Finished The White Tiger....Arvind Adiga is stupendous in delineating the reality of Indian polity. The White Tiger is well written...though it appeared to me to be too conscious to satisfy the western appetite. The Man Booker award did not come out of blue...definitely well depicted...Indian can surely 'boast' being rated among the best known corrupted nations of the world...but is that to this extent?
what I feel....Adiga aimed at capturing the pitch-black darkness that continues to exist under the much camoufalged Shining India...croes and crores are spent to advertise India's steady march into the power circle of global politics though at the centre the poor citizens suffers the painful plight inflicted upon them...and remain quite oblivious of the fact...and thats probably the reason when Balram Halwai breaks free, though savage and utter immoral his way is....it lands a real hard punch to digest...
Adiga surely knows to employ words so as to capture our imagination just the way it ought to be. The novel, if form is considered, is a kind of reinventing a long drawn practice. As Joseph Conrad deployed the travelogue method to probe into human psyche, to bring out man's sojourn into his inner self in 'The Heart of Darkness', as James Joyce used bildungsroman form to depict an artist's psychological growth in his 'The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,' Adiga deftly used the epistolary form. But a 21st century novel probably realistically discarded the 'letter-novel' form only to re-invent it in 'email-novel' form. Balram Halwai sends emails to the Chinese Premier unfolding his rise to success that in its due course lamblasts the corrupted hypocrite Indian social institutions and politics-- the sarcasm in the tone his hardly missed.
The story is of a boy from the 'Darkness' (the caste-religious fraction ridden villages in Bihar-Jharkhand), Balram Halwai...his struggle to come to terms with the extreme humiliation he faces at the hands of the upper castes, how he manages an escapade to Delhi as a driver, and how he is gradually engulfed by illegal and immoral activities...and how he finally ascends a position of his own and settles in Bangalore. Now he has money and even after a murder he is declared missing by the police...Balram now can bribe police, same police who made him sign a forced confession of a murder which actually was committed by his master's wife once. The sarcasm is evident when he joined the landlords house as a driver...the rich landlord funds the political party of one big 'socialist'...the landlords bribe the ministers of the cabinet headed by the 'socialist' to evade income tax raids. The socialist empties his lung power to prove himself the messiah of the Darkness...but when it comes to polling, Balram and his likes knows that they are not entitled to vote...because the socialist's men will take care of that....then with Ashok, the landlord's younger son moving to Delhi, Balram leaves for the big city ...that ultimately ruins him though giving him enough wisdom...he committed crime, he murdered Ashok to grab his money.....to establish an identity of his own...tired he was of the inhuman oppression ... he chose to betray the society to see his dream come true...had he made himself to stick to the societal norms...he would have ended up working for others as drivers the whole of his life....Adiga touches this very grey zone of man's life...the White tiger, with his dark mind scape...delving deeper into this blurred existence of human beings....where immorality is palpable but can never be altogether condemned....intriguing questions goes on arising...
The White Tiger is dark, very dark,....very savage....utterly fascinating and mesmerizing....
what I feel....Adiga aimed at capturing the pitch-black darkness that continues to exist under the much camoufalged Shining India...croes and crores are spent to advertise India's steady march into the power circle of global politics though at the centre the poor citizens suffers the painful plight inflicted upon them...and remain quite oblivious of the fact...and thats probably the reason when Balram Halwai breaks free, though savage and utter immoral his way is....it lands a real hard punch to digest...
Adiga surely knows to employ words so as to capture our imagination just the way it ought to be. The novel, if form is considered, is a kind of reinventing a long drawn practice. As Joseph Conrad deployed the travelogue method to probe into human psyche, to bring out man's sojourn into his inner self in 'The Heart of Darkness', as James Joyce used bildungsroman form to depict an artist's psychological growth in his 'The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,' Adiga deftly used the epistolary form. But a 21st century novel probably realistically discarded the 'letter-novel' form only to re-invent it in 'email-novel' form. Balram Halwai sends emails to the Chinese Premier unfolding his rise to success that in its due course lamblasts the corrupted hypocrite Indian social institutions and politics-- the sarcasm in the tone his hardly missed.
The story is of a boy from the 'Darkness' (the caste-religious fraction ridden villages in Bihar-Jharkhand), Balram Halwai...his struggle to come to terms with the extreme humiliation he faces at the hands of the upper castes, how he manages an escapade to Delhi as a driver, and how he is gradually engulfed by illegal and immoral activities...and how he finally ascends a position of his own and settles in Bangalore. Now he has money and even after a murder he is declared missing by the police...Balram now can bribe police, same police who made him sign a forced confession of a murder which actually was committed by his master's wife once. The sarcasm is evident when he joined the landlords house as a driver...the rich landlord funds the political party of one big 'socialist'...the landlords bribe the ministers of the cabinet headed by the 'socialist' to evade income tax raids. The socialist empties his lung power to prove himself the messiah of the Darkness...but when it comes to polling, Balram and his likes knows that they are not entitled to vote...because the socialist's men will take care of that....then with Ashok, the landlord's younger son moving to Delhi, Balram leaves for the big city ...that ultimately ruins him though giving him enough wisdom...he committed crime, he murdered Ashok to grab his money.....to establish an identity of his own...tired he was of the inhuman oppression ... he chose to betray the society to see his dream come true...had he made himself to stick to the societal norms...he would have ended up working for others as drivers the whole of his life....Adiga touches this very grey zone of man's life...the White tiger, with his dark mind scape...delving deeper into this blurred existence of human beings....where immorality is palpable but can never be altogether condemned....intriguing questions goes on arising...
The White Tiger is dark, very dark,....very savage....utterly fascinating and mesmerizing....
Tumito baba nomosso bakti dekhchi. Eto bhalo hoyeche ami obak hoey gechi. Boita porar ichhe hochhe dekhi kothay paoa jay
ReplyDeleteboi ta porle bujte parbo kar lekha ta bhalo tor nah The White Tiger r auther r???darun...dhanya...
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