About reading

The White Tiger offers a story of complicated wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality, told by the most volatile, captivating, and utterly inimitable narrator of the new millennium. The theme immerses the readers deep into the story due to the intrigue that goes with you during all the chapters. Clearly captured is the difference between the called, Two Indias. (The Dark one and the Light one). His life started in Blaxmangarh, where he was born. He entered at school in spite of the fact that her mother had died because his father wanted to make him a really successful man in the very next future. Unfortunately, his father died and he was obliged by her grandmother to work in her teashop with his brother Kishan. Surprisingly for the main character of the story, Kusum, her grandmother, lent him some money to get his driving license and start carrying out a new job, although he would have to give his full wage back to her. After some time, he started working for one of the richest families in New Delhi. Soon, he wanted to be promoted and he advanced rapidly in his career as a chauffeur. Later, he began driving a new boss, called Mr. Ashok, who was corrupted like the whole Stork’s family. He finally felt into their illegal business secretly, just pumping some petrol from the car. Suddenly, one day he unintentionally heard that his boss would take a large amount of money with him. He thought that it was his opportunity to give a twist to his monotonic life. During the route he stopped the car and pretended to have a mechanic failure, murdering his boss who had always trusted him, straight afterwards.Then, he picked out his cousin, fleeing from the police and travelled to Bangalore. After some dubious agreements he was able to establish his own taxi company. To sum up, Balram Halwai was a complicated man. A servant, an entrepreneur and a murderer almost at the same time. Over the course of seven nights, Balram told us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life, having just his own wits to help him along. Also, including the situation that takes place in India, which is apparently moved by envy, disloyalty, avarice, money… The White Tiger has received really positives reviews from experts and journalist from all over the world. Remember; don’t lose the chance to read it as soon as possible!

Aravind Adiga, a correspondent in India for prestigious magazines such as Time, has won the Man Booker Prize 2008 owing to his first and successful novel: “The White Tiger”. This piece is a false autobiography organized as an epistolary novel in seven letters.          The whole story is a criticism of contemporary India. The letters are addressed to China’s Prime Minister, and through them, Balram Halwai tells him how he got to where he is now from the darkest of India.          Following quite a chronological order, his life-story is told from his wretched birth, to his current state of successful entrepreneur in Bangalore, “The White Tiger”. First of all, he wasn’t even named by his parents. Then, he calls himself “half-baked” because he couldn´t finish school, instead, he started working in his early years. And coming from a poor family, he couldn´t be anything but a servant, doomed to stay in the dark India of poverty forever. This attachment is due to what he calls the “Rooster Coop”, which means that a servant will never take advantage of his master unless he doesn´t care for his family at all. However, as years go by, Balram slowly manages to distance himself from his manipulative family. And although he ends up being a driver for Mr.Ashok, the son of one of his hometown landowners, and his wife, Pinky Madam, this doesn’t prevent him from seeking for success.          In general, the story sounds really credible, full of tricky details. However, I must say that it is a little ironic how Balram criticizes India’s society to end up as another wealthy corrupt by abandoning his family. And the book is also biting owing to the fact that the author is a pretty wealthy man who has never had any economic problem. Nevertheless, I would recommend it to people looking for the realest view of India, with no censorship.          In my opinion, “The White Tiger” is an interesting book to learn more about the realities of the poor in India, as well as enjoyable because of its satirical adventures.

