The man booker award(fiction) 2008 : The white tiger , author Aravind Adiga, India.
Judges : Michael Portillo, Alex Clark , Louise Doughty, James Heneage and
Hardeep Singh Kohli
Indeed a very angry : aggressive, insightful and enlightening(entertaining) book. One doesn’t have to look for a moral
in these fiction books. The White Tiger should not be judged on political or social grounds. It’s just a novel for entertainment and at times novels provoke their readers.
Like the author says : " The narrator is a tainted one - a murderer - and his views are certainly not mine. But there is something I’d like my readers to think about. I’m increasingly convinced that the servant-master system, the bed rock of middle-class Indian life, is
coming apart: and its unraveling will lead to greater crime and
instability. The novel is a portrait of a society that is on the brink
of unrest. "
The book is written/narrated by a servant turned entrepreneur
who belonged to a very poor, labor class family in Landlord dominated
village - Laxmangadh, Gaya District in Bihar, where the conditions are
still the same as they were decades ago. This man is very different,
imaginative and determined to make it big from childhood. He saw his
mother’s death followed by his father’s death due to lack of facilities
and money, with minimal education he is forced to earn at tea shop and
goes on to become a driver of the landlord’s US return son and
daughter-in-law. Destiny takes him to Delhi , driving a Honda city for
the same master. The mistress is hot and revealing but the
servant/driver tries to serve with dignity and watches the mistress
leave the master and return to US for some reasons. He stands by his
master in tough times and watches his master change and get corrupted
in Delhi’s politics. Amid all these the servant changes his plans for
his future and cunningly draws his circumference of progress. He slit
his master’s throat at the right time and runs away with 7 lakh rupees
via various routes hiding from police to Bangalore, from where he is
writing this story(biography) to a Chinese visitor, owing all his
success as an entrepreneur to his Father and his Master , Mr. Ashok
after whom he has now renamed himself as Ashok. There are elaborative
mentions of politics, Delhi, developing Gurgaon, corrupt system of
police and complete India. The rise of outsourcing in Bangalore and the
need to keep changing in life.
The author has tried to highlight the
ambitious mindset of a servant and like I said, fictions are
entertainers and should not be judged on moral grounds. I would rate
the book as 6/10 and for me it stands nowhere near the word called
"prize". You can find these stories and trust me, better stories than
this on every roadside stall by Indian authors by names like "hatyara
kaun" , "kaatil patel" and some "Kaatil series of books " which come
for Rs. 4.5/- the author himself mentions so in the book more than 10
times. These kaatil series of books are about servants who rape, kill
their masters and get caught in the end. Aravind Adiga has picked the
scenario from those books and twisted it towards the end.
The
uneducated servant who learnt the ways of riches as bribing, lying,
killing, stealing, etc and has no idea on where on globe does India
figure or about how we got independent, talks about "slavery" and
"nation" all of a sudden towards the end and this whole book comes out
as a letter to a Chinese visitor as a narration.
"Half baked" that’s the word I’ll use for the writer as he uses
it for the central character of the story. The book misses out on a lot
of broken links jumping from toe to hair without making any sense but I
guess the narration was intriguing.
There are much -much -much better works existing in the same
year - 2008 . I guess the jury members were as corrupted as the book’s
politicians/police or they have not read such masala fictions found at
every bus stand in India.
All in all, an entertainer for a journey, nothing more, nothing less.
But yes, I am proud of Aravind Adiga , he brought this honour to the nation. Keep writing mate, critics make a better performer out of us.