The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

I always had a perverse fondness for Sujay, the Amherst grad who fooled us all with his earnestness when he was hired back in 2003.  Not perverse like that, Lebron.  Perverse in the sense that he was such a savvy manipulator, such a skilled liar, that it took all of us months to catch on to the fact that he wasn’t doing any actual work, and was, in all likelihood, doing many things that, shall we say, didn’t make him an effective role model for young people.

Well, Balram Halwai has certainly opened a window into the psyche of my old friend Sujay.  Who knows where his mind was all those periods he asked to sit in on my classes – maybe he was plotting to slit my throat with the jagged edge of a broken Johnnie Walker bottle.  

If Balram were a character on any of the cop shows that involve profiling (which, I guess, means every cop show), he would be described as the classic narcissist.   It’s through that narcissism that he probably draws the reader into his story – he crossed the line where one could be sympathetic for him well before the story started, and he doesn’t deceive you about who he is or what he’s done, but he is still likable.

Before I get to my clippings – you didn’t think I’d be able to resist device features the entire time I read, do you? – I’ll leave you with this, Lebron: it was hard to keep in mind that this story was happening in the current day, so antiquated seem its traditions.  And I’m not talking about the family traditions, which in any culture deserve to be antiquated; I’m talking about servant and master, about the upper caste landlords seeming so much like English lords in legendary tales of aristocratic snobbery, or even slave stories of antebellum America.  Even the presence of malls, outsourcing and cell phones sometimes failed to distract me from the 21^st Centuryness of the story.

So now, to give me a little focus, my clippings:

Now, a thinking man like you, Mr. Premier, must ask two questions. Why does the Rooster Coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively? Secondly, can a man break out of the coop? What if one day, for instance, a driver took his employer’s money and ran? What would his life be like? I will answer both for you, sir. The answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime minister will hand over to you, the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop. The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed—hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters—can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature. It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.  (Loc. 2415-24)

Two of my favorite parts of the story collide in this moment.  Balram is looking at a Rooster Coop in a butchering section of Delhi, but he’s seeing India.  I like that it’s a rooster coop and not a chicken coop because it doesn’t even pretend to account for women.  The second part is the connection to the White Tiger, and the way he twists its original meaning to turn it from prodigy to freak and pervert of nature.  When you read this book, Lebron, you’ll think of yourself as the white tiger, a freak of nature, but in a good way.  But that’s not what Balram means here, capisce?

See, I was like that ass now. And all I would do, if I had children, was teach them to be asses like me, and carry rubble around for the rich. I put my hands on the steering wheel, and my fingers tightened into a strangling grip. The way I had rushed to press Mr. Ashok’s feet, the moment I saw them, even though he hadn’t asked me to! Why did I feel that I had to go close to his feet, touch them and press them and make them feel good—why? Because the desire to be a servant had been bred into me: hammered into my skull, nail after nail, and poured into my blood, the way sewage and industrial poison are poured into Mother Ganga. I had a vision of a pale stiff foot pushing through a fire. (Loc. 2656-62)

 This is another great use of a metaphor.  It Balram is literally watching a large overburdened donkey flanked by two smaller overburdened donkeys, and as he saw India in the Rooster Coop moment, he sees himself in this one.  And there’s something incredibly interesting in the foot massaging moment he refers to – one gets the sense that he genuinely wanted to take care of his master in that moment, conditioned biologically and socially to feel a genuine intensity of feeling for serving.  And then, to close the passage, he makes his connection to the mother condemned by Granny Kusum to her early death, then condemned in death for having had a free spirit in life, a freedom Balram takes for himself.  This passage seems to me the kernel for the story, with its indictment of the traditions that strip men of the autonomy that makes manhood.

What’s that you say, Mr. Jiabao? Do I hear you call me a cold-blooded monster? There is a story I think I heard at a train station, sir, or maybe I read it on the torn page that had been used to wrap an ear of roasted corn I bought at the market—I can’t remember. It was a story of the Buddha. One day a cunning Brahmin, trying to trick the Buddha, asked him, “Master, do you consider yourself a man or a god?” The Buddha smiled and said, “Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.” I’ll give you the same answer to your question, Mr. Jiabao. You ask, “Are you a man or a demon?” Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are still sleeping, and that is the only difference between us. (Loc. 4285-92)

And here, near the end, Balram addresses the question a narcissist knows is being asked of him – how could he, knowing what would happen to his family (his murder is less cold-blooded; it’s wrapped in the old betrayal of the car accident and the impending betrayal of hiring a local driver), kill the landlord’s son and take that money?  But when you look at the family ties he betrayed, they all exist on the surface. they are family solely for practical purposes, unbound by any bonds of affection. Can you betray someone you’re not close to but tied to nonetheless? 

Sayward, thanks for the recommendation; I really, really liked this book.  Sujay, thanks for the brief presence in my experience; while you may still fail to recognize that your life has purpose, I can now assure you that it has: without you, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the book as much.  Of course, now that your purpose has been fulfilled, I don’t know what’s left for you. 

So I’ll leave you with my favorite part of any modern paperback, or e-book, the reading group discussion topics.  Sorry that I didn’t type all eleven, Lebron, but that much boredom for the sake of a joke just ain’t worth it.  Ciao.

The White Tiger Reading Group Stuff at the End

Questions and Topics for Discussion

The following reading group guide and author interview are intended to help you find interesting and rewarding approaches to your reading of The White Tiger

1.       The author chose to tell the story from the provocative point of view of an exceedingly charming, egotistical admitted murderer.  Do Balram’s ambition and charisma make his vision clearer?  More vivid?  Did he win you over?

2.       Why does Balram choose to address the premier?  What motivates him to tell his story?  What similarities does he see between himself and the premier?

3.       Because of his lack of education, Ashok calls Balram “half-baked.”  What does he mean by this?  How blah blah blah

4.       Balram describes himself blah blah blah

5.       Balram blames the culture of servitude in India for the stark contrasts between the Light and the Darkness and the antiquated mind-set that slows change.  Discuss his rooster coop analogy and the role of religion, the political system, and family life in perpetuating this culture.  What do you make of the couplet he keeps repeating to himself about the key and the door?

6.       Then six more questions…what’s a book group to do?

The bad thing about book group questions is that some of them are useful, like 1 and 5.  The other ones feel so much like my high school English education – read the excerpt in the anthology and answer the questions.   Geez, I hope English was a little more interesting in the Akron diocese.