There was this novel that had won the Booker Prize and I was a bit curious. Not because I thought that it would be a great novel, but because I thought that the title in itself sounded like that of an Indian movie. I haven’t read any of the other Booker nominees and yet was expecting ‘Sea of Poppies’ to be the winner. That should be a classic. Well, I’ll have to find out for myself what the novel has in store, but before I move further, hats off; and it goes to the title, ‘Sea of Poppies’.
I got ‘The White Tiger’ as a present on my birthday. Thanks to the friend of mine. Even before I started off, my fiancée went through the cover pages and she said she wouldn’t want to read it by any chance. That made it all the more a reason why I had to read it. I picked up the book and found it to be a real light story. Expressions were simple, well put for the biography of a simple man. I could have probably read the book in one relaxed sitting. Belonging to a village myself, it increased the curiosity and added to the nostalgia. The English did not seem to be elitist, like it often is in widely admired Indian writing.
As I continued, I found out that it failed to bring out any deep emotion. I continued telling myself that it wouldn’t be going with the theme because it was the biography of a villager. A thought just passed bye, I was wondering whether Adiga was capable of bringing out such emotions at all. Some of his observations and thoughts were extremely good. His attempt at looking at India as a rooster coop I think was smart and I guess the best, by and far. May be he wanted to keep the novel light. May be he is not good at it. But there are certain places where I started feeling that he lacked attention to detail. It comes out in the language and I think that makes all the difference. And as I was through, I was sitting there wondering to find a justification on having a bucolic munna expressing him in business jargon and educated English, well before he would enter the light in Bangalore.