The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

If you’re an Indian, there are few revelations in The White Tiger that come as a surprise to you – remnants of a feudal system, the corruption, the politics, the desperation of the poor, life in a big city, et al. But it’s not in these small details that we find a story worthy of, let’s say the Booker Prize. The evolution of human nature, the psychological metamorphosis of an individual, the transcendental aspirations of an ambitious entrepreneur who is desperate to break the cages of servitude and escape into the “light” fighting the conflicts raging within his tumultuous mind - It is in these that we find a tour-de-force by the debutant author Aravind Agida. Adiga takes us on a vicarious journey of a rags-to-riches transformation of his protagonist Balram Halwai - the White Tiger that is born once ever hundred years. In the process, he delves into the mind of a simpleton who reveals what prices he had to pay to break the chains that bound him to destitution, deprivation and desperation.

Most of us are aware of the “dark” India, where over 600 million impoverished Indians fight a daily war for mere survival against the authorities, the people, their fates and even themselves. We talk at length about the India that is riding the wave of success and growth - the India that media and the world loves (or hates), the India that works during the night in plush, Air-Conditioned rooms and travels in comfortable cars, the India that talks of change and innovation. But as escapists, we have decided to neglect the other larger India lurking in darkness, like a dormant boil on our skin that that doesn’t seem to go away, but doesn’t cause us any irritation either. This is what Adiga intends for us to see.

It is in this “dark” India that our white tiger, Balram Halwai is born and raised as the prodigious son of a rickshaw puller. Sharing his father’s dream of having a good future, Balram progresses through the school well, but is soon taken out so he can join his family to make both ends meet. Working for the “stork”, or the landlord, Balram gets his first break, when he is picked as the driver for the landlord’s son, Ashok, and his American wife, Pinky. For a villager, this is as good as it gets – living in the city and driving masters in flashy cars to swanky places surely beats working like a donkey in the village. For the villager in Balram, this is what he could have hoped for, but for the entrepreneur in him, this was just the beginning of a bigger change in his life.

Balram doesn’t do badly as a servant in the city. On the outside, he appears as a humble, dutiful and honest servant who looks after the master like a nanny looks after an infant. He is faithfully devoted to his kind albeit naïve master Ashok, who has just returned from the U.S along with an imported American wife. As Ashok gets settled, he starts getting involved in the family business, and his work is mostly about stuffing the insatiably greedy mouths of the politicians with money to keep them quiet. Ashok sees the world through UV-filtered, rose-colored glasses, speaking against corruption, bribery and all the problems that are so routine in the Indian society, but unacceptable in the west. He is in a permanent jetlag over the right and wrongs in business dealings as he tries to follow western principles, but never really enforces them, thanks to his dominating father and brother (who are more cunning, but enterprising when it comes to dealing with politicians). His wife Pinky, an American by upbringing, keeps whining about wanting to go back, and eventually leaves Ashok and the country. Balram, throughout his tenure, plays his part of a servant to perfection, even agreeing to take the blame for a hit-and-run for which Pinky was responsible.

In the meanwhile, Balram’s family back in the village, especially his conniving grandmother, is constantly pestering him for money for hundreds of things back home. However, over time Balram turns a deaf ear to his family’s demands, but his grandmother is not the one to give up. She sends one of her grandchildren to stay with Balram, and even tries to milk money from him by threatening to tell his master that he has not been sending any money home (since in Ashok’s eyes, Balram is a family-loving, kind and selfless servant). What she doesn’t know is that the Balram she vexed perpetually is not the same boy anymore. Internally, Balram has gone through a drastic change – his innocence is shred to pieces, and an insatiable greed has taken over. His entrusting master doesn’t hesitate to discuss confidential matters or carry around satchels full of money in front of Balram, who is slowly blinded by the wealth and glamour around him. As the transformation is complete, Balram murders Ashok, and runs away with the money to start his own venture.

