Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower: The Locus of Ambivalence in Modern India

Abstract

The social institutions are dying from the morbid nature of capitalism. Capitalism proliferates the surreptitious credo and consumes the pillar of the whole nation. Furthermore, at present, many institutions are used to perpetuate capitalist ideology among the youth of a nation. The rise of the neoliberal agenda keeps propagating the belief that it is not that hard to find success if one works hard enough, normalizing the notion that the youth should blame themselves for their failures. However, the consequences are totally opposite and cruel. This leads to an ambivalent state of mind. In addition, academic institutions attempt to resist such a juggernaut. But it seems to be losing credibility by succumbing to the individualized rise. Similarly, Last Man In Tower by Aravind Adiga documents the rivalry of two men who are interested in owning the same flat in Mumbai. The novel sees neighbour turn against neighbour as their determination to secure the flat, each for his own purposes, causes them to participate in increasingly dastardly schemes. The novel revolves around the theme of greed and how it has the power to drive us to do things of which we never dreamed we were capable. The core essence of this paper is to focus upon the factors that led to the ambiguous state of mind among the people of the "Vishram Society" and what types of solutions have been offered to the so-called "Vishramites" by the capitalist and ambiguous Dharmen Shah. Not only that, Masterji, the representative of academia, persists in the socialistic norms but gets murdered by his own society members. Things become more horrible when all the members get what they were willing to give but yet everyone is suffering from guilt. It exposes the sense of self in a globalised world that either forces assassination, murder, or suicide. Although slower economic growth, widening inequality, societal divisions, amending laws, "individual happiness” raise disturbing questions about contemporary ideas of national development, Maybe this is an era of indiscriminate capitalism. Here Adiga leaves us with an ambiguous question. "Who is right—the champions of idealism or the practical developers of glittering cities that promise to take India out of centuries of backwardness?"