Sep 17, 2009 09:02 PM
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The way Aravind Adiga entertains in this booker-clinching page-turner absolves him of ‘all the sins’ which are supposedly committed by him as perceived by some of literary critics in his debut novel. The white tiger aka Balram Halwai is not a typical at the bottom of the pyramid character from the land of darkness.
He is a revolutionary in some sense because he refuses to accept his position what the pseudo-democratic society bestows upon him.On the way to liberation what he does is a crime. But is Balram’s crime bigger than other players of the story.Everybody , from politicians to bureaucrats , from feudal lords to hoi-polloi, at some point of time commits a crime against the people who are at lowest level of pecking order. It hardly makes difference that sometime crime is committed out of circumstantial compulsions.
The description of darker side of India will not be by liked by the people who still (with full conviction )believe in ‘Shining India’ and for whom the parameter of progress is limited to the SENSEX or NIFTY. But for a person who is surviving on the one and half course meals, SENSEX even at 30000 has no meaning. Anybody coming from the land of darkness knows that the grim reality potrayed by Aravind in his novel is not a figment of his imagination but it really exists.In fact, it exists in even more perverse form.Yes, at times he is a culprit of generlisations but that is forgiv”able” because for a writer of fiction you can’t use the strict parameter of a social-historian. Overall feel of the book is almost near to the reality.
