Balram Halwai, narrator of The White Tiger, is not going to let a lack of education keep him in the dark. He is heading for glory in India's bright future. He will be one of those who stuffs cash into brown envelopes for policemen and politicians, and not just another victimAravind Adiga's first novel is couched as a cocksure confession from a deceitful, murderous philosopher runt who has the brass neck to question his lowly place in the order of things.
His disrespect for his elders and betters is shocking - even Mahatma Gandhi gets the lash of his scornful tongue.
Balram has worked out early in life that good deeds usually have awful consequences. This is because he, along with most lowly Indians, inhabits the Darkness, a place where basic necessities are routinely snatched by the wealthy, who live in the Light.
He gets a lucky break when he learns to handle a car, then lands a job as driver for a landlord from his village. He has the voice of what may, or may not, be a new India: quick-witted, half-baked, self-mocking, and quick to seize an advantage. He happily abuses religious foibles and hatreds of others where it suits, dispatching a rival driver to destitution via a little anti-Muslim prejudice.
There is much to commend in this novel, a witty parable of India's changing society, yet there is much to ponder. The scales have fallen from the eyes of some Indian writers, many either living abroad, or educated there like Adiga.
The home country is invariably presented as a place of brutal injustice and sordid corruption, one in which the poor are always dispossessed and victimised by their age-old enemies, the rich. Characters at the colourful extremities of society are Dickensian grotesques, Phiz sketches, adrift in a country that is lurching rapidly towards bland middle-class normality.
My hunch is this is fundamentally an outsider's view and a superficial one. There are so many alternative Indias, uncontacted and unheard. Adiga is an interesting talent. I hope he will immerse himself deeper in that country, then go on to greater things.
His disrespect for his elders and betters is shocking - even Mahatma Gandhi gets the lash of his scornful tongue.
Balram has worked out early in life that good deeds usually have awful consequences. This is because he, along with most lowly Indians, inhabits the Darkness, a place where basic necessities are routinely snatched by the wealthy, who live in the Light.
He gets a lucky break when he learns to handle a car, then lands a job as driver for a landlord from his village. He has the voice of what may, or may not, be a new India: quick-witted, half-baked, self-mocking, and quick to seize an advantage. He happily abuses religious foibles and hatreds of others where it suits, dispatching a rival driver to destitution via a little anti-Muslim prejudice.
There is much to commend in this novel, a witty parable of India's changing society, yet there is much to ponder. The scales have fallen from the eyes of some Indian writers, many either living abroad, or educated there like Adiga.
The home country is invariably presented as a place of brutal injustice and sordid corruption, one in which the poor are always dispossessed and victimised by their age-old enemies, the rich. Characters at the colourful extremities of society are Dickensian grotesques, Phiz sketches, adrift in a country that is lurching rapidly towards bland middle-class normality.
My hunch is this is fundamentally an outsider's view and a superficial one. There are so many alternative Indias, uncontacted and unheard. Adiga is an interesting talent. I hope he will immerse himself deeper in that country, then go on to greater things.
