Cultural Spectrum in Arvind Adiga’s Selection Days

Abstract

Cultural Studies have played a pivotal role in understanding and evaluating the power dynamics of the social, political, economic and ethical world order by empirically engaging and focusing on the present-day culture, tracing its historical roots and explicating its attributes with reference to a particular literary text and its reception in a society. Arvind Adiga, the Man-Booker Prize winning Indo-Australian author, in Selection Day, has adroitly detailed how cricket as an individual entity impacts the cultural phenomena of a society by confronting its inherent myriad issues. The narrative delves deep into the lives of two siblings – Radha and Manju, witnesses the dramatic turnaround of events and tries to capture the themes of unfulfilled desires and preordained destinies. The novel also explores how the sport holds different meanings and significance for different characters, each of whom view the game in the light of their own ideology. The author foresees and sensitizes the theme of homosexuality, which is still a taboo and been unheard of, within the sports fraternity. Adiga’s critique of the parental felony, embodied in Mohan Kumar, and its repercussions is the most compelling theme at the heart of this work of fiction. Selection Day powerfully binds together the societal phenomena of class construction, unquenchable thirst for money, sexual orientations and ideologies with a single thread and studies how culture, in itself, is an ever-evolving phenomenon.