Q & A (novel) - Plot

Plot

Narrated in the first person, the novel follows the life of Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated young waiter. Prior to the start of the novel, Ram has correctly answered 12 questions on the fictional game show Who Will Win a Billion? (or W3B), and has won Rs. one billion (about $22 million). However, show host Prem Kumar and the producers, who do not have the money to pay him, have had the police arrest him for cheating; they had cast Ram because they figured an uneducated street child would not be able to answer more than a few questions at most, and they find the police more than willing to believe them. Ram explains to his sympathetic lawyer, Smita Shah, (who has rescued him from being tortured), just how he managed to answer twelve random questions: they related to real events that occurred in his life, with each question prompting its own flashback. As he says, "Well, wasn't I lucky they only asked those questions to which I knew the answers?".

Ram goes on to tell her how by drawing from the experiences of his own short, yet turbulent and sometimes cruel life, he, a young, poor waiter, answered the twelve questions that led him to the jackpot. Through this device, the novel moves between Mumbai, Delhi and Agra (non-chronologically) as it highlights Ram's bizarre experiences, from his original upbringing by an English-speaking priest to his various jobs, which include working as house help for an aging Bollywood actress, in a foundry, an Australian diplomat who turns out to be in a spy ring, as a tourist guide in Agra and a waiter in a bar at Mumbai. His best friend is another young orphan named Salim, who plays a part in some of these adventures and dreams of becoming an actor, as it was foretold by a palmist at a fair. Ram was told by the same palmist that he would not live a very long life, but he doesn't believe in foretelling the future and dismisses it. Salim later becomes an actor after saving a Bollywood producer from assassination from a professional hitman. However, the key events of Ram's life come when he works as a tour guide at the Taj Mahal, which is when he meets a young prostitute named Nita. He falls in love with her and asks her pimp to let her marry him, but the pimp refuses. Meanwhile, Ram's friend Shankar is dying of rabies. He needs 400,000 rupees to buy a vaccination, and Nita's pimp demands the same amount. Shankar dies, and Ram steals the money from Shankar's uncaring mother. After learning that the pimp (who is also Nita's brother) will continue to demand even more money, he instead gives it to an English teacher whose son needs the rabies vaccine. The teacher later helps answer Ram's question about William Shakespeare when Ram uses his Friendly Tip Lifeboat.

Ram tells his lawyer that he went on the show partly in a quest to win enough money to buy Nita's freedom from her pimp, and partly in a bid to get even with the show's host, Prem Kumar, who abused and exploited Nita, resulting in her being placed under intensive care in hospital. Prem also exploited the late Neelima Kumari, a former Bollywood actress and Ram's former employer. Ram had planned to kill him when he went for a bathroom break (show rules dictate that the contestant must be followed everywhere by the host so they cannot cheat). However, Ram decides against it and, in gratitude, Kumar tells him the answer of the last question, which was the only answer he might have not have answered correctly.