“Stories of rottenness and corruption are always the best stories, aren’t they?”

THE WHITE TIGER

-By Aravind Adiga

- Man booker prize,2008.

The White Tiger is an engaging book, which can stick you around. It is a monologue that describes the harsh reality of India which a patriotic wouldn’t like. To describe its genre, it is dark humor, mystery and is a contemporary story with no specific real hero. It gives an insight into socio-economic issues of poverty, religion, caste, loyalty and, corruption.

Not giving out the spoilers but in brief, if I’d have to describe, the story is about a poor boy-Balram who lives in a small village and works as a driver for a landlord initially. Then, he is taken to Delhi where things are a lot different. Balram’s mind gets corrupted which leads him to murder his own master. He runs away from Delhi with a heap of money and settles in Bangalore. He establishes a huge business of transport in the city of Bangalore and is as successful as a rich then onwards.

The story is inspired by the lives of working-class people and it takes you through the journey of becoming rich from a rag, from coming through the darkness to light & understanding the haves and have not’s of relationships. The book contains explicit examples of the two different universes, the rich and the poor. However, I feel at certain times the author has exaggerated the condition of what here refers to as “real India.” Also, some silly references that make me wonder and ask, WHY?

The Indian class struggle in a globalized world is depicted in its true sense. The story if keenly read, makes you understand how one‘s mind is molded by society and its consequences. The mention of rooster-coop is eye-opening! It refers to the master-servant social system where the servant is always oppressed, not only by the master but the other minions too. If one goes out of the way; more specifically, out of the stereotypical behavior (in this case,that of a driver), he is to be bullied, exploited, and pulled down. According to Balram, if you don’t follow the rooster coop, you are considered to be a crazy person but one has to break out of the rooster coop to live a better life. Lastly, Rooster Coop keeps social inequality alive.

The author has portrayed bureaucracy, and shown, how even the rich are servants of people above them. The landlords work under the orders of politicians and so on. The entire race of human beings works on the master-servant system and all of us at some level are servants of someone and how that someone is a servant of the other and eventually we all become the servants to our society and government.

However, there are unanswered questions about the family of Balram that arise- like what’s the condition of Balram’s family? Have they been caught by the master’s family? Are they even alive? And so on. The story brings out the selfish nature of a human being and the desire to run in a race of becoming rich. This race in turn can cut off all the moral values and culture, even towards ones own family which the Rooster Coop contains. There is sadness and much criticism involved but is worth a read. I observed though Balram is the wrong one here, a sense of hatred does not arise towards him which usually in other cases would have. After all, he is a murderer. This is a special and unique technique of the writing.

Sadly, the movie does not fully capture the gravity of the book’s character. The main narrative of the book contains dark humor, which has not been shown in the movie.