when they both sat down on a bench watching little kids playing football, they realized how much they missed each other and started talking about the time when they didn’t saw each other. Salim talked about his past in which very much happened. He followed his dream to become an artist. He asked Mukesh Rawal if he could get a part in a film and he replied that he had to take some professional pictures and show them to him. Then he would become a junior artist. Junior artists play in the film a role for a few seconds and are only on the screen for about three seconds. But that’s a good beginning for him. When Salim has taken these pictures, he got caught by a mob. The mob was going to burn him in a bus in which he was. But fortunately there was a man named Ahmed who threatened the criminals with a gun. So they could escape and Ahmed took Salim to his home. From now on, Salim cleaned the house of Ahmed and looked after it, when Ahmed wasn’t in the house. Ahmed was a man who bet on Indian cricket games and always won. After a while, Salim noticed, that strange things were happening. Things such as Ahmed receiving yellow letters which contained the information about a person and then a few weeks later, it was announced on the criminal news, that this person had been murdered. Salim found out that Ahmed was the man who killed these persons and once he saw that Ahmed had to kill Abbas Rizvi, who was a producer who had promised to Salim that he would make a star out of Salim. So Salim changed the photo with a photo of Mr Babu Pillai, alias Maman. Maman was the man who almost blinded the two boys. Then Salim got out of the house and didn’t come back. A few months later, Salim heard that Ahmed was killed by the police in a shoot-out.

Then, there is the change to the studio, where Prem Kumar asked the last question: “How many test centuries has India’s greatest batsman Sachin Malvankar scored?” Ram’s choices were a) 34, b) 35, c) 36 or d) 37. He answered c) 36 and won a million rupees.

10,000,000 Tragedy Queen- Ram lives as a servant in the house of Neelima Kumari, once a famous actress. The time Ram lives at her place, he discovers the sad and lonely life of an actress’s faded glory. She was beaten and hurt by an unknown man. Neelima commits suicide in order to remain beautiful forever, but her body isn’t found until weeks later, when it is ugly and decomposed. After all this, Ram could answer the question about Neelima Kumari in the quiz show.

100,000,000 A Love Story - Ram ends up in a place near the Taj Mahal. He starts earning money by illegally guiding tourists. He meets a group of rich boys, who take him to an expensive restaurant and to the Red Light District of Mumbai. He has sex with a young prostitute, Nita, and falls in love with her. She also loves him, but can’t leave the brothel because of her brother who forces her to prostitute. Nita’s brother tells Ram he needs 400.000 rupees to buy Nita free. He steals the money from the woman where he is living, but gives it to a man who begs him to give the money to him to buy the medicines of his deathly sick son. At he question in the quiz show, he calls this man because he is a teacher. He doesn’t know the answer, but Ram answers it right. In which of the plays of Shakespeare is one of the characters named ‘Costard’? The answer is Love labour’s lost.

1,000,000,000 The Thirteenth Question - The last question has arrived, but Ram doesn’t know the answer. In the break, Ram wants to shoot Prem Kumar, the quiz master, because it turns out that Prem was also the unknown man who hurt Neelima. Ram forces Prem to give the right answer, and wins the show.

Epilogue - Ram finished his story, which he was telling to his lawyer, Smita. Smita tells him that she is not named Smita. She is Gudiya, the daughter of Mr. Bapat, whom Ram thought he had killed – but in reality, Mr. Bapat had only broken his arm and completely reformed himself. Now she knows Ram did not cheat, and she helps free him.

Notes

External links

• Slumdog "Millionaire riveting despite changes: Swarup" - Times of India
• "Slumdog has my stamp of approval says Vikas" - Times of India
• "The Hole in the Wall Project" - Dr Sugata Mitra