A handful of thoughts

Aravinda Adiga’s White Tiger is not the first book that deals with the two Indias that reside within this sub continent, the ‘India of Light’ and the ‘India of Darkness’. Nor is his style or narrative very unique; the protagonist tells his life story in a series of letters to the Chinese Prime Minister. But what would make you race through the book without giving yourself so much as a moment to breathe, is the sheer audacity of the narrator - a certain Balram Halwai, a driver, murderer and entrepreneur. Though by some means, Balram is quite an archetype, as one of those angry young men all set to change the world but unlike his other literary peers, he is in some manners cowardly and servile. He bribes, whores, steals, all along aware of the so called ‘immorality’ of the acts he is performing. He is never amoral, but always immoral. And indeed, the White Tiger that he is, he never pounces upon a prey unless seriously hungry.

But in what Adiga’s book really moves away from all known contemporary literary works is his portrayal of the Richman’s Driver. Familiar as we are with The Driver having seen them aplenty outside office buildings, malls and multiplexes, we’ve never had such a peek into the life of one, except in a Madhur Bhandarkar movie may be. The boredom of waiting, exchange of pornographic magazines, sharing ways to cheat on the employer, repeated instructions from the boss to switch off the AC and music player when parked….all of these have been depicted so very realistically, half way through the novel you’ll feel guilty about not having given the driver community a thought, earlier.

True, things fall too well into their places, after the point when the protagonist flees to Bangalore; almost like in Hindi movies. Nevertheless, Adiga manages to pull it off, more so because as the novel draws to a close, the reader would hate to lose the drama or the pace, it has till then cooked up. Adiga’s work is neat and he diligently and lucidly performs what he is supposed to be doing in the book - tell a story. The book perfectly conforms to the most widely accepted ‘beginning, middle and end’ format, touching a few soacial chords here and there, on its way to the rather predictable but acceptable ending. However, Adiga should have been more careful while stating facts. For example, neither China nor Abyssinia (as he claims) have managed to keep away foreign invadors in history. Such bits of information are available on the internet. And I doubt if that was a deliberate mistake, used for building up the character.

But above and over all such follies, rises his plot, the story of a Balram Halwai, born in the darkness, representing the light.