Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil is put together with the novel The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga.

1. Reading Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis as a
Continuum of Aravind Adiga’s Dark India Exploration

2. Thayil has been writing poetry since his
adolescence. In his prose, as in his poetry, he
has introduced new areas of feelings and
emotions to Indian literature, and has often
concerned himself with the pleasures and
pains of drugs and alcohol, sex and death that
are not traditionally connected with the
firmament of Indian literature.
About Narcopolis, Thayil said, “I've
always been suspicious of the novel that paints
India in soft focus, a place of loved children
and loving elders, of monsoons and mangoes
and spices. To equal Bombay as a subject you
would have to go much further than the merely
nostalgic will allow. The grotesque may be a
more accurate means of carrying out such an
enterprise.”

3. The novel Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil fits into the recent literary wave of "Dark India", a body of
literary fiction which seems to have found a niche in the market, writing as it does of the underbelly of
Indian society: its slums, poverty, deprivations and destitutions (T.K.Pius).
Narcopolis, with its setting on Bombay's Shuklaji Street of the 1970s, and 1980s crowded with
opium dens and brothels, with its cast of drug addicts, drug peddlers, prostitutes, criminals, and even a
eunuch is a book which definitely sets out to depict a nonshining India, which may be a more faithful
representation than what it had been the norm up until recently, of the exotic, lush, extravagant India
(T.K.Pius).
The book mainly chases the story of a ‘hijra’ named Dimple and through her into question of
gender, religion, consciousness and the minds of other characters. The opening sentence of Narcopolis
begins: “Bombay, which obliterated its own history by changing its name and surgically altering its face, is
the hero or heroine of this story.” Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis shows the whole other intricate side of Mumbai.
What Narcopolis does is that it gives us a chance to re-read the history of Bombay, the history which is not
captured in the history book.

4.  The time is the 1970s, drifting into later decades, and the narrative spotlight soon falls on one such
resident, Dimple, a girlish eunuch who, having grown up in a brothel, is now both a prostitute and a sort
of moral center; more important, Dimple expertly packs the opium pipes that are consumed in Rashid’s
den, sucked up by an avid clientele. As time goes on, the cast of characters enlarges: One of particular
interest is a Chinese exile, Mr. Lee, who has had a dangerous falling out with a prominent leader back
home but wants nothing more than to return there, whether alive or otherwise. As time goes on, too, pipes
give way to needles, and the city changes its tenor as the drug diet changes, never for the good. Asks
Dimple: “Tell me why Chemical is freely available when there are no tomatoes in the market.” The
answer: “Because...the city belongs to the politicians and the crooks and some of the politicians are more
crooked than the most crooked of the crooks. (KIRKUS)

5. The story is set in Bombay, at a time when Hindu-Muslim tensions are about to flare up, the pavement
stone killer is making headlines for smashing homeless people’s sleeping skulls, and the nights are full of
promise, perversions and endless nasha. It all takes place on Shuklaji Street, the dilapidated hub of sin in a
cosmopolitan city where dreams hang upside down on sale, where behind closed doors hide opium dens,
and its gutters overflow with poverty and sodomy, and on its gully walk pimps, prostitutes, beggars and
thieves all gambling fate for a living.
According to Jeet, “Mumbai mingles with people, creates problems for people, provides pleasure to the
people, and thrashes people”. The novel traverses through the smoke alley of Mumbai’s drug world.
Mumbai is as the central theme of the novel and presents a discerning image of the city with the help of the
characters, their relationships, behaviors and the style of living.

