The White Tiger is the debut Novel of Aravind Adiga which won 40th Booker Prize in 2008. It is an interesting and entertaining novel of an Servant, Philosopher, Entrepreneur, Murderer and a complicated man Balram Halwai. Written as an letter to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Balram tells his story in a very unique way. It scatters the light of the chandelier on the darker side of the Independent India from villages to the rapidly growing metropolitan cities.
Starting out as a cleaning boy in a small tea shop in his village Laxmangarh, Balram moved to the city Dhanbad with his elder brother to become a cleaner at a bigger tea shop. But his yearning for a uniform and a better life attracted him to the drivers that he saw at the tea shop in Laxmangarh, and he convinced his family to let him learn how to drive. By a strange quirk of fate, he soon gained employment with Mongoose, the son of a landlord (Stork) from his village. Learning the ways and means of the house, his cunning and intelligence enabled him to move with Stork’s younger, US returned son to Delhi, the city that eventually corrupted him.While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly ("Love -- Rape -- Revenge!"), barter for girls, drink liquor (Thunderbolt), and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink liquor (single-malt whiskey), and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Detailing the sequence of events that led him to murder his master and flee to Bangalore, Balram narrates his life story in the form of seven letters to the Chinese Prime Minister who is visiting India shortly, in order to acquaint him with the “real India.”
I highly recommend this book to the people interested to know about differences in living of Rural and Urban India.You will know that how landlords of the village rules the villagers and how ministers rules these Landlords.Book teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations.
The novel successfully discloses the youth crime in India and shortcomings of the democratic society.But the Dilemma is,whether to feel proud about the great award winning book or to be ashamed of the subject of the book that is 'Indian Corruption'.On a whole the book is a slap on Indian democracy.
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