Compare And Contrast Masterji And Ashok

The middle class in Mumbai have always been distrustful of builders notorious for their ill-kept promises, but despite their various socio-cultural loyalties and affiliations, they all must give in to the temptations of sudden wealth while a few like the Pintos are frightened into submission and the Masterji gets eliminated. Thomas Friedman, the well-known chronicler of globalisation, argues that the destruction in the wake of globalisation is inherently creative in that it destroys the old to make way for the new. Whatever has become redundant must perish and manure the new. In The World is Flat, he avers that it gives the opportunity for every individual and society to make independent choices about what to discard, adapt and adopt. Otherwise:

Balram and Shah, being quick learners, are the epitomes of adaptability and, therefore, destined for scaling up the higher echelons of the social pyramid. When Balram realises that if he needs to liberate himself, he must break out and escape from the fear of the Rooster Coop, he orchestrates a murder without any qualms of conscience, steals money, leaves his comfort zone and transplants himself to a new city in the South. Shah, who comes to Mumbai as a penniless drifter, becomes a smuggler first, then a slum re-developer and finally a big time builder by seizing one opportunity after another as they unfold before

Shah, the powerful builder in Last Man in Tower, the ultimate beneficiary of the rising per capita income and soaring middle-class aspirations ever since the advent of globalisation, is also represented as one among its many unhappy victims. He is constantly aware that the pollution of the big city and the dirt and grime from his construction site are slowly killing him. The pressures he inflicts upon his victims through various means also take a heavy toll on him by making him all the more inhuman. His deceased wife had commented on his work only once: that if he kept on “threatening other people and their children, one day something might happen” to his own child (Last Man in Tower 162). The fact that his own son is a good for nothing drug addict and a member of a lawless gang of hooligans vexes him sorely. His trusted left-hand man Shanmugham, whom he holds close to his heart like his own son, runs out of patience and blackmails him for a sweetener after the Vishram deal. Though he has a mistress kept in a gilded cage in Versova, he is deprived of true love. His personal life is in shambles despite all his material well-being and the limitless power he wields. Balram’s case is even worse. Without a friend or anyone to love, except a nephew to take care of and whose loyalty can only be counted on pecuniary terms and little else, Balram is a loner. The only consolation for Balram is