6.  The novel is broken up into four ―books. Book One, ―The City of O, begins with Dom‘s arrival in
Bombay. It is the late 1970s, and he quickly weaves himself into the fabric of Bombay‘s sordid
underbelly, specifically, the opium dens. Here he meets Rashid, owner of a khana on Shuklaji Street
where much of the novel takes place; Dimple, the beautiful hijra who works for Rashid preparing bowls
of opium; ―Bengali, who manages Rashid‘s money; Rumi, the unflinchingly confrontational
businessman whose addiction is violence; Newton Xavier, the celebrated painter who both rejects and
craves adulation; Mr. Lee, the Chinese refugee and businessman; and a cast of poets, prostitutes, pimps,
and gangsters. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. The seduction of
opium beckons even the most stalwart of men.
 This is a book about drugs, sex, death, perversion, addiction, love, and god. Above all, it is a fantastical
portrait of a beautiful and damned generation in a nation about to sell its soul. Written in Thayil‘s poetic
and affecting prose, Narcopolis charts the evolution of a great and broken metropolis.

7. In The White Tiger, Adiga bares the startling reality of a nation where unplanned, haphazard urbanization and
colonization is suffocating the already overburdened infrastructure, where the social fabric is being stretched to a
breaking point, where poverty, corruption, disease, moral degradation still rule the day where every known
tradition is being put to test.
Corruption in politics & education, pollution, prostitution, Hit & run, failure of governmental institution, Rich v/s poor
conflict, Religion, Capitalism v/s Marxism, Business model of India(entrepreneurs), Globalization and changing morality,
two sides of India-Darkness and Light are beautifully merged into single plot in humorous and satirical way.
The novel critically analyses the effects of unbridled capitalism on an emerging economy like India, and the social injustice
and inequalities that it entails. The White Tiger throws into relief the discrepancy between the crushing rural poverty from
which the protagonist Balram emerges, and India's new -found status of a Modern global economy (Ringo).
Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don’t have entrepreneurs. And our nation,
though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or
punctuality, does have entrepreneurs (Adiga 4).
For this land, India has never been free. First the Muslims, then the British bossed us around. In 1947 the British left, but
only a moron would think that we became free then (Adiga 21-22).

8.  There was supposed to be a free food at my school- a government programme gave every boy three
rotlis yellow daal , and pickles at lunchtime. But we never saw rotlis yellow daal , or pickles, and
everyone knew why : the school teacher had stolen our lunch money. The teacher had a legitimate excuse
to steal the money- he said he hadn’t been paid his salary in six months (Adiga 32-33).
 Once, a truck came into the school with uniforms that the government had sent for us; we never saw
them, but a week later they turned up for sale in the neighbouring village.
 No one blamed the school teacher for doing this. You can’t expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet.
(Adiga 33)
 There is no duster in the class; there are no chairs; there are no uniforms for the boys. How much money
have you stolen from the school funds ? (Adiga 35)

9.  Like eunuchs discussing the Kama Sutra, the voters discuss the elections in Laxmangarh.
 I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth (Adiga 102).
 You have got a good scam going here- taking coal for free from the government mines. You have got it
going because I let it happen. You were just some little Landlord when I found you.
I am not a politician or a parliamentarian. No one of those extraordinary men who can kill and move on,
as if nothing had happened.
Its amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.

10.  Both the novels narrates the darker shades of the Nation.
 The White Tiger and Narcopolis has generated tremendous response both from the literary and
academic circle. Critics have equally been lavish in praising the books as they have been in
condemning it. Hailed as extraordinary and brilliant, thrilling and insightful, witty and
unpretentious, the novels are considered as some of the most powerful books published in
decades by some. Critics have also opined that the novels are tedious and uncanny,
disappointing and absurd, patronizing and officious, reading more like the thriller magazines
without any moral purpose or justification.

11. Work cited :
Adiga, Arvind. The White Tiger. 15th. Noida: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008. Print.
KIRKUS. Jeet Thayil Narcopolis : Book review. 25 12 2018 <https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-
reviews/jeff-thayil/narcopolis/>.
Koteshwar, K. "Another One Bites the Dark: Reading Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis as aContinuum of Aravind
Adiga’s Dark India Exploration." International Journal of The Frontiers of English Literature and The
Patterns of ELT 1.1 (2013): 1 to 14. pdf. 2021 06 10.
T.K.Pius, Dr. "The Thematic and Narrative features of Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis." IOSR Journal of Humanities
and social science 19.12 (2014): 54-68.