Legal Research

The White Tiger

By scott

Aravina Adiga’s book is the third book of the Booker shortlist to be set in modern day, but to spend its length looking back over a character’s ‘life-story’. Where this one perhaps differs is that we are informed very early on that out lead character is a murderous entrepreneur. The Book tells the story of Balram Halwai, who - in his own words, and over the course of seven nights, recounts the events of his life in letters to Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, ahead to his visit to India and tells him “sir, you are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don???t have entrepreneurs”: - Balram, has predictably, become involved in the outsourcing boom in the country.

Balram’s story begins in the fictional village of Laxmangarh, near Bodh Gaya, where Buddha attained enlightenment. After watching his rickshaw-puller farther die, he is forced out of school and into the workplace, eventually finding himself the driver to the son of one of the village landlords, and living in the Indian capital New Delhi. We follow his rise up the ranks and then his cutting the throat of his employer/master.

The book is a book about the two India’s: one of Darkness (where the majority live) and one of Light, a place of money and education and where foreign IT companies head to outsource their businesses. Book makes it clear that the master-servant relationship is very much alive and well in the country - even in the role of foreign IT bosses and their Indian workforces.

Whilst your reading it, The White Tiger is quite an enjoyable and amusing read. Balram like to think of himself as wise and educated in the ways of the world, which makes it particularly amusing when his ignorance comes through, for example when he tells Wen Jiabao about Rikshaws and comments “Now, since I doubt that you have rickshaw-pullers in China - or in any other civilised nation on earth - you will have to see one for yourself”.

Adiga also displays a wonderful turn of phrase with lines such as this describing a water buffalo “she was a fat, glossy -skinned creature, with a vein the size of a boy’s penis sticking out over her hairy snout, and long thick pearly spittle suspended from the edge of her mouth; she sat all day in her own stupendous crap”

The problems with the book only really come after it is finished. The biggest problem, for me, is that as enjoyable a ride as it is - this is book a in which there just isn’t a single likeable character. Even the central character and narrator, Balram, is not portrayed as a likeable, innocent character corrupted by events - he is clearly quite selfish, and self absorbed from the off. He can inject humour into telling his tale, but I’m not sure it makes him someone we like. The female characters - the few there are - are also very two dimensional and stock.

I did enjoy it, its comment on modern day India is well made, and would probably recommend it to a couple of friends, but a Booker winner? a Booker short-lister? Not for me.

Full post as published by Information Overload on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).