The White Tiger –Aravind Adiga Reviewed

About the author

Aravind Adiga was born in Madras in 1974 and was raised partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities. He was a former correspondent in India with TIME magazine. He has published articles in publications like The Financial Times, The Independent, and The Sunday Times.

He lives in Mumbai and claims to travel in overcrowded Mumbai trains and stands in queues, etc. And this, he says has given him the insight into the miseries of the average Indian.

Dissection Box:

Aravind Adiga has written a very incisive and at times controversial book. This book came to me as a curiously inauthentic description of the ideologies, mindsets and situations as faced by Indian people. It seemed to me as a novel from an outsider(a non-Indian), presenting cynical anthropologies to an audience that was never meant to be Indian.

The Book:

This is the first novel by Aravind Adiga. Balram Halwai, is the chief protagonist and the narrator of Aravind Adiga’s first novel, “The White Tiger,”.

The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. On one hand it is the tale of rural India where the life (read misery) of people is compared with animals (buffalo, cows, dogs, even pigs to be precise). The misery portrayed here is so absolute and without hope. It is strife with continuous struggle to come to terms with the harsh realities of life.

On the other hand it is the story of urban India, which is teeming with opportunities and where money is aplenty. A place where people will do anything and everything for money.

The book starts in the background of a village in Gaya, Bihar and portrays the journey of its protagonist from darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success.

Balram Halwaai – The White Tiger

This novel talks about a person who’s born in a village in heartland India. The son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop.

The inspector pointed his cane straight at me. “You, young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals - the creature that comes along only once in a generation?”

I thought about it and said:

“The white tiger.”

“That’s what you are, in this jungle.”

- from The White Tiger, page 30 -

As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape – of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.

Aravind has described his created character Balram, as “a man of action and change,” “a thinking man,” “an entrepreneur,” “a man who sees tomorrow,” and a “murderer.

As the character of Balram gradually reveals, I found it distressingly amoral and an object of sympathy.

The Narration:

Balram’s narrative progresses in the form of a series of letters to Wen Jiabao, premier of China. This is both innovative and gives a question and answer format to the whole book. But, this form of narration is spewed with pitfalls. For starters it lacks the flow and the reader may tend to get bored if he doesn’t find the questions appealing.

The White Tiger claims to gives us an insight into the rapidly changing India. It is a mix of a cautionary tale which is full of contradictions. Infact, I found on nearly every page a witty observation or a fine phrase, and on nearly every page inevitably something that sounded false. I was so disappointed at one stage that I stopped reading the book at page 71.

But, then with great effort I got back to reading and I must say that it took a lot of effort to finish this book off.

My Verdict:

“The White Tiger” is a penetrating piece of social commentary, attuned to the inequalities that persist despite India’s new prosperity. I am not sure if it correctly identifies — and deflates — middle-class India’s collective euphoria.

This book is full of satires. But, it is certainly a pleasant read. It is about the India that we don’t want to see. Although it has tried to portray India in true light, but instead has come up with an India that does not hold promise. And where everyone is a conman who is waiting to rip your wallet off and if you are unlucky enough then your life as well.

His detailed descriptions of various vile aspects of Indian life are relentless — and ultimately a little monotonous. Every moment, it seems, is bleak, pervaded by “the Darkness.” Every scene, every phrase, is a blunt instrument, wielded to remind Adiga’s readers of his country’s cruelty.

The story is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether forgettable.

5.5/10