The White Tiger, a single letter in an epistolary format written to the Chinese premiere on the eve of his visit, over a span of seven nights divulges the story of a chauffeur turned murderer turned entrepreneur. Marked by the ingress of a debut writer, born in Madras and partly raised in Australia, the novel strikingly discloses the "rags to riches" story of a strongly defined character 'munna' aka 'Balram Halwaaii' aka 'White tiger' and his ortrayal of the darker India. India, a land of 36,000,004 gods and of enormous values is seen having changed definitions for the lowly and unprivileged fraction of the country. Balram, a name suddenly budded from the witty and egocentric vocabulary of an emblematic government school teacher, is not a typical rogue. In spite of every felony he triumphs in drawing sympathy from the reader. He is just another fugitive from darkness who wants to break through the 'rooster coop', “the greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history.” The situation of the poorer India is recited as the roosters in the coop who like in the meat shop of Old Delhi "see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they are next. They do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The same thing is done with human beings in this country". The two prominent faces of India; one- the rich and powerful India which leads the world in IT and the other pooper side which is led by the ruthless convention set by the powerful, is well portrayed in the story. The story is all about a 'white tiger', a “the creature that comes along only once in a generation”, who breaks through this rooster coop, the core of gloom- the land of Buddha, Laxmangarh to the dazzling life of legendary India. Born to a rickshaw puller and so depicted fair wife of his, 'Munna' later nomenclatured 'Balram', is the brightest boy of the class but in no time from his mother's death he is bound to drop school and is found in the tea shop cleaning tables and serving tea and adding his worldly knowledge by eavesdropping. Sick of being stuck in the poverty rut, he escapes the village in search of wealth. For Balram, there is no looking back. He lies his way into becoming a chauffer for a wealthy 'new york returned' boss and then murders his way into becoming an entrepreneur. He lies, deceives, dishonours, murders and yet the reader doesn’t hate him for anything.
The wry homour in the story was great, revealing a very satirical perspective and latent skills of the writer. The first ranker in Mangalore state SSLC in 1990, Arvinda Adiga took up his higher studies in Australia, Combodia and oxford. His astonishing endowment cannot go unnoticed in White tiger, which can keep one hooked throughout, without any trace of boredom or dullness. Being the fifth Indian author to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction for 2008, joining V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai who won the prize in 1971, 1981, 1997 and 2006 respectively, Adiga's "The White Tiger" is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity. The mammoth recognition of Indian stories be it on silver screen or on black and white, shows the appreciation of vulnerable and darker India. The ample resentment amongst the so called country loving people for the changed image of India otherwise portrayed as the land of values and spiritualism, was witnessed in the Oscar winning "Slum Dog Millionaire" and the booker winning "the White tiger". It but needs immense courage and understanding to bring out the latent ache of the dispossessed and unprivileged section which Adiga says is " not an alternative India but the pretty mainstream" .
The wry homour in the story was great, revealing a very satirical perspective and latent skills of the writer. The first ranker in Mangalore state SSLC in 1990, Arvinda Adiga took up his higher studies in Australia, Combodia and oxford. His astonishing endowment cannot go unnoticed in White tiger, which can keep one hooked throughout, without any trace of boredom or dullness. Being the fifth Indian author to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction for 2008, joining V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai who won the prize in 1971, 1981, 1997 and 2006 respectively, Adiga's "The White Tiger" is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity. The mammoth recognition of Indian stories be it on silver screen or on black and white, shows the appreciation of vulnerable and darker India. The ample resentment amongst the so called country loving people for the changed image of India otherwise portrayed as the land of values and spiritualism, was witnessed in the Oscar winning "Slum Dog Millionaire" and the booker winning "the White tiger". It but needs immense courage and understanding to bring out the latent ache of the dispossessed and unprivileged section which Adiga says is " not an alternative India but the pretty mainstream" .
My review for Newsfront
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