What Bollywood does not count is in 'The age of vice': an India of corruption, inequality and mafia

Cultural codes also read for one.

What some describe as one of the publishing phenomena of the year, the novel

, is not read the same in Uttar Pradesh, the Indian state where its author, Deepti Kapoor, was born 42 years ago, as in Los Angeles, where they work in a hurry to turn it into a series.

Where her compatriots perceive the different tensions of Indian society (the old caste segregation has now been added to the segregation of money), the Americans enjoy the entertainment of allowed mafias and forbidden passions in the style of

.

saga

of Stieg Larsson because, like the Swedish author, she also X-rays without any sweetener the darkest side of her country, be it through sexual violence, abuse of power, collusion between politicians and criminals or the bath of alcohol and drugs of its protagonists.

However, the most unexpected literary reference will be offered by the writer at the end of the interview in a Lisbon cafe, carried out two weeks before her trip to Madrid to promote her book, which Alfaguara has just published with a translation by Ana Alcaina Pérez and Laura Martin of God

It is the first cold morning of this winter, and before posing for the photos in the Plaza de las Flores in the Portuguese capital where Kapoor settled four years ago with her English husband, she shares her enthusiasm for Rafael Chirbes: "I read

because I saw my story reflected in that world of corruption and speculation that he tells”.

The Age of Vice

is a 600-page novel, which will continue in two other installments to complete a trilogy of almost 2,000.

In 2019 it was the most persecuted work at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

He has it all to catch: crime, corruption, tyranny, conspiracies, debauchery, and, in small doses, love, admiration, and loyalty.

Also three characters handcuffed by a tragic fate that never appears in Bollywood musicals.

It is not surprising that the book fueled an auction among 20 television production companies to gain the audiovisual rights and that it will be distributed in 16 countries.

The writer is still digesting all those expectations: “I had never experienced anything like this before.

My first novel [

] was small, with few reviews, let's just say it died down soon.

This is a trilogy that will have a series on television, it is a kind of product.

I'm still trying to figure out how to fit all of this together, it's a strange feeling."

“I read 'Crematorio', by Chirbes, totally fascinated because I saw my story reflected in that world of corruption and speculation that he recounts”

Kapoor's second book had a worse life.

Set in the world of yoga, which she knew well from her former job as a teacher, it did not arouse editorial interest.

"My agent at the time encouraged me to write about wealthy people who had crazy stories that I knew, sort of like the Delhi Gatsby, very rich people who cause a lot of pain because they have power and hide behind their wealth."

This contempt for the suffering of others is the engine of

, which begins with the imprisonment of the false culprit of a hit-and-run, where five emigrants who were sleeping on the shoulder die.

Something that, according to the author, happens in her country: "There are traffic accidents in which suddenly the person who was behind the wheel stops being behind the wheel and a poor driver goes to jail instead of her."

When she composed the literary puzzle with three basic pieces, the outcast Ajay, the heir to the mafia family Sunny Wadia and the disbelieving journalist Neda Kapur, the writer was content to leave behind the novel about an Indian Gatsby to show the social complexity of the country. .

“India was never perfect and it was always a poor country, but in the 1990s there was a financial crisis and reforms were introduced.

We slowly moved from a semi-socialist economy to a capitalist one, and suddenly money started flowing in many cities.”

From the freedoms and opportunities a new middle class was born, which benefited people like Deepti Kapoor, who studied Journalism in Delhi, but all the urban and economic expansion, with the arrival of multinationals attracted by opportunities and an English-speaking population, created new gaps .

The suburbs were growing so fast with executive salaries.

“The foundation of this world was made on extreme inequality and suffering”, affirms the author.

“I wanted to show the glamour, the opulence and the privilege, but also draw back the curtain to show the rot that is behind it”.

“In my country there are traffic accidents in which suddenly the person who was behind the wheel stops driving and a poor driver goes to jail in his place”

The new rot is superimposed on the old social segregation of Hinduism, where the Dalit caste has no rights.

Despite the political advances made since the 1940s with positive actions to favor their integration, discrimination is perpetuated.

“I think there is more knowledge about the atrocities against Dalits, but the violence, the inequality and the pain remain.

Every day you can read a story about some Dalit being beaten or killed.

In rural India ancient customs are maintained, although in the cities they can find a space to have an anonymous life.

On his last trip to India, Kapoor met with a young couple for his research.

“They have gone to university and they work, but no one in the boy's office knows that he is a Dalit because if he says so, he thinks they will start treating him differently.

There are still a lot of painful stories."

In the novel, the false culprit of the outrage is the Dalit Ajay, who was a child sold by his mother to settle a debt and who will become the assistant for everything to Sunny Wadia, son of an all-powerful mafia boss who dreams of being better. than his father while saturated with substances, alcohol, food and sex.

The bulimia typical of the nouveau riche.

Western readers – and Los Angeles producers – love Ajay.

“He is the heart of my novel.

I got the inspiration when I was in the mountains, traveling through the Himalayas, and I met a boy who had been sent by his family to work.

He lived alone, like an orphan, but he was full of hope and optimism.

So I decided to combine his story with that of the young people who worked in the mansions of the rich.

When I was a journalist I attended many parties where these young men were as servants or chauffeurs, always somewhat withdrawn and always watching to make sure you didn't lack for anything.

I wondered about their lives and their origins.”

The Indian writer Deepti Kapoor, in Lisbon's Flower Square in mid-January. JOAO HENRIQUES (JOAO HENRIQUES / EL PAIS)

It is easier for an individual to break traditions than for an entire country.

Deepti Kapoor broke some of her in her family, conservative and upset after the death of her father when she was 19 years old.

That loss of hers was followed by the loss of her first boyfriend, so in addition to burying her idealized dreams of college life, she became the official rebel of the family.

She burned the pain and rage by stepping on the accelerator of her car through the streets of Delhi, then a city in full conversion towards furious capitalism, with all the opportunities and baseness of it.

That magma burns in

That pain and that rage founded her as a writer.

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