Unmade in India

Aravind adiga’s debut novel The White Tiger is built on a set of binaries — the two Indias (one of Light and the other of Darkness) — and then sets itself on a narrative trajectory that lifts it far above the didactic trap it could have fallen into. It is a deconstruction of India from the bottom upwards. If that smacks of familiarity, the reader may note that Adiga attempts to penetrate the heart of darkness itself and make that darkness speak in a voice of its own.

The White Tiger is an intelligent and ruthless portrait of the India in the making — shining or rising, but always sinking — shot through with wit and black humour that match the author’s economy with words. It is about an India where the old hierarchies are being replaced by the black-and-white categories of “Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies”. It is also a very angry novel, an anger that defines the narrator-protagonist. But the real power of this book comes from its total lack of sentimentality and the consequent realism it thus manages.

These are familiar motifs but the handling of the material, the fleshing out of the plot, the narrative and the tone distinguish the book from others in the market. Balram is a halwai whose poor folks lost the sweetshop to a grabber long ago and were reduced to labour of the most bestial sort. From this double reduction begins the narrator’s upward climb. The action begins in the present moment, triggered by the announcement of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s state visit to India, apparently with an eye to acquiring lessons in entrepreneurship from India’s great business story.

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