The White Tiger : A Review

Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008

Author- Aravind Adiga


For the Desk of:
His Excellency Wen Jiabao,
The Premier’s Office,
Beijing,
Capital of the Freedom-Loving Nation of China
From the Desk of:
‘The White Tiger’
A thinking Man
And an entrepreneur
Living in the world’s centre of technology and outsourcing
Electronics City Phase 1(just off Hosur Main Road),

This is how Aravind Adiga’s debut novel and The 2008 Man Booker award winning novel begins. Though Classified as Fiction, any person hailing from the world’s largest democracy will testify to the dark and rhetorical conditions in India and of its poor and deprived as being true. The book provides a realistic contrast to the belief of ‘India is shining’.
This story is a sarcastically humorous account of Balram Halwai, the protagonist and ‘The White Tiger’. It tells his journey from ‘The Darkness’ to ‘The Light’, a dark journey and a powerful story. The Darkness and The Light here are symbolical not to journey of salvation or enlightment but to, coming out of the shackles that bind the deprived to their conditions through their cycles of repression by the rich. It refers to the protagonist journey of being condemned as a servant for his lifetime in his village and how he sacrifices everything to break his hierarchical bondages and journeys to ‘The Light’, where he is free at last, to make his own choices, to live, and to start a new life.

This is a dark story, and a powerful story, a story of breaking free, but making grave sacrifices, of being selfish, making desperate struggles and the protagonists’ violent bid for freedom which may seem shocking but is realistic’
This is a story of how a severely loyal and ‘The White Tiger’ in a jungle of animals turns into a murderer. This is how injustice and deprivation and fear or the momentary lack of it forces a person to become fearless, and over time gives him the courage to crush his shackles and set himself free.
Balram Halwai or ‘The White Tiger’ knows, what he will lose in making his decisions, he is sorry but he has to get through it, he has dared to do what people like him may shudder with. In short, he goes from the good to being ‘cold-hearted’ and hopefully makes the transition back yet with reclusion. He is witty and a hero of the story and yet may seem psychopathic.
The story is angry and compelling, has a mordant wit and a dark humor, it clings to the readers’ heart and captivates us. It gives us a real insight to the two India’s and what happens when they both collide.
About the book, if we exclude the honour of ‘The Man Booker Prize’,  it may seem to some as yet another attempt on a psychopathic autobiographical account of an thug of India’s urban jungle but this, in my opinion and hopefully many others gives us the story of a memorable hero, and an idealist. And, Yes! The question  of the hero’s character still lingers in every readers mind.

It may seem as the story being very serious and violent but it is downright witty and humorous and sarcastic as reflected by this random paragraph (one of the lighter parts of the book)-
“It is an ancient and venerated custom of people in my country to start a story by praying to a Higher Power.
I guess, Your Excellency, that I should start off by kissing some god’s arse.
Which god’s arse, though? There are so many choices.
See, the Muslims have one god.
The Christians have three gods.
And we Hindus have 36,000,000 gods.
Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to choose from.”

The book brings to us the good and the bad it gives us an insight to the conundrum of ethics, and also it brings to light the two India’s and the obligations and the mindset of the people of both India’s.
“The White Tiger” is a must read and a compelling read and puzzle of ethics for the readers. This is a powerful, a humorous, yet angry and a dark story at large.



P.S- Any review, criticism, comment etcc. are welcome and will be held with regards.


P.P.S- The last post promised “One Hundred Years of Solitude” , I’m sorry and no such promises this time.

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