The White Tiger

Update: This book is now on the short list of six for the 2008 Booker Prize. In celebration I bought a second copy.

by Aravind Adiga

What a wonderful read! The story is written as a letter to the Premier of China who will be coming to visit China. This sets the stage for a very funny novel indeed, as the writer compares how these two tigers match up in their new found wealth. A particularly funny line was when, addressing the Premier, the writer says “I gather you yellow skinned men, despite your triumphs in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don’t have democracy. We Indians…may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy. If I were making a country, I’d get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy.”

In 276 pages I felt that I had lived a life time with the driver Balram Halwai the narrator of the story alias The White Tiger. The book was both extremely funny and at the same time a bitter critic on how the rich and the poor live in India today. It is one of the few books that I wanted to reread immediately. The need to read it again was because I had been so swept up in the tale that I wanted to make sure that I had not over looked some of the social issues that come to play in the tale. As I put the book down to go to sleep I suddenly realized that although Balram had murdered his employee he was in some ways better than him. For when his employer’s wife did a hit and run they had tried to put the blame on him, their driver. Later in the story, when one of Balram’s (now Ashok Sharma) driver’s runs over a child and kills him, Balram immediately goes to the scene of the accident and takes responsibility. Of course, I realize that he does this because he has paid off the Assistant Commissioner to ensure that nothing gets in the way of his success; lessons that he had learned well from his former employer. And so in the dog eat dog world of India, injustices abound, and everything is possible if you grease the wheels of those in charge.

This book is now on the Man Booker Dozen List. Visit the site at
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/>