Book Review: Mohsin Hamid's "How to Get ****** Rich in Rising Asia"

[RiazHaq]

It's a story of a sickly little village boy's rise in Pakistan from abject rural poverty to great urban wealth as a young man who falls in love with "the pretty girl", an equally ambitious fellow slum-dweller in the city.

Billed as a "how-to" book, Mohsin Hamid's “How to Get ****** Rich in Rising Asia” draws upon trends like increasing urbanization, rising middle-class consumption, growing entrepreneurship and widespread scams to weave a fascinating tale set in Hamid's hometown of Lahore. It's also a boy-meets-girl love story that takes many twists and turns and ends with the two lovers finally living together in their twilight years.

Along the way, Hamid, himself part of a ambitious new generation of Pakistani writers making it big on the global stage, touches upon the principal character's brushes with religious conservatives, unscrupulous politicians, corrupt bureaucrats and criminal gangs. Hamid shows how the protagonist successfully navigates through it all until he himself falls victim to fraud perpetrated by his young lieutenant.

Although the book does not explicitly name the places, the descriptions suggest that it's set mostly in Lahore, Hamid's home town, and Karachi which is described as "city by the sea".

The protagonist is a third-born poor kid transplanted by his father along with his mother and siblings from his village to the city. The order of his birth permits him to go to school while his older siblings forgo schooling to work and help the family make ends meet in the city.

The protagonist drops out of the university that he was admitted to and goes from being a DVD rental delivery boy to a successful entrepreneur with a thriving bottled water business. Later, he has an arranged marriage which produces a son but he continues to think of “the pretty girl” from the slum who is trying to climb higher as a fashion model in the "city by the sea".

As the protagonist grows old, he finds himself alone, divorced from his wife, and separated from his son studying in the US. The story ends with him finding "the pretty girl", the love of his life, till death does them apart.

Hamid's latest novel is hard to put down once you start reading it. It is meant to be read cover-to-cover in one sitting. His prior internationally-acclaimed and equally attention-grabbing works include Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The Reluctant Fundamentalist made the New York Times Best Seller List. It was also short-listed for Man Booker Prize. It has been made into a movie slated for release in the United States next month.

Haq's Musings: Mohsin Hamid Spins Rags to Riches Tale Set in Rising Pakistan

Here's a trailer of The Reluctant Fundamentalist:

 

[RiazHaq]

Pakistani-American playwright Ayad Akhtar wins the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to "Disgraced," by Ayad Akhtar, a moving play that depicts a successful corporate lawyer painfully forced to consider why he has for so long camouflaged his Pakistani Muslim heritage.
Finalists

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: "Rapture, Blister, Burn,” by Gina Gionfriddo, a searing comedy that examines the psyches of two women in midlife as they ruefully question the differing choices they have made; and "4000 Miles," by Amy Herzog, a drama that shows acute understanding of human idiosyncrasy as a spiky 91-year-old locks horns with her rudderless 21-year-old grandson who shows up at her Greenwich Village apartment after a disastrous cross-country bike trip.

The Pulitzer Prizes | Citation

 

[A.Rafay]

@RiazHaq why a word in your title of thread got blocked?? What is it?

 

[RiazHaq]

@RiazHaq why a word in your title of thread got blocked?? What is it?

It's a 6-letter adjective beginning with letter f and ending in letter y that is often used with rich.

Do a Google search for Mohsin Hamid and you'll find the title of his latest book.

I find this kind of censorship laughable.

 

[A.Rafay]

It's a 6-letter adjective beginning with letter f and ending in letter y that is often used with rich.

Do a Google search for Mohsin Hamid and you'll find the title of his latest book.

I find this kind of censorship laughable.

Its Filthyy Rich! Not really a good word to use in a book title.

 

[haviZsultan]

I have not read this book yet but wish to read it soon.

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's a WSJ interview of Mira Nair about The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the movie:

What led you, an Indian artist, to make this film about Pakistan?

Without my knowing it, this world had nourished me culturally. My father grew up in pre-partition Lahore, so I was raised Lahori in India, speaking Urdu, knowing Faiz's poetry, listening to Iqbal Bano's songs. As a child of modern India, I'd made a moving journey to Pakistan in 2004, when I was invited to speak because my films are popular there. We were treated like rock stars. The warmth, the refinement, the expression of the arts—music, painting—was dazzling. I'd stepped into a familiar culture and was inspired to make a tale of contemporary Pakistan. Six months later, Mohsin's book gave me the opportunity to show a Pakistan you never see in newspapers. Its dialogue with America was appealing because we don't see issues from two sides; it's always a monologue, never a conversation.

The novel is structured as a recollective monologue. You've added characters and changed the end. Was that for cinema purposes?

We haven't altered the spirit of the novel. The film is indebted to the tightrope that the protagonist walks in the novel. We don't know who Changez is. That propelled the screenwriting: What kind of fundamentalist is he? I wanted the Pakistani family to be real human characters. I changed the brother into a sister because "Muslim" movies are about men, but in Pakistan women are the heartbeat of every gathering. They're bawdy, strong, opinionated, beautiful. So I wanted a female—and made her a Bond-chick in Pakistan TV's longest-running comedy. We added a third act: In the novel, Changez returns to Pakistan. I wanted to know what he'd be doing there such that an American wants to talk to him. That makes the film timely, not dated. The world's changed: Osama was killed—before our eyes—and the CIA's Raymond Davis went shooting in Pakistani streets. These were uncanny happenings.

There are three screenwriters credited. Why so many?

