So many Indian novels written for the western market have an aspect of poverty porn about them. The White Tiger avoids this. Instead of relying on a semi-mystical evocation of ‘old’ India and our sympathies for those repressed by the caste system, it’s written as a series of emails from a Bangalore entrepreneur to the Premier of China and is unashamedly about modern India. The author is Aravind Adiga.
Balram Halwai is the son of a rickshaw puller, born in what Adiga calls ‘the darkness’ – rural India, where corruption and despotism still rule despite the thin film of democracy layered over the top. If Rohinton Mistry* had written this book, Balram would have had an extraordinary stroke of luck, made a modest improvement to his life through working hard and being appropriately obsequious, and then had it all ripped away from him by some aspect of the caste system, to live miserably ever after.
Adiga, perhaps more realistically, has Balram better himself by cunning, luck, bribery, blackmail and corruption. The book builds up Balram’s rage at the society he lives in, a rage that culminates in him murdering his master and escaping with a large sum of money to reinvent himself as one of India’s ‘entreprenuers’ in Bangalore – the symbol of new India, far from the darkness – to live happily (or cynically) ever after.
Balram is a very believable character, though not a sympathetic one, as is the way Adiga portrays Balram’s transformation from servant to master. The psychology of the book is spot on. It can be savage and bloody and gruesome sometimes, but the brutality is never overplayed or gratuitous, and is certainly not done to garner our sympathy.
Very enjoyable, and deserved to win the Booker, which it did.
* If you’re the person who borrowed my copy of A Fine Balance before I left Sydney, could I have it back please?
The Whie Tiger
Aravind Adiga
Harper Collins, 2008
