Adiga's Lost World: Mangalore

The coveted Booker Prize to Arvind Adiga is being taken as an honour to the entire academic community of this port city, Mangalore.

School chums and friends of Arvind Adiga, this year's Booker winner, in Mangalore are surprised thrilled. "That quiet boy," is how he is referred to by those who had associated with him in his school days.

Arvind had his schooling in Canara High school in Dongarekeri, and later in St. Aloysius High School till 1990. After tenth standard he moved over to Sydney where he completed his further education.

His father Dr. Madhav Adiga is a paediatrician settled in Sydney.

Fr. Peter Pinto former Principal of the St.Aloysius High school remembers young Adiga as a quiet boy who had stuck to his studies. He was pleasant in demeanour but broody at times, the teacher recalls.

Teacher, Krishna Bhat of Canara High school expressed happiness over Arvind Adiga's winning the coveted prize. He said, "it is a surprise and it's an honour for the entire academic community of Mangalore." This city has bred many noble souls and litterateurs. And, the mind of a Mangalorean, no matter life takes him, comes back to his good old city like a homing pigeon, he says.

Arvind's mother died when he was in tenth standard and his step mother Gayathri took care of him. In a way, The White Tiger, his maiden book that won the honour has a whiff of his surrounding in which he grew up. "It's a live story happening all the time," said a research student who has read the excerpts of the book in the media.

Adiga's ancestors were from Udupi and belong to the Madhwa sect of Brahmins.
Prominent citizens of Mangalore are planning a felicitation for the "golden boy."

Now, most Mangaloreans are avidly reading on the net his article titled, "My Lost world" he wrote in Time in 2006. It's a story of Mangalore two decades after he left it. The sea-change that has swept the dear old city is unbelievable.

He concludes as follows: For me, that small, steep, winding road--which connects my old primary school, St. Aloysius, to the high school up the hill--is the physical embodiment of a rite of passage. I had gone up this road as a 13-year-old on my first day at high school. From the top of the hill, I had a fine view of the city. Two decades ago, when you stood at a high point like that and looked down on Mangalore, the city's puny buildings all vanished, submerged beneath a canopy of coconut palms. That was when you felt a sense of contempt for Mangalore and dreamed of going somewhere big. But now you see concrete towers with dozens of metal rods sticking out of their sides, as if they were ripping a path for themselves through the trees. You cannot feel contempt for Mangalore now. You feel a sense of awe at how profoundly it has changed. But if you look a bit longer at the scene, you cannot avoid a faint inkling of something like fear.