Tiger, tiger, burning bright…

It’s great to see what one desires most to be seen. And the joy is double if it’s something that defies the norm. Ever since ‘The White Tiger’ started to make headlines, there was a horde of ‘critics’ preaching against the dark portrait. And with each bitter assault and the extracts they provided I knew that I would love ‘The White Tiger’. I’m a self-confessed lover of dark, bleak and brutally honest portrayals. Vijay Nair’s ‘And the winner is…’ in the Literary Review of The Hindu dated 04-01-09, was a respite, rather one piece of a helluva, I’ve been waiting to savour.

It was interesting to read the reviews after the coveted ‘Booker’ was bestowed upon Aravind Adiga for ‘presenting the dark side of India’. Emerged as the dark horse from a list of celebrity authors including Amitav Ghosh and Philip Hensher, Adiga became only the third debutant after Arundhati Roy and DBC Pierre to bag the Man Booker Prize. From seasonal critics to amateur bloggers, there was a hurry to join hands against ‘The White Tiger.’ The only few good words - barring a couple of desi reviewers - came from the western media and that might’ve added fuel in the fire of the much abused ‘catering to the western sensibility’ allegation.

Years ago, there was a rage against ‘The God of Small Things’ when Arundhati Roy was awarded with ‘Booker’. That time it was not just the academic critics but also the comrades who were up in arms against her for her alleged anti-Marxist remarks in the novel. “Obscene” pronounced the ideologues and the rank and file repeated the refrain without bothering to turn a single page. I personally knew a handful of people who spent much of their energy denying the novel any literary value. And when asked “Have you read it?” the answer was a belligerent “No” that implies “What does it got to do with my bashing Roy”? Where ignorance is a bliss, it’s folly to be wise. But ironically, it was the Marxist critic Aijaz Ahmad who showered praises on ‘The God of Small Things’ for its rich imagery, brilliant narrative and the bold experiments with language, even before it was accorded ‘Booker’.

Vijay Nair began his piece by raising the question, the root cause of the hostility the recent booker winners, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga has received and is still receiving. “Is it because they hold a mirror to realities we refuse to acknowledge?” he asks. Partly the answer lies there, and another part in this paragraph of his article:

“The White Tiger is the most recent of the three and it may be worthwhile to explore the book as well as the anger it has generated among Indians. Not just among stuffed-shirt critics who for years have been struggling to write their first book and despairing, frustrated writers who have had to deal with the “no advance, no royalty; feel blessed you have been published,” vagaries of Indian publishing houses and who cannot but resent the outsider who gets catapulted to a different league of big advances and international celebrity-hood riding on that one “lucky” book, but also the average Indian reader who patronises English fiction. This is the class that grew up reading Sydney Sheldon and Danielle Steel, but would like to own the work of “that Indian Bloke, what’s his name, who won that jackpot of a prize”.

Hobnobbing with the press after receiving the award, Aravind Adiga said: “I grew up in the south, which was very different culturally and economically to the places along the Ganges where I was traveling. For the first time, I met people like rickshaw-pullers, and it got me thinking about India in a different way. This book was an attempt to capture the voice of the men I met”. And the central character of the book was partly inspired by a rickshaw-puller he met, who angrily said, “You’ve listened to me, but when you go back, you’ll forget about me.” “I did not forget”, concluded Mr.Adiga. All one needs to find out that he didn’t is a journey through the brilliantly original ‘The White Tiger.’

As an indication that nothing is left behind untouched by the prevailing characteristic of a particular period, Adiga too didn’t be spared of intolerance. It ranges from calling him an ‘outsider’ to question his patriotic credentials. But ironically he has proved more insider than anyone of those detractors. If patriotism is jumping the bandwagon of the false “India Raising” and turning one’s back towards the ever-growing poverty and injustice meted out to the millions who live like worms, of course Aravind Adiga is not a patriot, nor am I.

What makes Vijay Nair’s article sweeter is the one that preceded it. Appeared in the November issue of the Literary Review, Amitava Kumar in the essay ‘On The White Tiger’ wonders; “Is it a novel from one more outsider, presenting cynical anthropologies to an audience that is not Indian?” Begins with that query, the essay details on how Mr. Kumar got to know about the novel for the first time and how excited he was to start reading it after he met Adiga in New York and came to know that the novel “had been a fruit of his labours as a reporter in India.”


There are two things I want to address in Amitava Kumar’s essay. The first one is his outright denial of Adiga’s description of the way the women at home treat their men when they came back from the city. (He also hails from Bihar, which was mentioned as ‘darkness’ through out the novel). “I had witnessed such men, and sometimes women, coming back to their village homes countless times. The novelist seemed to know next to nothing about either the love or the despair of the people he was writing about”, says Mr. Kumar. I believe that it was necessary for Adiga to describe the scene in that manner. Balram Halwai, the protagonist, as far as characterization is concerned, is near perfect. The character was moulded and developed with utmost precision. As a student he was bright, his own parents were “too busy” to give him a name so he was called Balram by the teacher when he went to school for the first time. From being called as a ‘White Tiger’ for his intelligence he was thrown to the tea shop in the next scene with his classmates ridiculing him calling “The Coal Breaker”. When he and his brother took his father to hospital, the poor man wasn’t given any treatment at all and eventually he met with a pathetic end there vomiting blood, the ward boys made them clean up the premises. The funeral of his mother, which he witnessed when he was a kid, was ‘grand’. The woman who had nothing decent to wear throughout her life was carried to the pyre “wrapped in saffron silk cloth which was covered in rose petals and jasmine garlands.” All these, the utter helplessness and the cruel contradictions life throws at him, contribute greatly in the characterization of Balram. The root of his realization, that Kusum is exploiting him and will continue the same, lies in his memory of his father “being fed after the buffaloes were fed” by the women at home. There’s no doubt that Balram Halwai knew it inside out where he came from, and it is this knowledge that makes him go. One can easily spot a ‘raging desire’ in his tone and manners to ‘come up in life’, to ‘arrive’. The scene in which he begs for the job at the Stork’s home and eventually gets in is just a typical example.


Another issue Mr. Kumar raises is that Balram’s reaction when he returned to his village is not that of someone who “has only recently left”. “Does it appear to be the account of a man who is returning home?” he asks. Sorry sir, it was a great mistake by Adiga here. Balram Halwai, in true filmy style, should’ve stepped out of the car as soon as he entered the village sporting an excited expression (cho chweet!) before he appreciates the intricate patterns of cow dung strewn all over. The next scene should’ve been a song sequence featuring Balram running through the field, probably with a camera in his hand and a horde of bare-torsoed, malnourished children running behind him, only to be vanished after the song. (Haven’t you seen those countless bollywood flicks in which the US returned or city educated girl comes to her grandpa’s village with a precarious tendency to fall in love with the village fool Mr.Adiga? Shame on you dude, shame on you.

This sentence in parenthesis, “No boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you” defies the arguments that Adiga lacks compassion and ‘The White Tiger’ is an outsider’s narrative. It’s not just knowledge but deep compassion that ultimately makes the sentence shine like a jewel.

There’s no doubt that Adiga’s ‘tiger’ is burning bright. But what we see in the brightness, in the light, are not at all pleasant things to see. Dehumanisation, the dark side of ‘the shining India’, the utter helplessness of the poor…Aravind Adiga has captured it all making ‘The White Tiger’ a mirror held against contemporary India.