should we soul search?

this says it all... if an award winning writer can comment that life would not change and that life in Mumbai"...has a way of reminding you that writers are not particularly important", it becomes telling.
really, for how many people is a book that important? how many people really follow what is going on the world of the printed word?... so even in the backdrop of a Booker, if Adiga commented as he did, it is time for some soul searching. Mumbai is just a micrcosm of the world where we are busy running our own routines... start early morning, run the whole day in chasing small goals, come home tired, wind up the day and start yet another unmeaningful, uneventful one...
while Adiga, since he lives in Mumbai, concludes so about his adopted home, most cities and its residents are more or less the same...
and believe me, writers are one of the most marginalised, in terms of the attention he or she gets... many consider the writer to be residing in a different domain (while s/he is constantly deriving her/his source of writing from what s/he observes around her/him)...
as Adiga says, "It won't mean anything to my neighbours, they won't know about this. Life will continue."... is this frustrating? or is this one stage ahead -- cynicism? i think it is the latter and that is because the writer in Adiga had to find publishers to talk to the world, while the next door remains closed...
yes many of the so called next door persons would say, "would Adiga talk to us if we did?"... is true also. Looking at the whole thing from the next door neighbour's perspective, i feel, there needs to be two way traffic... and that writers also have a role in their own alienation... but who takes the first step? there are expectations from both sides... the writer thinks the neighbour should come ahead, while the neighbour thinks the onus lies with the writer...
it is a broken communication... and this is as true of Mumbai, as London or New York... a larger human issue, i feel.