Submitted by

C.B. Aathira

I M.A. ENG

The White Tiger

-         Aravind Adiga

Chapter 1:

The First Night

          The White Tiger is in the form of a series of letters. The letters are written by Balram Halwai, an Indian citizen to Wen Jiabao, the premier of the slate council of the People’s Republic of china. In the letters, he describes the reality of India through his life story, his experiences and struggles on his way towards liberation. He discusses the changes in his life as he moves from Laxmangarh to Delhi and Bangalore. His life history is an evidence for India changing value systems which has paved way for the political corruption, theft, lack of morality, hunger for money and other such evils.

          Balram represents the two sides of India, the dark and the light. Through he is born and bred in darkness, he marches towards light through his life experiences.In the novel where both the village and the city are picturised we find the character like Balram, Vikram, Kishan represents lower class. In the city, the masters, the stork, Ashok, Moukesh rule the poor servants like Balram and Ram Prasad, the driver.

          Indian entrepreneur Balram Halwai (alias Ashok Sharma), the novel’s narrator and protagonist, begins composing a letter to Chinese official Wen Jiabao, who is visiting India on diplomacy. Balram expresses his excitement as a local businessman that Jiabao wants to understand the culture of Indian entrepreneurship, and claims that his life story is all Jaibao needs to hear in order to learn “the truth about India”. He warns Jaibao not to believe what politicians tell him, and not to buy the bootlegged American business books that children sell in the street.

          To set scene for Jaibao, Balram describes the luxurious Bangalore office from which he writes, and explains that he will stay up all night to tell his story. This is no great hardship considering that all successful entrepreneurs must watch over their businesses night and day. He honors the Indian tradition of praying to the Gods before beginning a story, an act that he irreverently refers to as “Kissing the Gods’ arises,” before starting his narrative.

          Balram refers to himself as a “half- baked Indian” because he is prevented from completing his formal education as a child. However, he claims that this lack of schooling is not necessarily a disadvantage, and that all Indian entrepreneurs are similarly “half- baked”. “Fully formed” Indians, on the other hand, go on to work in companies and have no entrepreneurial spirit.

          To describe his physical appearance and basic biographical details, Balram references a police details, Balram references a police poster that is issued for his arrest three years ago after an even that he describes as “an act of entrepreneurship”. He mocks the hazy, incomplete police report and fills in the missing information as he goes along. He particularly notes his outward transformation from the unfed peasant in the poster to the pudgy businessman he is today. He also mentions that as a child, he is simply called as “Munna” or “boy”, until a school teacher assigned him the god Krishna’s sidekick.

Balram goes on to describe his native village of Laxmangarh, in the poor, rural “India of Darkness”, in contrast to his current city of Bangalore, which he says is part of the urban, prosperous “India of Light”, Laxmangarh sits on the banks of the sacred Ganges River, where religious Hindus have cremated their dead for centuries and where Balram’s own mother was cremated when he was a young boy. He describes the traumatic experience of her funeral, how he was frightened not so much by the cremation but by the black river mud that sucked his mother’s ashes into its depths. Watching her sink into the earth, Balram faints from an over whelming sense of oppression and futility. Despite its importance as a sacred site, he never returns.

Through his youth Balram is surrounded by poverty, disease, and malnutrition. His destitute family lives at the mercy of four cruel and exploitative land lords referred to collectively as “the Animals”, individually as The Water Buffalo, The Raven, The Stork and The Wild Boar. The Animals “feed” on the town, harassing women and taxing the villagers at every opportunity”.

          Balram’s father Vikram Halwai scrapes together a living as a rickshaw driver. His one ambition is to see his son complete his education and “live like a man”. Balaram’s only understanding of what this might mean is based on his awe for Vijay the Bus Driver, who began as a pig farmer’s son but somehow works his way to a stable job, not to mention a fancy uniform and shiny silver whistle that all the young boys admire. Rumor has it that Vijay got his jobs in exchange for having sex with a politician, but this does not trouble Balram.

Balram’s school though underfunded and run by a corrupt teacher who steals funds because he himself has not been paid for months, is a place where he excels. He recounts a pivotal moment in his life when a visiting school inspector singles him out for his academic promise and integrity. The man calls Balram a “White Tiger”, the rarest and most noble animal in the jungle, and promises him a scholarship. Balaram, used to live a life of hardship in the Darkness, knows that this promise is too good to come true.

His intuition proves correct. Balram’s grandmother Kusum takes out a loan from the Stork, one of the four village landlords, to pay for a relative’s wedding. The Stork orders that Balram be taken out of school to work alongside the rest of his family and pay back the debit. Balram goes to work with his brother Krishna in the village teashop. Though this is a devastating turn of fate, Balram claims that his entrepreneurial spirit allows him to take matters into his own hands, to turn this bad news into good news.

Balram ends this first installment of his story with a memory of the Black Fort: the only thing of beauty in his impoverished town. The fort is a grand old building on a hill above town, constructed by foreign occupier’s years ago, which both fascinated and frightened Balram throughout his youth. He claims that his ability to appreciate its beauty marked him early on as different from his fellow villagers, destined not to remain a slave. When he returns to the village years later with his wealthy master Mr. Ashok and his mistress Pinky Madam, he finally gets the courage to visit the fort alone. He looks out over the village from on high and spits. Eight months later, he reveals, he slits the throat of Mr. Ashok.