Book Read: The White Tiger
Author:Aravind Adiga
Pages: 276
I really wanted to like The White Tiger. I have enjoyed a lot of work by Indian writers (Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry, Hari Kunzru, Anita Rau Badami, Jhumpa Lahiri) and Adiga is of Indian descent, he won a Booker Prize, and lots of Indian writers have won Booker Prizes and other important literary awards, and the people who judge these sort of awards generally seem to know what they're doing, and so I bowed my head and bought the book.
The White Tiger certainly isn't bad. The narrator, Balram, relates his story through a series of letters to the Chinese premier Wen Jiabo, who is expected to visit India to learn about the new entrepreneurial class. Balram grew up in what Adiga calls "The Darkness" - a rural town called Laxmangarh - the son of a rickshaw puller. His father's pitiful death spurs Balram to learn how to drive, and through his ambition and charm, he manages to secure a post in Delhi ("The Light") as the driver of the son of a wealthy landowner from his village. It's here that the novel's sharpness unfolds and we see the bitterness and deceitful behaviour shared by both the upper and lower class characters. We also see Delhi - the new India - through Balram's eyes. He mentions "hospitals with lobbies as clean as five-star hotels" and provides lingering, loving descriptions of newly-built strip malls. Adiga wants us to know that India isn't all back roads, landfills and poverty - the country is growing.
The expanse of the country also matches Balram's rising ambition, and his loyalty to his wealthy but spineless boss begins to quaver beneath his own desire for Money and Power. The novel's conclusion won't be a surprise (it's revealed early on in the book) but the gradual course of Balram's changing personality may be.
I feel like this novel will be taught in classrooms and passed around overeducated, underemployed, middle-class North Americans (of which I include myself) who will be impressed and charmed at this "gritty depiction" of modern India. When The White Tiger is compared to the magical realism by Salman Rushdie or the romantic, damp family tales of Anita Rau Badami, it does come across as a little rawer, a bit more unflinching. But I also agree with the Guardian's first review of the novel, which pointed out that there are so many alternative Indias, uncontacted and unheard. Adiga's viewpoint is a very particular one---it should not be considered the ultimate truth.
A confession here, and a diversion: I found myself praising the book to others even as it became more and more milquetoast and less spectacular than I wanted it to be. With each successive page turn, I read frantically, groping for something better: better writer, a sharper wit and conclusions that were a little more revelatory. Now that I'm done, I feel a bit like a fraud.
Adiga has also been criticized in the press for being an Oxford-educated upper middle-class journalist; what does he know about being a poor, paan-chewing driver in Delhi? I'm of the view that this is irrelevant. The story is convincing. And authenticity isn't really Adiga's problem. For a novel that has been labelled as at least partially satirical, The White Tiger isn't very funny or particularly acerbic---and that is a problem. It was actually a bit tasteless, not in the sense of being uncouth, but rather because mostly it sat bland and dull on my tongue, like uncooked bread. Where's my fucking spice?
With that being said, a few parts work. It's genuninely agonizing to witness Balram's employer become more vulnerable and stupid in his eyes. In the same way, it's sad (but also vaguely interesting) to watch the deterioration of his character (or is it a strengthening?) His dubbing of a sleazy fellow driver "Vitiligo-Lips" is funny the first four or five times it's mentioned, and I also enjoyed every time the drivers brought up their favorite local periodical, Murder Weekly.
Overall, though, I wasn't attached to any character enough to care about their well-being or demise. Even Balram, who at least had the benefit of being interesting, became tedious until the novel's final, decisive act. I actually found myself skipping his repeated proclamations of enterpreneurial skill and ominous foreshadowing to Mr. Jiabo. I found myself wishing there had been more ACTION and less nostalgic blather - more little shocks to rouse the reader out of a bit of a stupor.
I ultimately feel the success of The White Tiger is due in part to the Slumdog Millionaire-ization of popular North American culture at the moment. Any story about downtrodden people in the Third World seems to get our attention, tug our strings, prod that little bruise of white guilt. Such stories are entertaining, certainly---but do they deserve all these accolades? Haven't we already seen these ideas paraded before us, and done better?
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