How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Author : Mohsin Hamid
Publisher : Penguin, Rs499
The book seems to be written for Western readers. It does not reveal anything new to those residing in the subcontinent when it prescribes the essentials needed to get ‘filthy’ rich, writes Sonal Prakash
Mohsin Hamid’s latest book, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, compels you to forget your routine worries and engagements and dwell upon the kind of society we Asians are living in, particularly those of us who belong to the Indian subcontinent. The book, even as it is based in contemporary Pakistan, is starkly realistic, and for the most part, there is nothing in it that we Indians cannot identify with.
The book, resembling a self-help guide, documents a rags-to-riches story of a nameless Pakistani boy who emerges from his poverty-stricken surroundings to become an influential business tycoon. His journey from his bleak origins to someone who becomes a thriving water industrialist is fraught with difficulties and hardship that he circumvents to emerge as a brilliant success story.
The protagonist wants to brush off from his self the dirt and squalor into which he was born and brought up, and who stops at nothing when it comes to becoming ‘filthy rich’. Both the protagonist and his lady love, the pretty girl, as the narrator calls her, are blessed with a Machiavellian streak that keeps stimulating them to advance further and further in their pursuit of riches. This book will strike a chord with all those who have not had opportunities for proving their worth and acquiring wealth. We run into such people quite often who have no hesitation in bending the system to realise their dreams.
The male lead, in the novel, when he is young, and still resides in village, suffers from Hepatitis E, and his parents, because they do not have enough money to consult a doctor, whisk him away to the city. Here he is admitted to a school and taught by an inept teacher who believes in corporal punishment beating those students who know better than to simply repeat after him. After school he finds himself at university where he joins an organisation whose members are held in awe by fellow students. However, the readers see him gradually eschewing idealism and begin working, first with a dealer selling expired food products, and then starting his own enterprise that sells bottled water. He expands this trade by flouting rules with impunity and bribing his way through the red tape. His business becomes no less than an empire and the credit for it goes to his colluding liberally, and in an underhand manner, with those wielding power and authority such as Pakistan’s military, politicians and bureaucrats.
Going by the title of the book, it seems obvious that Asia is rising. The question that may perhaps nag the readers is to what extent is this claim genuine enough. In spite of gaining freedom from the colonial rule, the countries constituting the so-called rising Asia are ridden with all kinds of inequities at the political, economic and social levels. Countries like Pakistan have seen little in the way of development and its large population lives in abject poverty and deprivation. They confront all kinds of problems — to quote just one instance from the novel, the protagonist’s sick mother is not even ensured adequate medical treatment only because it is beyond her family’s reach.
Reading the novel is almost like biting into a slice of life, and on a number of occasions, one identifies with how things work in the ‘rising’ Asian economies, particularly in Pakistan — the rural and urban divide, dirt and filth in both villages and cities, rampant corruption, threats of terrorism, nepotism, poverty and despair, the all-powerful military and bureaucracy which have no compunctions about becoming party to venality if it suits their interest.
One must concede that Hamid’s experiments with how his stories should be narrated are always refreshing. If in, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the narrative was in the first person, then How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia has been told by a second-person who addresses the protagonist and instructs him on what steps he should take on his path towards achieving economic success. Hamid dispenses with the names of his characters; the characters in the novel could be just anyone in the ‘rising’ Asia trying to realise their ambitions. The reader is taken on a journey through the protagonist’s life with each chapter finding him a decade older and his business growing from strength to strength.
The novel, if seen through the prism of postcolonialism, reveals how little things have changed in ‘modern’ Pakistan even as the British left the country more than six decades ago.The narrator in How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, in the guise of an instructor in a self-help book, guides the protagonist to come to city, become educated, not fall in love, put aside idealism, court violence, befriend a bureaucrat, patronise military and get mired in debt. Taking his advice, the main character of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is able to ride the crest of financial success.
The problem is that Hamid does not reveal anything new when he prescribes the essentials to be followed in order to become rich — at least not to those who reside in the subcontinent. Here it is almost our second nature to bribe in order to get the smallest of government-related works accomplished. The book, therefore, appears to be written for the Western readers who are not so well acquainted with the executive and financial workings of the state in the newly emerging economies of Asia.
The novel, nevertheless, is a compelling read and even as one does not wait with baited breath for what occurs in the end, one is fully absorbed in the narrative recognising easily the situations that involve the central characters of this work.