The white tiger, Avind Adiga’s novel, is the best example which shows the real Indian society, and the big differences, both social and economic, between the Darkness and the Light (“the two Indias”).  The white tiger tells the story of Balram, an important entrepreneur in Bangalore, who tells Mr Jiabao, who was the Prime Minister of China and was coming to India in the very following days, how he became such a successful entrepreneur, so he told Mr Jiabao his whole story, which is divided in seven nights (except the sixth morning). Balram’s story begins in a little village in the Darkness, called Blaxmangarh, where Balram was born, and lived with his family. After the death of Balram’s mother, his father sent him to school, though Kusum, Balram’s grandmother, had not accepted the decision. While he was at school, Munna (Balram’s real name) was renamed and his day of birth changed. An inspector came to the school too, and discovered Balram’s flairs, and called him “white tiger”, because it is really difficult to find somebody like Balram in the Darkness. But, after some time, Kusum finally took Balram out of school, and made him work in the teashop in the village with his brother Kishan.Balram’s father did not like this decision, but he could do nothing owing to the fact that he died of tuberculosis in hospital due to the fact that there were no doctors there.Balram finally understood that he did not want to live like his family; he wanted to go to the Light and have a good life. So he asked Kusum for some money in order to learn to drive and get a driving licence. Kusum agreed, but, when he got a job, he had to send back the money he had earnt. Subsequently, Balram asked in all New Delhi wealthy families’ houses, and at the very end he got a job as a second driver in the Stork’s family. But Balram wanted more, so he spied and blackmailed, and became the first driver. Later he had to be Mr Ashok’s driver, who was Mongoose’s brother (Mongoose was his first master). After some time being Mr Ashok’s driver, Balram realized that the Stork’s were a corrupted family, like the politicians who were controlling the fate of India. But, consequently, Balram finally got corrupted too, and started by stealing a little amount of money selling some petrol that he pumped from the car, or deceiving with the bills of the mechanic in order to steal some money. One day, while he was eavesdropping he heard that Mr Ashok was coming to bribe the new government of India with a huge amount of money put in a red bag. While Balram was driving Mr Ashok in order to meet the politicians, he stopped the car and pretended to show Mr Ashok a mechanical failure, and murdered him with a broken whisky bottle while he was looking for the failure, took the bag, came back to pick up his nephew Dharam to flee to Bangalore, but he had to be zigzagging in order to not be caught.When Balram arrived in Bangalore, three days after he fled Delhi, he went to the police office to remove his “wanted” poster and investigate a taxi company with the aim to dissolve the company by bribing them.After that, he started his own taxi company, with 26 cars and 16 drivers, and managed to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Bangalore.To sum up, The white tiger defines Indian society like a huge group of human beings ruled by poverty, hunger, blackmailing, bribery, envy, loyalty, death and sex. The white tiger has also received many prices, like the Man Booker Prize in 2008, and has very good reviews from newspapers like The Times. So, do you want to know the whole story? Then you have to read it.

Although this book was the winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, I had not heard about it or its author until I got the news this was the book we would have to read this year. After surfing the net I found it is an Indian writer first novel who was born in Madrás, which is one of the biggest Indian cities, and who, obviously, knows what he is talking about and has a lot to say about it.This book is a kind of biography; it is a letter collection the protagonist writes to the Chinese prime minister. The protagonist is called Balram Halwai. He was born in The Darkness, which is the name Indians use to refer to the poorest areas in their country. It tells us about his youth, how, after being the youngest in his school in being able to read or write, a peculiarity that made him win the nickname of “White Tiger”, he had to give up his studies and start to work in the local tea shop to help his family. After that, the book shows us how he was restless in his village, how he looked forward to finding something better for himself, and how he fought to get it.Using these letters, Aravind tells us lots of things about Indian reality. He is able to show us the differences between the two modern castes, the Darkness and the Lightness. He shows us how the progress is changing its old way of life, their stronger traditions, how Darkness inhabitants fight to get out of their poverty… Furthermore, he gives us a clue of how far people can go to get out of poverty. Even though the story is quite interesting and makes you learn a lot about India, I sometimes found that giving so many details makes the plot a bit slow, a bit boring. However, it is a good window to show us real life, human feelings and situations: poverty, envy, family, loyalty, violence… Maybe that is the main reason why this book has got such encouraging reviews.

As the winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2008 with his debut novel, we get to know Aravind Adiga as a talented writer who shows the contrasts between the two parts of a country, all through the eyes of a main character that comes from the darkest part of India. Considering the idea that in India there are only two destinies, which are to eat or be eaten, Adiga gives a perspective of a part of the country we don’t usually hear about. The novel takes the form of a series of letters that the main character writes to the Chinese Prime Minister, in which he offers to tell him the truth about India, by telling the story of his life.  The poverty in the country is perfectly reflected in the whole life of Balram Halwai, described by himself as a self taught entrepreneur, who was born and raised in the “Darkness”, but was able to break out of the coop and get to the “Light”. Belonging to a family who hadn’t much money, and with both parents dead at a very soon age, he had to quit school, and start working at tea shops. But he always knew he was meant to do something else with his life: he was, after all, a white tiger, who comes along only once in a generation. So he learned how to drive a car, and became a driver of a wealthy family. He was lucky enough to get the job, and later, move to the city of Delhi with his master, which would be the most enriching experience for him. By listening to his master’s conversations from the driver’s seat, he would learn more about India than any other way. Even though the respect he felt towards his master, Mr. Ashok, Balram tells how he was changed from an innocent village fool into a corrupted citified fellow, and how that gave him enough courage to run away and start a new life in Bangalore. Balram Halwai, the white tiger, is the main character of the novel, who earned this nickname because of being the smartest boy in his school. Through the experiences of his life, he learned about the two parts of India, and always dreamed about getting out of the Darkness and being part of the Light, which would be almost impossible for a servant as himself. His principal influence would be his boss, Mr.Ashok, from who he learned almost everything he knew about India. For Balram, this man was different from any other master he had had and the only one he always respected, even tough he was the one who killed him.  So that’s how Balram became and entrepreneur: by killing his master and running away with an important quantity of money, and this is also the way he broke out of the Rooster Coop in which every servant in India is trapped. And all of this is told by a man whose destiny was to become a sweet maker.  For people who, as myself didn’t know much about India, the White Tiger will definitely change the way you think about a country which is getting stronger every day. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get another point of view from a man who comes from the poorest and most rural part of India, written by an author who clearly knows what he is talking about. According to Adiga, the only difference between the Darkness and the Light is the chance to make your own decisions, and that difference, is everything.

