79 pages • 2 hours read
Vikas SwarupQ & A
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaPrologueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The narrative begins with Ram Mohammed Thomas, a penniless waiter, being arrested in the middle of the night for winning a television quiz show. Thomas explains that arrests are commonplace in Dharavi, also known as “Asia’s biggest slum” (2). After the arrest, Thomas is taken to a hot and dirty interrogation room where he is accosted by Inspector Godbole. Godbole comments on the fact that Thomas’s name mixes “up all the religions” (3). Eventually, other men enter the room, among them Neil Johnson, a representative of the company that licenses the quiz show, and Billy Nanda, the show’s producer. After a lengthy conversation, it’s revealed that Thomas has won a billion dollars on the quiz show, but the company can’t afford to pay the prize. Instead, the show’s affiliates want the police to interrogate Thomas until he confesses to cheating so that he will have to forfeit the prize money.
With the other men gone, Godbole begins physically torturing Thomas. Although Thomas didn’t cheat, he thinks about confessing just to stop the pain. However, right before he confesses, a woman named Smita Shah comes into the room claiming to be Thomas’s lawyer. Thomas has no idea who Shah is and passes out. He wakes up at her house, and she tells him that she will protect him, but that she needs him to tell her how he knew the correct answers. Thomas agrees, and Shah plays a video recording of the quiz show so that Thomas can walk her through his time on the program.
Prologue Analysis
The prologue introduces the vast differences between the social classes in India, illustrating the injustice that the lower class faces at the hands of the often-corrupt upper class. Thomas, a waiter living in Mumbai’s largest slum, has been arrested for winning a billion rupees on a quiz show. Because the wealthy have the power in India, the show’s producers are able to have Thomas arrested and are hoping that the cops can force a confession of cheating out of him. What Thomas makes clear in the prologue is that the lower class are constantly being arrested, and that there is nobody to care or help them. Implicit in his arrest is the notion that a lower-class citizen couldn’t possibly possess the knowledge to win on the quiz show, thereby providing commentary on how the upper class perceives the lower class educationally. Finally, the fact that the corporation sponsoring the quiz show is unable to pay the amount to Thomas (or anyone, for that matter) when he does win can be seen as Swarup’s commentary on the contrast between what private, corporate entities promise to a community and what they actually deliver; Thomas is promised a billion rupees, and is instead tortured by police.
