Family ties

The importance of the family and loyalty to the family in Indian can not be stressed enough as an individuals test of morality. But as Adiga depicts the family, they are actually a catalyst to immorality. In Balram's case it is the women in the family, especially the grandmother, that I found to be particularly disabling Balram, his father, and brother. The hope may have been gone for Balram's father to achieve a better life but Balram was the smartest boy in school and could have been offered a scholarship somewhere if he had been allowed to stay. Yet, he gets pulled out of school because the women thought one of his cousins "needed" to get married and so they had to take out a huge loan form the stork. I do not know if such lavish weddings are required for anyone to get married in a small village, but this seems ridiculous and selfish to me. It seems that the women in the family payed no attention to Balram's ability and his potential to become educated and perhaps move out of a life of poverty and expected him to exist in servitude and relinquish all of his earnings to them. Perhaps if Balram's family gave him the chance to escape poverty through honorable means he would have. Perhaps if they had given him love and support he would have not let them go in the end.