Once I asked my friends, while discussing about something, whether light was there at the beginning or whether it was darkness. One said that the light was there at the beginning.
I wondered many times whether it was likely like that. But now I believe that it was darkness there at the beginning and not the light. Light was something which corrupted the darkness.
The novel just tells us how it was corrupted by setting a seemingly complex plot with good narration and definitely with the page turning ability.
The Novel tries to project the life of Balram Halwai, The protagonist, against the power class of India or rather it narrates how he became one of them.
Most of the other novels say the same thing. The hero is born and brought up in a slum, but he thrives all hardships with his honesty and sincerity and emerges as a champion in a society characterized by villains. Seems more or less like an eternal Bollywood saga.
The author in this book did not even attempt in doing so. He describes the character not only as someone from the dark but being darkness itself. The darkness where the real India resides and eats on its chunk of meal.
The real India where people forgot to distinguish between pigs and children, where those who rule is god and those who rebel is devil, where votes are meaningless, and those who vote are fools.
This is the story of how Balram Halwai just a simple man from darkness became one of the elite. How he crossed over towards light after committing a murder.
The book can be regarded as the history of entrepreneurs, the real ones, in India who came from places where even god wont survive.
A real piece of work. A real White Tiger which comes only once in a generation.