The White Tiger, this year's Man Booker Award-winning novel by first-time novelist Aravind Adiga, about a poor Indian boy who grows up to find success in the big city, is stirring up considerable controversy. Some Indian readers resent Adiga's portrayal of squalid rural poverty, political corruption and the affluent middle class's exploitation of underprivileged servants. In short, this book amounts to an exposé, the glum subject of which is made compulsively readable by the comical, objective, irreverent voice of our hero, Balram Halwai. Still, the novel's tone does little to mollify Adiga's critics, who compare the work to V. S. Naipaul's demeaning An Area of Darkness.
The White Tiger
, by Aravind Adiga, Free Press, 276 pages, $28
Actually, The White Tiger is reminiscent of Naipaul's more popular work, A House for Mr. Biswas, the story of a low-born Trinidadian Indian whose efforts to elevate himself are thwarted by a combination of ancient tradition and modern forces. Balram Halwai's expectations are much more dramatically limited than those of Mr. Biswas. He is born in a rural Indian village where his father drives a rickshaw. His tyrannical grandmother rules over the extended family in the cramped quarters they call home. The most important member of the family is the water buffalo, for the money it brings in for its milk.
Balram loves to learn, even though his teacher passes most of the school day either spitting or sleeping. But he is forced to quit school when a wealthy village leader calls the family's loan.
Balram's mother is dead. But he clings to her belief that he is a special child, the one she expected to escape rural life. As if to reinforce that vision, Balram earns the sarcastic sobriquet "white tiger," for the rare animal that comes along once in a generation. His luck does turn when his stingy grandmother offers to pay for driving lessons. Eventually, Balram lands a job as a driver in Dhanbad. When his employer and his wife arrange to spend some time in Delhi, they take Balram along. There, he listens and learns all he can about becoming wealthy.
The White Tiger ... is a novel of social protest, a novel about class
Part of what is unsettling about this book is Adiga's juxtaposition of a prosperous, 21st-century urban India - the West is just a Google away - with the almost medieval "darkness" of the nation's rural life. Modern India is increasingly defined in the West by a collection of hopeful phrases: as an "emerging superpower" and "the world's largest democracy," as a "leader in technological industry and outsourcing." Adiga's brutal clarity makes India a metaphor for the parallel worlds of rich and poor just about everywhere else.
In the novel, these worlds intersect in Balram's relationship with his employer and his family. They occupy an apartment in a glamorous high-rise while Balram sleeps in cockroach-infested servant's quarters. Like all the others, he is on call 24/7 - to massage feet and sweep and feed, and sometimes even to drive, ferrying his boss and his wife to social engagements or meetings with corrupt politicians.
His remuneration is, naturally, inadequate, though it is true that his employer could be worse. Still, the family shows Balram little respect. They mock his accent, emphasize his limited education. They seem to insult him for sport, while Balram inwardly rages. Yet, overall, they hardly notice him, holding private conversations about business and politics while Balram eagerly eavesdrops. They behave as though he is not even present: He is like Ralph Ellison's invisible man.
