White Tigers and Black Hearts

By Nimisha Mittal 5 February 2009 290 views 7 Comments

India is the land of the glorious – with a rich history of kings and treasure, chivalry and courage, and as the largest democracy in the world, she is giving First World countries a cause to worry with her advancement in science and technology. Her people are united, and survive bravely despite poverty and unemployment, and patriotism runs thicker than blood in their veins – as seen by their recurrent chants of ‘Mera Bharat Mahan’ (My country is the greatest!)

At least that’s what the politicians, tourism agencies, and advertisements on TV would have us believe.

Aravind Adiga stubs out this image of the Indian paradise, and throws the ashes to the wind in his debut 2008 Man Booker Prize winning novel ‘The White Tiger’. The book is not just a brazen look at the corruption, discrimination, and hypocrisy in the country. It is a revelation of the real state of affairs in India, the real causes of its continuing poverty, unemployment, servitude, and other evils thinkers often rave about.

Balram Halwai is the star of the plot. Incidentally, he is the creature at the very bottom of the social ladder, (which is partially underground and part of the sewage). His father was a rickshaw puller. Balram, like every other kid in his family, was pulled out of school to help his family pay off its debts incurred from paying dowry¹ in a sister’s wedding. Ironically, his family lives in a district of Gaya, where the Buddha found enlightenment, in the eternal shadow of the village’s landlords, who live in mansions and rob the poor workers of their wages.

This book takes a look at the finer details of the magical land of the Taj Mahal and the pure Ganga – the fact that every house is built with a servants quarter; every glamorous mall has a poorer version of it nearby, where 80% of India’s population flocks; the lawlessness; the media’s true masters; the power of the bits of paper that the Reserve Bank churns out every year.

The battle between the rich and the poor continues, the caste system flourishes, and money towards the advancement of villages and education regularly gets detoured to the bellies of those that guard the entire system. There is no lack of resources in the country, just a lack of honest, good-intentioned people, such as Balram Halwai’s master… the one that Balram murders.

The journey of Balram Halwai, who comes from a family whose water buffalo is its most important member, is not the traditional rags-to-riches story. It is the unfortunate story of how one man decides he has had enough. Over a period of seven nights, in the form of several letters, the narrator describes the creation of India’s modern entrepreneur to a Chinese Premier. The view of the Glass from the bottom of the social ladder, from the inside of the Rooster Coop, is neither half full nor half empty. It is broken.

‘The White Tiger’ is brilliant. The tone is blunt, angry, and honest. Adiga’s observations are shrewd and insightful. The book is a combination of a narrative, a diatribe, and a psychological analysis of the human mind. Balram starts in a tea stall, progresses to a driver, and ends up as one of the most powerful men in the city, building himself a house where even the bathroom has a chandelier.

For anyone who has grown up in India, who has tried unsuccessfully to participate in a fair election, who has often had to part with money to penetrate the bureaucracy, this story rings embarrassingly true. The voice in the story is a villain’s - the kind that doesn’t come along very often. Just like a white tiger. And this white tiger is created by the world around it.

This is not a story that ends in applause. It is an enlightenment … of a different sort.

Rating: 4 / 5
Publisher: HarperCollins India / Free Press
Pages: 304
Price: $ 24

Footnote:
1. Dowry is the term given to gifts from a bride’s family to the groom in a traditional Indian wedding.

Photo Courtesy: ShelfLove

7 Comments »

neon said:

Great review! I had never bothered to wonder about the psyche of the driver, the cook, the servant who are part of most affluent Indian households and this book really made me think.

[Reply]

# 5 February 2009 at 9:31 am

Vikram said:

Nimisha, I would like it if you read this review by a Dalit blogger himself, while you may not like the tone of his writing, please understand that if a person has had his own life defined in casteist terms, he/she is likely to see the oppressors (i.e. upper caste Hindus) in those terms.

Unfortunately you have made the same mistake in your review that Adiga has made in his book. You have failed to recognize the identity of the Dalits. Like Slumdog Millionaire this book is not going to open any eyes, because they are not shut, they are blinded. Blinded by a Bollywood which middle class (mostly upper caste Hindu) India cannot let go off, blinded by a denial of the reality of caste and blinded by a desire to be a ‘world-power’.

So the politicians, bureaucrats etc. are all easy scape goats, but if you pause and think for a moment that 60 years ago millions would simply die in famine and literally no one was educated, they havent done a bad job (except in the BIMARU states due to caste rivalries). Its just that they and the ‘bottom of the social order’ do not subscribe to the same vision of India as upper caste middle class India does. Lets hope one day a Brahmin can have the vision to write a book on that.

[Reply]

Nimisha Reply:
February 24th, 2009 at 9:21 pm

Thanks for your comment, Vikram. I did check out the other review. It was very interesting to read, but I do not fully agree with the author on all his views.
As readers, we are all entitled to our own interpretations and thoughts. The author of that review saw his caste and his own identity in the protagonist, whereas I saw what the lives of the poorer people in India were like.
‘The White Tiger’ is a work of fiction. Fiction is based on reality, but is not a biography. I think the name of the book itself is an example of what one man did, the kind of man who is rare, like a white tiger. It is not a generalization or a recommendation on how to become powerful or commit murder.

[Reply]

# 8 February 2009 at 12:32 am

Aditya said:

I loved this review!

Just like the book, your review has an undertone of sarcasm…almost a dark on at times..

Great job, Nimisha!

[Reply]

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Nimisha (author) Reply:
June 28th, 2009 at 2:43 am

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[Reply]

# 14 March 2009 at 6:43 am