Bus #44; 6:12 a.m.
Pages read: 95-107
I need to vent, so I am adding to my earlier post.
Erotophonophilia is the topic of the casual reading of the servants in India. Or at least that is what Adiga/Balram asserts. A very popular magazine that all chauffeurs read while waiting for their masters to return from a night of revelry is "Murder Weekly." Murder Weekly contains stories like, "A Good Body Never Goes to Waste." Balram assures that the magazine doesn't fuel any violence b/c "...the murderer in the magazine is so mentally disturbed and sexually deranged that not one reader would want to be like him...." pg. 105. Adiga adds a lighthearted funny follow up, "It's when your driver starts to read about Gandhi and Buddha that it's time to wet your pants...." pg 105 In the context of casual humor this subject makes me sick, regardless of any literary purpose. Though I don't believe that Adiga's writings will promote or condone the practice (vast numbers of "The White Tiger" readers seeking out such materials), I just think it is inappropriate. My opinion unjustified? You can probably make a very accurate rebuttal to my opinion. But I still feel a line has been crossed. The context (subtle/casual humor) of which this criminal behavior is tossed about is unsettling at best.
Perhaps I feel this way b/c I work in the field of criminal law. I read and hear accounts of unbelievably horrific crimes on a daily basis: child sexual abuse, rape, torture, murder. These things really happen to people. And I cannot read something like this without being flooded with unwanted thoughts of the real life victims; the real life individuals who perpetrate the crime; and those real life individuals who read these materials. The truth makes the depiction of it in a lighthearted manner deplorable.
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