The White Tiger-- Aravind Adiga

Perhaps one does well to let the author speak for himself:

from The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga

It is an ancient and venerated custom of people in my country to start a story by praying to a Higher Power.

I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god's arse.

Which god's arse, though? There are so many choices.

See Muslims have one god.

The Christians have three gods.

And we Hindus have 36,000,000 gods.

Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to shoose from.

Now there are some, and I don't just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist. Some believe that none of them exist. There's just us and an ocean of dark around us.  I'm no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work--much like our politicians, and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year.

 And so, you have a sense of the spirit of the thing.  The White Tiger is the story of Balram (no last name) who has climbed the entrepreneurial ladder of India and now sits in his luxurious 150 square foot office (with chandelier) and dictates/writes a series of letters to the Premier of China advising him:

She explained a little. Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don't have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousand of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs--we entrepreneurs--have set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.

And so the story--our friend will narrate to the Premier how he came to be one of these great entrpreneurs.

This is an angry book--a blazing-hot with rage story, told under the mild countenance of one of India's Horatio Algers.  When I say it is an angry book, it is angry in the way that Dickens's books are often angry--raging at the society and government that systematically oppresses the poor (and worse) for a moderate gain that improves conditions for no one. As Adiga points out, it is the entrepreneurs that are improving things, and only inasmuch as they care to do so.  Balram is one of those who does make the effort.

No one walks away from this book unscathed.

(By the way, Mr. Premier: Have you noticed that all four of the greatest poets int he world are Muslim? And yet all the Muslims you meet are illiterate or coverd head to toe in black burkas or looking for building to blow up? It's a puzzle, isn't it? If you ever figure these people out, send me an e-mail.)

But by far the greatest vitriol is reserved for those who should be making a difference (and who do--for themselves.)

You see a total of ninety-three criminal cases--for murder, rape, grand larceny, gun-running, pimping, and many other such minor offenses--are pending against the Great Socialist and his ministers at the present moment. Not easy to get convictions when the judges are judging in Darkness, yet three convictions have been delivered, and three of the ministers are currently in jail but continue to be ministers. The Great Socialist himself is said to have embezzled one billion rupees from the Darkness, and transferred that money into a bank account in a small, beautiful country in Europe full of white people and black money.

And so it goes, for the whole novel--one continuous, unrelenting indictment of a government and political system that ruthlessly exploits the poor and dismantles their own culture to bring Mall World and other sundry advances of the West into the backwaters of Delhi.

The White Tiger is savage, as its title suggests. But there is another side as well.  For those of us who constantly watch American jobs drain into the outsourcing pool, we get a glimpse of the other side of outsourcing.  We come to understand that while a very small number of people actually benefit from all the work flowing into India, it is under the same feudal/medieval conditions that the country has always operated.  Workers are required to work the hours that allow them to best accommodate their American bosses.  While they are paid better than anyone in India (other than the self-paying politicians), they still only barely make their way out of poverty and into a kind of middle existence on the edges of the Indian cities.  And in the midst of all of this, the poor camp out on green stretches in the middle of busy highways.  Their children are killed by drunken motorists at night. Their slums (if they are lucky enough to live in one) are built on the rims of open sewers.

The White Tiger is a quick read and does for more prosperous India what Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance did for the poorest of the poor-the untouchables.  It is a brilliant book, punctuated with sorrow, violence, and anger and driven by the sort of reforming spirit that propelled Dickens's books.  It is well worth your time and energy to look into this book and to see another side of life, another part of the world, which we are (mostly) well-insulated from.

[Of course, it is important to remember, that The White Tiger isn't the whole story.  The author never purports it to be--there is an India of beauty, charm, life, and joy that we get an occasional sense of in the book, but which is mostly to the side--the main thrust of this story not oriented toward that India.]

****1/2--Highly recommended