As readers, we are already aware in the beginning about how the story is going to unfold. But Adiga’s intent was never to conceal the end, but to lay open the mind of an individual. Written by Balram himself as a series of seven letters to His Excellency, the Prime Minister of China Wen Jaibao, The White Tiger, as aptly put by the protagonist, is essentially a brutally honest account or “An autobiography of a half-baked Indian.” But how does an individual end up half-baked in the first place? It happens when a bright and passionate child with stars in his eyes is taken out of school only to continue the tradition of servitude because those around him will pull him down even as he tries to crawl out of pit of destitution and materialize a better future for himself. It happens when those who employ him flaunt their shallow lifestyles and countless rupee notes in front of him, taunt him about his manners, language and status, and insult him incessantly even when he is willing to take the fall for their misdeeds. After all, what would happen to those who have half-baked education, half-baked morals, and half-baked perception of the world? They are bound to end up where Balram did.

In the beginning, Balram brings to light the corruption at the lowest level – a village school teacher stealing money for student’s uniform from the state. But Balram defends the man instead of being contemptuous (as most of us would be), because according to him, “you can’t blame a man in dung heap to smell sweet.” As he grows up, he witnesses a different kind of corruption at higher levels, the so-called powerful men like Ashok’s father, who have exploited the likes of Balram, bending over backwards to appease the politicians in power. As a result, brought up on a diet of degeneracy, corruption and slavery, Balram is “corrupted from a sweet, innocent village fool into a citified fellow full of debauchery, depravity and wickedness” over time.

To the reader aware of his ulterior motives, he comes across as a deranged man who has respect or love for others and no control over his own tongue or thoughts. Though he is not an idealistic or principled man, his crudeness has a certain frankness to it that’s almost disturbing. I say disturbing because I know that most of us would have similar thoughts occasionally, but we would never even admit to ourselves that we could harbor them in our minds. For him, matters of faith are nothing more than kissing “divine arses” that he must perform like a vestigial habit. He doesn’t even spare the father of the nation!

Yet we empathize with him and to some extent, even pray that he gets what he wants. Why? For one, we understand where he is coming from. When Balram’s father dies of TB in a hospital, unattended by the doctors because a poor man’s life means nothing, we sympathize with him even though it doesn’t seem like he needs any. Consider another situation - When his drunken mistress runs over a child in the middle of the night, they all conveniently “decide” that it is Balram’s duty to take the blame and go to jail. We cringe at the thought, but faced with the same situation, perhaps many of us would do the same. Nevertheless, we wish that Balram has the last laugh.

Secondly, unlike most animals who readily accept their fates, the white tiger carves his own destiny even if it means tasting blood of his own kind. After all, secretly many of us root for either the fighter or the underdog among us. And our predilection for his cause is made even sweeter when we learn that this white tiger is not a wild beast entirely. He has a conscience and repents over his actions – more so because he killed a good man. That is why we approve of what he does and understand that for this poetry-loving, foul-mouthed man with a strange penchant for chandeliers, that’s the price he has to pay for dolce vita. In this world where people rise to the top by stepping on the pile of corpses of others’ lives, aspirations and dreams, any cost – murder, guilt, corruption – is justified. To make a leap from murky “darkness” to heavenly “light”, one has to step in the puddle of mud too.

Full of insight and a caustic wit, The White Tiger never gets boring or monotonous. Half-baked chandelier philosophies coexist with pragmatic ones like “darkness” does with the “light”. One thing I noticed and admired was that Adiga made sure that Balram came across as a true psycho – even his humor is so chilling that it can only be associated with that of a madman. But it does make us smile occasionally, even though we are witnessing unpalatable truths and stark realities in a microcosm of deception and decadence. Also, interspersed with some witty lines are real gems of insight and wonderful imagination. Here’s a quotable quote from the book - “The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body with a sharp pen.”

Here’s another instance of imagination unleashed:

“With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then, an egg will crack open - a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out of an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road - and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.”

Even though I am of the opinion that Adiga has done a truly commendable job with his debut novel, I do not think The White Tiger deserved to win the Booker Prize. Seems like I am not alone - it was the least favorite among the bookies to win. However, it is not astonishing considering the sudden affinity of the committee towards Indian writers, who truly seem to be the flavor of the season. Adiga has done his homework well in most parts, but there are few aspects he has not addressed well. As a whole, the book is engaging, almost unputdownable, but towards the end, the story loses a bit of its shine. Nevertheless, what particularly struck me was that this book shows a more serious, eye-opening perspective than its recent counterparts that seem to be focusing either on the NRIs, or the Indian elite. Adiga has popped some good questions for us to chew on.

Savour this book for its ferocious honesty. After all, The White Tiger is born once every hundred years, and Adiga has captured him for us to tell his tale.