The White Tiger<\/em>, the novel by Aravind Adiga which won the Man Booker Prize in 2008, has been described as black comedy and a hilarious look at the insanities of life in modern India, but to this reviewer it is chilling as well, because it reveals a society in which the poorest classes have little hope of ever improving their lives. This is not a society that any of us would choose to live in, but sometimes we appear to be headed in that direction. If I had read The White Tiger<\/em> when it came out in 2008, I might not have thought it had any parallels to our country or any political significance to us.\u00a0 But now, unfortunately, I do.<\/p>\n

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The narrator and hero, Balram Halwai, begins the novel with a letter to the Premier of China, a man Balram expects to visit Bangalore within the week.\u00a0 He has heard that the Premier wants to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their successes, so Balram writes:<\/p>\n

Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you don\u2019t have entrepreneurs.\u00a0 And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does<\/em> have entrepreneurs. \u00a0Thousands and thousand of them.\u00a0 Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs \u2013 we<\/em> entrepreneurs \u2013 have set up all of these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Balram identifies himself as \u201chalf-baked\u201d which means that he was never allowed to complete his schooling.\u00a0 But he considers himself advantaged in the sense that while very well-educated people tend to take orders from others for the rest of their lives, \u201cEntrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay.\u201d<\/p>\n

He loses his mother to sickness and death before he is eight years old, but is raised by a grasping grandmother and by a father whom he reveres as a man of honor and courage, in spite of his humble occupation as rickshaw-puller. Although his father chooses not to fight the system himself, he determines that his son will have an education.\u00a0 Balram remembers his father\u2019s words all of his life, \u201cMy whole life, I have been treated like a donkey.\u00a0 All I want is that one son of mine \u2013 at least one \u2013 should live like a man.\u201d\u00a0 Although he does not understand exactly what his father means, Balram decides to be a white tiger \u2013 the creature who comes along only once in a generation, a person who takes advantage of every opportunity without exception. Sadly, within a few months Balram\u2019s father succumbs to tuberculosis in a hospital in which there is no doctor to attend him.\u00a0 The doctors are all attending wealthy patients.<\/p>\n

Balram keeps his eyes open and learns the bitter truths about his society.\u00a0 He misses no chance to move ahead in a very unfair world by watching everyone and seeing what they do, not what they say. He astutely observes the way the wealth in his district has been divided between four men, and he manages to be employed by one of them.\u00a0 In moving ahead as quickly as possible, he has to leave behind his own beloved older brother.\u00a0 After a visit home, he agonizes, \u201cThey were eating him (the brother who cares for the family) alive in there!\u00a0 They would do the same thing to him that they did to Father \u2013 scoop him out from the inside and leave him weak and helpless, until he got tuberculosis and died on the floor of a government hospital, waiting for some doctor to see him, spitting blood on this wall and that!\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, Balram knows he must move on and not go back home.\u00a0 Meanwhile he grows more cynical and ruthless, although the reader cannot help admiring him for his savvy humor and determination.\u00a0 And he does have his standards, although he is willing to betray others in the servant class in order to get a better job, that of driving his boss in Delhi, a city where he has even more opportunities to learn hard lessons.\u00a0 The book entertains the reader beautifully, in spite of its harshness, because Balram essentially sees truth is a totally unsentimental way and amusing way.\u00a0 The reader slowly succumbs to the seduction of a lovable and funny fictional character, one capable of both empathy and murder.\u00a0 At the end of the novel, Balram owns his own company with a fleet of cars and driver\/employees whom he claims to treat with respect. True, he has made some ruthless decisions to get there.<\/p>\n

So . . . Balram maneuvers in a class system that has a wealthy, powerful group of people and an underclass who sees little hope of bettering themselves; at least he is surviving and enjoying his success at the end of the novel. \u00a0However, none of us Americans envy the two tiered society in which he lives.\u00a0 In fact, we fear such a way of life.\u00a0 As the author Aravinda Adiga himself says in a Q and A at the end of the novel:<\/p>\n

India is being flooded with \u201chow to be an Internet businessman\u201d kind of books, and they\u2019re all dreadfully earnest and promise to turn you into Iacocca in a week.\u00a0 This is the kind of book that my narrator mentions, mockingly \u2013 he knows that life is a bit harder than these books promise.\u00a0 There are lots of self-made millionaires in India now, certainly, and lots of successful entrepreneurs.\u00a0 But remember that over a billion people live here, and for the majority of them, who are denied decent health care, education, or employment, getting to the top would take doing something like what Balram has done.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The White Tiger<\/em> entertains, absolutely, but it is also a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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