The White Tiger

I have just finished reading the 2008 Man booker prize winning novel, ‘The White Tiger’, by Aravind Adiga. Believe me, this is one of the four best books by eastern writers I have read till date. The other three being ‘The Kite Runner’, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ – both by Khaleid Hosseini, and ‘Moth Smoke’ by Mohsin Hamid (who also wrote ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, short listed for the 2007 Man Booker).

Read them all to believe me!!!

The white tiger is a story set in the backdrop of contemporary India. It strikes the discord between two Indias. The brighter India, which belongs only to a few; And the darker India, where rest of the country lives. The story takes us through the life of Balram Halwai, the protagonist who is ‘The White Tiger’.

Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations. Balram’s journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

Aravind has shown the true face of India through Balram’s eyes. It’s no surprise that he deserved the award. Aravind adopted a fresh way of narration which made the characters livelier. The story is written in the form of a letter from ‘The White Tiger’, based in Electronic city of Bangalore, to the Chinese Premier.

I won’t reveal anything from the story. Every line in the book is a must read. And I can’t resist myself from reading it once again.

Okay! It’s time for me to run and read it again… see you later.