First of all, this book was not a personal choice but a recommended reading so I knew nothing about it before reading it. Nevertheless, I agreed with reading this book.Although it is not a real story, we could say it’s a reflection of life from one perspective, the one of poor people. To be more precise, it’s about the life in one of the poorest countries in the world: India.This book deals with social differences placed in  Indian society, ruled by a deeply rooted caste system. A handicap that marks your path in life.Balram Halwai is a man who, through an imaginary letter addressed to the Prime Minister of China, tells all his life and how he has become a successful entrepreneur even though he was born belonging  to a one of the lowest castes, this is  born in the dark side of India. As a child, he was nicknamed white tiger because he was different from the rest, he had something special, a particular intuition that allowed him to win over all people.  After leaving school quite young, he started working in a teashop but he immediately knew he could aspire to a higher position.  Once he knew about other people‘s rise in life, he decided to become a chauffeur, and this was the best thing he could have done for his living. In fact he was hired by a rich man. Through years driving his “owner” he realized how rotten  his country was and started thinking the only way to get a break was acting in the same bad way, so the moment he has the opportunity, he takes it. In the end, although he admits he has acted badly, he doesn’t regret doing anything.To be honest, at the beginning, I found this book quite boring because of the lack of any excitement. Actually, the main interest in it was the description of the customs of this country. Not until I reached the latest part of the book, did I start enjoying the book, when the main character turned over his dark side. At least, the book has been quite useful for me as regards the situation of a country like India. All of us have always heard  lots of  stories about castes, poverty etc, however, we tend to think that they are only a kind of tale of the past, but being realistic,  there are still several serious problems in all these countries which have lasted up to these days.Taking into account this is the first novel by this author, obviously, I had never read anything of him before but I don’t rule out to read his following novels . Finally, I would recommend this book only in the case somebody loves books which show the cruelest side of life. If not, it could be a bit boring.

This book tells  the story of a man called Balram Halwai who is the White tiger of the book title, a title he earns by the fact of being considered the smartest boy in his village which is placed in a part of rural India he calls “the darkness” .  Balram is the son of a rickshaw-puller, his family is too poor for him to be able to finish school, and instead, he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. Through these experiences, Balram learns much about the world and later states that the streets of India provided him with all the education he needed, in fact he gets his lucky break when he learns to handle a car and later, he gets his opportunity when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation, as he drives his master to shopping malls and call centers. Since that moment he starts to live into a world of servants and masters where he becomes aware of the immense wealth and opportunity all around him, and where he comes to the realization that there are two groups, those who are eaten, and those who eat. Balram decides he wants to be an eater; it is at this moment where the novel tracks the way in which his ambition plays out until he becomes a successful entrepreneur, something that he gets after killing his employer while stealing a bag containing a large amount of money, capital that finances his  Bangalore Taxi business.This novel takes the form of a series of letters written by Balram to the Chinese premier who is about to visit India. In the letters he describes his rise from lowly origins to his current position as an entrepreneur in Bangalore, as well as his views on India´s caste system and its political corruption.I find this book very disappointing with a very predictable plot, as the theme the author brings into focus adds nothing new to what we know about that India which he shows as an India of light and an India of darkness, in fact, it is not only India but our world that is two worlds in one full of poor and rich, injustice and power, a world whose differences creates monsters as the protagonist of this novel.

Aravind Adiga’s first book:”The White Tiger”,which has won the Man Booker prize in 2008,focuses the plot around Balram Halwai,a laborer born and raised in a small village utterly controlled by powerful landlords. Balram describes his childhood in “The Darkness, a particularly poor region in India.He is singled out by a school inspector as being the “white tiger” for being able to read and write when nobody else can. A white tiger is the rarest creature in the jungle, it only appears once in every generation.Unfortunately his family is forced to pull him out of school to help them pay off their debts.Afterwards Balram is taken to Delhi as a driver for one of the landlord’s sons: Ashok.As a driver, he gets to know the relationship between master and servant in their culture. Balram begins a series of rebellions leading up to the murder of Ashok, and the theft of millions of rupees. But this is not the vicious murder of a hated landlord. Rather, it is the amoral killing of the system that Ashok represents.A key metaphor in the novel is “the roster coop”. Balram learns that those who are eaten are trapped inside a small and closed cage -“the roster coop-” that limits their opportunities. Balram’s dream is to break free of his coop and become what a symbol of individualism, power, and freedom is for him: “a white tiger”.From my point of view, there is nothing new in this book about the life in India, just the style in which it is written-open letters to the premier of China.However what is astonishing about this book is not Adiga’s depiction of the social and economic inequalities of contemporary India, but the simplicity with which he does it. Adiga creates two very different worlds: Balram’s tiny native village in “The Darkness”, and the slavery of the Delhi he inhabits in his life as a driver.In conclusion, I liked this book,but I am not really enthusiastic about it.  