I wanted a dialogue, an unpredictable meeting of equals, between Changez and Bobby, the American. Calling Hollywood A-listers, I was amazed by their ignorance [of Pakistan] and arrogance, so I picked Mohsin and Ami Boghani to write the first draft. We three did the second draft, about Pakistani life, in Lahore. Then I found Bill Wheeler to tie the skeins together. The four of us huddled together and mapped it out collaboratively before Bill rewrote it. Bill was humble about what he didn't know and very good at what he knew.

Were there logistical problems in filming in three continents?

That's the beauty of production. We shot "Istanbul" in one 18-hour day in an old Delhi orphanage. Only the exteriors were shot in Turkey. The Lahore scenes were shot over 20 days in Old Delhi—the tea house built in a 16th-century structure—with four days in Lahore's streets. New York interiors were shot in Atlanta, which gives a 40% tax rebate, with only four days in New York. We hired 150 Filipinos, put them in hard hats and made a Philippine factory in hi-tech Noida, outside Delhi. I didn't want to sacrifice the globalization—the film's about the divided self in this era: Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? Where will you matter? These are the questions today. I didn't want to reduce that scope. I worked with my old team, hired local crews, shot digitally. Knowing how to cut costs comes with experience.

The film contrasts Wall Street's corporate culture with the old-world refinement of middle-class Pakistanis......

Mira Nair Engages Contemporary Pakistan - WSJ.com

 

[RiazHaq]

Initially, most poor migrants who arrive in Karachi start with low-paying jobs and live in slums. Over time, many of them move up to middle class with better jobs and housing and their children do even better with greater opportunities offered by Karachi.

To illustrate this, let me give you the example of ANP's Senator Shahi Syed who drive a rickshaw and lived in slum when he first came to Karachi. Now, he lives in Mardan House, palatial home in Defense Society.

A recent book "Getting ****** Rich in Rising Asia" is a similar rags to riches tale set in Lahore.

Haq's Musings: Mohsin Hamid Spins Rags to Riches Tale Set in Rising Pakistan

Read my other post titled "Do South Asian Slums Offer Hope" to understand better what I'm talking about.

Haq's Musings: Do South Asian Slums Offer Hope?

 

[RiazHaq]

Initially, most poor migrants who arrive in Karachi start with low-paying jobs and live in slums. Over time, many of them move up to middle class with better jobs and housing and their children do even better with greater opportunities offered by Karachi.

To illustrate this, let me give you the example of ANP's Senator Shahi Syed who drive a rickshaw and lived in slum when he first came to Karachi. Now, he lives in Mardan House, palatial home in Defense Society.

A recent book "Getting ****** Rich in Rising Asia" is a similar rags to riches tale set in Lahore.

Haq's Musings: Mohsin Hamid Spins Rags to Riches Tale Set in Rising Pakistan

Read my other post titled "Do South Asian Slums Offer Hope" to understand better what I'm talking about.

Haq's Musings: Do South Asian Slums Offer Hope?

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's an Aljazeera report titled "Pakistani economy grows in spite of state":

Lahore, Pakistan - Zia Hyder Naqi started his first business when he was eight years old, turning old newspapers into paper bags in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. He didn’t earn much, but the 1.5 Pakistani Rupees ($0.02) he made every day was enough to buy him his lunch, and a sense of satisfaction at having made something.

Today, 40 years later, Naqi is the managing director at a plastics manufacturing firm that employs 430 people, and earned $14.2m in revenue last year.

Synthetic Products and Enterprises Ltd (SPEL) is one of the largest firms of its kind in the country, and makes everything from plastic cups to the inner sides of car doors for firms such as Toyota, Honda and Suzuki, and everything in between.

Business has been good for SPEL, Naqi says, but that's not because the government is providing a conducive climate for economic growth.

"Let's start by saying that we work in spite of the government and not because of the government," Naqi told Al Jazeera. "It really means that we have to struggle. We compete against the best in the world."

Power cuts

Pakistan suffers from a raft of economic problems - spiraling inflation and unemployment, a chronic energy crisis, a lack of implementation of existing policies and an unstable investment environment, owing to the country’s tense security situation.

Primary among those difficulties, Naqi says, is the issue of power cuts - or load-shedding, as it is referred to in Pakistan.

"Our reliability is affected when we have load-shedding, because we don't know when power will arrive and go. So we have to create back-ups, which means that the cost of operations goes up. It affects morale, it affects our work, it affects our delivery, it affects our customers. [It affects] the cost at which we deliver, and how competitive or uncompetitive we become to the customer," he says, estimating that the cost of putting in those back-up system raises the overall cost of his products by as much as 10 percent.

Last year, Naqi’s firm spent an extra $1.2m on putting back-up generators into place, fuelling them and paying for their general upkeep, as opposed to taking electricity off the grid. Moreover, he says, that $1.2m is a sunk cost, as it is not being invested into productive processes. The result: it’s harder for Pakistan’s products to compete in the international market, as the cost of producing electricity pushes firms into a loop of spiraling costs and being unable to further invest in new technologies.

Pakistan’s electricity woes, analysts say, are a result of industrial growth outstripping the pace of growth in generation, and a woefully maintained distribution system that results in line losses of around 20 percent At its peak last summer, the country’s electricity shortfall was a staggering 8,500MW - about 40 percent of the country’s total generation capacity (not counting transmission losses)
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Meanwhile, far from the think tanks and policy committees, the entrepreneurial spirit of the eight-year-old Naqi is still alive and well. Over the last month, dozens of shops have sprung up all over Lahore, selling elections campaign-related merchandise - everything from pins and badges (for about $0.40 each) to gigantic flags ($2.44), from T-shirts ($3.05) to stuffed soft toys in the shape of party election symbols.

"With the amount of money that I’m making right now," says Muhammad Imran, 30, the owner of one such shop, "we could have built a whole bridge!"
....

Pakistan's economy grows 'in spite of state' - Features - Al Jazeera English