Aravid Adiga’s ‘The White Tiger’: Won 2008 Man Booker Prize

Posted on January 7, 2009
Filed Under Blogging | Leave a Comment

Kudos to Mr. Aravid Adiga for his award-winning ‘The White Tiger‘. Before hitting a really long-train-journey, wanted a book for company. It was then I realised, I missed reading the latest ‘Man-Booker-Prize’ won Adiga’s White Tiger. As an Indian, missing a honored Indian’s writing, would really be atrocious of me.

I bought the book from Landmark bookstore in Forum mall, Bangalore. Incidentally, the book too had a lot talking of Bangalore, Delhi, and most of them I found was just like out-of-my-heart. My feelings, my thoughts, were all incorporated in Adiga’s writing. IT was one very eye-opener to me, and I do recommend if you havent got one.

The book is a fiction, I would call it a sarcastic writing on the rich high-class Indians, or the enterpreneurs who claim, ‘India rising’ aka ‘India shining’. When rich and the middle class travel in their benz and when entrepreneurs make their mark known in booming IT corporations, behind all this, there is the working-class, in Adiga’s lingo, they are called the ‘human-spiders’. The ones you everyday come across in your life, who do the meanest of jobs, for a survival, who are still be freed and who are in their coop, and among them contains a ‘white-tiger’, a unique creature like Balram Halwai.

The character Balram is deep in the “Darkness” of rural India. Balram is the son of a rickshaw-puller, his family is too poor for him to be able to finish school, and instead he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables.

However, Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. Balram later aware of immense wealth and opportunity around him, dreams of a luxurious life, a life away from his ramshackles, where a freed man can live.

The debut novel of Adiga is of a series of letters written late at night by Balram to Wen Jiabao, the Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. In the letters, Balram describes his rise from lowly origins to his current position as an entrepreneur in Bangalore.

The conclusion of the novel, is the most interesting and of great stupefaction. What a wrecking-turn, the last few pages had. It is a must read, if you still are in your ‘India great’ – ‘India-democratic’ world. India still has a lot more to go, this democracy, gets us nowhere, unless the people’e mentality change. Dont expect India to compete with China, we are nowhere :D

“At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society (Indian). That’s what I’m trying to do — it’s not an attack on the country, it’s about the greater process of self-examination.”  – Aravid Adiga.

About: Aravind Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennai) in 1974. He is a journalist and author, who holds dual Indian and Australian citizenship. diga began his journalistic career as a financial journalist, interning at the Financial Times. He was subsequently hired by TIME, where he remained a South Asia correspondent for three years before going freelance. During his freelance period, he wrote The White Tiger. He currently lives in Mumbai, India.

Comments

Leave a Reply