The White Tiger – A Total Disillusionment

Now I know after reading the prestigious Man Booker Award winning ‘The White Tiger’ as to why ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ bagged so many Oscar Awards. Precisely, the Western world seem to have a high fascination about India and Indian people together with the heaps of garbage, poverty, illiteracy, corruption, violence and so many evil things there. Aravind Adiga, the Author of the book, has proved himself to be successful in fulfilling their expectations to the reasonable extent in ‘The White Tiger.’

The book tells the story of a poor man called Balram Halwai born in a village; that is the dark heart of India. Being deprived of proper education, to earn money he has to do a few jobs right from wiping tables in a hotel to drive the car of a landlord. He gets monthly salary but he is not satisfied. He wants to become rich and successful in life. For that ultimately he decides to break the ‘Rooster Coop’ and murders his owner, snatches away his bag full of rupee notes and flies away from Delhi to Bangalore. There he becomes a successful entrepreneur and in this way he achieves his ambition. That’s all !

Features of the book can be narrated as under ;
1. Simple language (though not smooth flowing).
2. Realistic descriptions (though sometime tend to vulgarity and weirdness).
3. Unusual philosophy.
4. Verbosity & Repetition.
5. One Sided and Negative Approach through out the book.

Objections :
1. The Author divides this county in to two parts; namely, Dark World and White World.
In other words, he believes that people of this country are living either in slums and
huts or in lavish flats and bungalows. He, however, forgets the middle class; the one
being always crushed between the both, also exists. So in fact, there are three worlds
instead of two in this country (and might also be in each and every country in the
world).

2. The hero of the book ‘breaks the Rooster Coop’ by slitting his owner’s throat and
snatching his money bag. Coincidently, the person whom he kills is the only person
who is very kind, understanding and sympathetic to him. What the Author wants to
indicate from this ? This is the only way to break the so-called coop ? And if at all you
want to kill, kill a kind hearted person ?

3. The Author indicates that no entrepreneur in India is having a clean past. This
statement is not only disgusting, but straight away its an insult to all those thousands of
Indian entrepreneurs who have come up with a great degree of dedication, knowledge
and tremendous efforts.

4. The Author doesn’t see a single good thing in India. There must be millions of people
in this country who are hardworking, honest, kind, co-operative and still successful.
But the Author refuses to accept this. He doesn’t see all the benefits of the biggest
democracy in the world which he himself is enjoying every day too. He doesn’t
remember that the son of a boatman could become the President of India and Sam
Pitroda was a boy from nomadic tribes. He probably doesn’t know meaning of the
prisons flooded with criminals. He perhaps doesn’t hear or read about how big shots
and politicians are even made behind bars as a result of petitions filed by commoners.
It seems, he doesn’t recognize efforts and sacrifice being done by the great social
workers in all respects. He doesn’t realize, how the corruption is sizably reduced by
introducing Online R.O.C. compliance, Online Income Tax and Vat Returns & Self
Assessments and so many other things. That doesn’t mean that everything is smooth
sailing in India, but still there happen to be so many good things which we experience
in our day to day life and we hope to happen a few things in years to come. But the
Author doesn’t want to acknowledge this. This should be regarded as a total
ungratefulness.

To conclude, the Book (and also the Booker) is nothing but an unfortunate total disillusionment.