Page 149 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 19: Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger—Critical Appreciation

19.1 The White Tiger—Critical Appreciation Notes

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, has once again drawn the attention of thousands of Indian
readers not only for winning the Man Booker Prize 2008 but primarily for its realistic and graphic
picture of some of the most canny truths about India. It is perhaps the most drastic and bitter facts
that have impressed the judges, who have got a revealing inside into India. Hence the book, as a
whole, presents the crude, dark and naked facts about India, and that has added all the merits for
the award of the coveted Man Booker Prize.
The entire plot of the novel pivots round the protagonist Balram Halwai, a young man born and
brought up in a remote village of Bihar, who narrates his story of life in the form of a letter to a
foreign dignitary, the Chinese Prime-Minister who is on his visit to Bangalore on an official
assignment. In his talk Halwai begins to tell the Chinese Premier the story of his life. We are
introduced to the poverty of rural Bihar, and the evil of the feudal landlords.
Halwai's voice sounds like a curious mix of an American teen and a middle-aged Indian essayist.
While unfolding his life of adventure and struggle, he is mainly concerned with painting a realistic
picture of his village, his people, the feudal Zamindars of India and particularly all those
entrepreneurs who have arisen from dubious position to the great heights of business magnets.
But it is the graphic picture of the country and the portrayal of the characters that really matter in
the novel. To begin with we have the portrayal of a school teacher who is thus painted by the
narrator.
The teacher turned aside and spat - a jet of red paan splashed the ground of the classroom. He
licked his lips.
While describing about India to the foreign Prime-Minister, he explains and immediately depicts
the great river of India called
Ganga which flows through his village. That black river am I talking of - which is river of Death,
whose banks are full of rich, dark, sticky mud whose grip traps everything that is planted in it,
suffocating and choking and stunting it? Why, I am talking of Mother Ganga, daughter of the
Vedas, river of illumination, protector of us all, breaker of the chain of birth and rebirth. Everywhere
this river flows, that area is the Darkness. Please understand, Your Excellency, that India is two
countries in one: an India of Light, and an India of Darkness. The ocean brings light to my
country. Every place on the map of India near the ocean is well-off. But the river brings darkness
to India - the black river. And then he gives a vivid picture of the buffalo that always stands in
front of his house as a member of the family: The water buffalo. She was the fattest thing in our
family; this was true in every house in the village. All day long, the women fed her and fed her
fresh grass; feeding her was the main thing in their lives. All their hopes were concentrated in her
fatness, sir. If she gave enough milk, the women could sell some of it, and there might be a little
more money at the end of the day. She was a fat, glossy-skinned creature, with a vein the size of
a boy's penis sticking out over her hairy snout, and long thick pearly spittle suspended from the
edge of her mouth; she sat all day in her own stupendous crap. She was the dictator of our house!
And finally completes the picture of his village home with an account of women quarreling with
each other: Every now and then they stop their work, because it is time to fight. This means
throwing metal vessels at one another, or pulling each other's hair, and then making up, by
putting kisses on their palms and pressing them to the other's cheeks. At night they sleep together,
their legs falling one over the other, like one creature, a millipede. The novel opens with such
shocking but vivid account of India's village people, landscape and, above all, a devastating
account of haves and haves-not during the narration of the personal life of the protagonist Balram
Halwai who, while serving his rich master as a driver, learns the art of entrepreneurship and
himself becomes a great entrepreneur by killing his own master after robbing him of all his
money. Hence neither the plot nor character analysis nor the novel itself appears to be worthy for

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