The White Tiger

I picked up this book by Aravind Adiga in the Singapore airport last week and finished it in five hours flat. Having just won the Booker prize, the book had a lot of expectations to deliver. I have read a lot of books that have won this prestigious prize in the past and I must confess that from a purely literary angle “The white tiger” pales in comparison. But there is something about this book that holds one’s attention till the end. Its a work of pure fiction, but somewhere down the line Adiga branches into Non-fiction. I completed this book in the flight when everyone around me were fast asleep and I pondered sometime over the subject matter of the book. I took me a while to realise that Adiga has potrayed an image of India which to the Urban crowd no longer exists. The glamour and gloss of IT industry has given the world a make believe image that India has come out of the clutches of fedualism, but the reality reamains that more than majority of the population still grapples with slavery, casteism, poverty and illiteracy.The book shows the slow metamorphosis of the protaganist Balram Halwai from an innocent village boy to a cunning, scheming urban citizen, who has lost all sense of intregrity and steeps himself in every form of debauchery. Adiga minces no words when he describes the activities of Balram and that is the poignant part of the tale. There are some stunning sentences in the book which shakes ones of the reverie that we have been living in.

Read it. It may prove to be an eye opener.

Cheers!!!!!!!!!!