Balram
Halwai, the narrator of Aravind Adiga’s first novel, “The White
Tiger,” is a modern Indian hero. In a country inebriated by its
newfound economic prowess, he is a successful entrepreneur, a
self-made man who has risen on the back of India’s much-vaunted
technology industry. In a nation proudly shedding a history of
poverty and underdevelopment, he represents, as he himself says,
“tomorrow.”
Balram
Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur.
Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of
a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and
transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having
nothing but his own wits to help him along.
Balram
begins the journey into his past by describing his early life in the
village of Laxmangarh, a small community pervaded by poverty. His
family is dominated by a forceful grandmother, fed as the result of
the income generated by a hard-working (but badly paid) father, and
trapped in their way of life by India’s centuries-old caste system,
which defines individuals by the jobs done by ancient ancestors. Very
early on, however, Balram comes to realize and/or believe that the
life for which he seems to be destined is not the life he wants
and/or needs to live, and slowly, carefully, starts working his way
towards greater wealth and success. He doesn’t really know how he’s
going to get there: he only knows that he has to, and trusts that the
way forward will ultimately be revealed to him.
“The
White Tiger” is a penetrating piece of social commentary, attuned
to the inequalities that persist despite India’s new prosperity. It
correctly identifies — and deflates — middle-class India’s
collective euphoria. But Adiga, a former correspondent for Time
magazine who lives in Mumbai, is less successful as a novelist. His
detailed descriptions of various vile aspects of Indian life are
relentless — and ultimately a little monotonous. Every moment, it
seems, is bleak, pervaded by “the Darkness.” Every scene, every
phrase, is a blunt instrument, wielded to remind Adiga’s readers of
his country’s cruelty.
The
characters can also seem superficial. Balram’s landlord boss and
his wife are caricatures of the insensitive upper classes, cruel to
and remote from their employees. Although Balram himself is somewhat
more interesting, his credulousness and naïveté often ring false.
When he goes to buy alcohol for his employer, he finds himself
“dazzled by the sight of so much English liquor.” When he visits
a shopping mall, he is “conscious of a perfume in the air, of
golden light, of cool, air-conditioned air, of people in T-shirts and
jeans. . . . I saw an elevator going up and down that seemed made of
pure golden glass.”
The
problem with such scenes isn’t simply that they’re overdone. In
their surfeit of emblematic detail, they reduce the characters to
symbols. There is an absence of human complexity in “The White
Tiger,” not just in its characters but, more problematically, in
its depiction of a nation that is in reality caught somewhere between
Adiga’s vision and the shinier version he so clearly — and
fittingly — derides. Lacking this more balanced perspective, the
novel feels simplistic: an effective polemic, perhaps, but an
incomplete portrait of a nation and a people grappling with the
ambiguities of modernity.
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