Nov 05, 2008 01:30 PM
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In The White Tiger, the narrator is a man named Balram Halwai, who introduces himself as a Bangalore-based entrepreneur; his epistolary narrative is addressed to no less than the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, who is visiting India to learn about how business is conducted in this large, “shining” democracy. But Balram has other, darker revelations to make about his country, the sort that a visiting dignitary would be shielded from.
With admirable wit and insight, The White Tiger details Balram’s back-story, his journey from a small village on the banks of the Ganga (a dark land suffocated by “the black river”, as he calls it) to the metropolis of Delhi – more particularly Delhi’s glitzy suburb Gurgaon – and his gradual understanding of the difference between India’s haves and have-nots. Working as a driver (and generic domestic help) for “Mr Ashok”, a rich landlord’s son, he marvels at the pace of life in the big city; he hangs about with other drivers and becomes acquainted with their favourite pulp magazine, Murder Weekly; he watches as the rich make deals with corrupt ministers; and he reflects that millions of people in India are no different from birds in a rooster coop, aware of their fate and resigned to it: “A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 per cent to exist in perpetual servitude, a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.” Balram decides that he will be the one to break out of the coop – he is no mere rooster, after all, but a white tiger, a name once given him by a school inspector to suggest the rarest of animals, a creature of initiative and daring, which comes along only once in a generation. We will discover near the end of the book exactly what his life-altering act of “social entrepreneurship” is.
At its best, The White Tiger is just as insightful as any of the big “India books”. It also provides a worm’s-eye perspective – the perspective of the frustrated little person – that there hasn’t been enough of in Indian writing in English. This is a very dark novel, something that isn’t immediately obvious because the tone is so chatty and conversational.
Adiga has an authentic, unforced talent for irreverence, as when Balram mocks the continuing eagerness of people to “kiss some God’s arse”, never mind that the country’s 36 million Gods “seem to do awfully little work – much like our politicians – and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year”. Or when he reflects that in post-Independence India there are only two castes, men with big bellies and men with small bellies.
The White Tiger is a book that can cut uncomfortably close to the bone for anyone who’s ever reflected that the bill they just paid for a restaurant meal amounted to half of their driver’s monthly salary (and I’m not talking five-star hotel restaurants). Or for anyone who’s seen their domestic staff chatting with friends in the nearby park while casting occasional glances at the house, and wondered about the nature of the gossip being exchanged. Adiga makes us think about these things as well as about the many Indias and the different types of aspirations and frustrations they represent, but he does it within the framework of an absorbing novel. This is a very impressive debut.
Worth the Bookers.