This books tells the story of an Indian boy who was born in one of the lowest castes of India, and how he worked out to become a well-known and respected entrepreneur, but it also makes a review of many aspects of the unknown India (crimes, bribery, politics, blackmailing…), apart from the spiritual one.The whole story is placed in India (cities such as Bangalore, Deli, Laxmangarh, etc.) and takes place at the very end of the twentieth century.This story is presented as a number of letters which Balram Halwai (the main character) sends to the Chinese Prime Minister (Premier Jiabao), who is about to visit India in the very following days, as it is said on the news and newspapers, so consequently, Balram decides, before the Prime Minister comes to Gandhi’s country, to tell his experience in life and how to succeed in his country. He starts talking about his background in Laxmangarh, his life at school and his relationship with his family. His mother dies and his family wants him to work at a tea shop. Munna (Balram’s other name in the story) finally achieves his father’s wish: attending school to become a “man”. There, a school inspector names him “White Tiger” because he is “the creature that comes along only once in a generation” in the middle of the jungle seeing that he is the only smart and clever guy in the whole school. As the time goes by, Balram realizes that Laxmangarh isn’t his place and wants to become a driver, a rich person’s chauffeur. He borrows the money from his grandmother and finally finds a rich family to work for, The Storks. There, he is the second driver, but Munna blackmails the first driver, and hear begins his career. He becomes the first driver of part of the rich family in Delhi. With this corrupt family, he finds out how politicians, elections and bribes work in his country. He gets “infected” by corruption, as the main character says in the story, and he ends murdering Mr. Ashok, his master and stealing the money which Ashok was going to use to bribe the new elected government in India. He gets away with the nephew of whom he was in charge: Dharam. Munna becomes an entrepreneur who runs a taxi company for people who work at night, thanks to bribing the police and other important people from India. It could be said that he becomes at the end a real “man” of whom his father would be proud of, but, furthermore, we can find under this plot, the description of a man who has betrayed all his family to get his dream. He leaves them at Laxmangarh after stealing the Stork’s money and he knows that his family will have to pay for his greedy actions. Nevertheless, he doesn’t want to know anything about them despite knowing that his nephew will bear a grudge against him because of his actions to the family.In this book, we can find through the story and the characters, all kind of feelings and situations related to human beings: loyalty, envy, violence, sex, hunger, poverty, corruption, love, family, betrayal, money… and that’s why this novel has had such good reviews and also prizes, it tells the problems we could have to face in this intricate life.

The well-known book `The White Tiger´, written by the Indian Aravind Adiga has gone around the world as soon as it was launched. His first book has been so well received because of its plot, main character, the atmosphere and criticism tone which is written with. It’s a novel which keeps up with times, it is mainly about religion and politics.

 First I must admit I have read this book because I wanted to improve my English writing and reading comprenhesion skills. Adiga introduces us into an enthralling story about justice, crime, corruption, money, freedom, education and work. Reading it, we will certainly find out whose hands the power in India is. The main theme in this book are the many injustices of modern India society and how this country is seizing advantages that China, for instance, can’t. The author explains the wide differences between rich and poor people or masters and servants and how elections are severely corrupted. All over the book, we discover the common situations that Balram, the main character, is confronted with and how he adresses them. The tale is set on the borderline between an India of “Darkness”, a world of landlords and peasants, and an India of  “Light”, a world of cities, servants and masters. The Indian writer contrasts the old India with the new and corrupt one. The story takes place between Bangalore and New Delhi, and altough it spans just one week, the author tells us the account of a whole lifetime through a set of letters that Balram Halwai writes to the Prime Minister of China, who is coming to India on a state visit.  The plot presents us Balram Halwai as the White Tiger, a nickname he gets for being deemed the smartest boy in a little village called Laxmangarh. He is brought up in a very poor family so he can’t finish school and instead he must work in a teashop. In his teens the streets of India teach him all the knowledge he has to have in order to gain admittance to a world of adults.  Balram tells Wen Jiabao through seven letters about democracy and how he wound up in the position he is now, a genuine entrepreneur in Bangalore. He confesses to being one person who has a crime in his hands and he is always trying to excuse himself. Suddenly a great opportunity comes up to Halwai, he starts to attend driving lessons and by chance,  he gets the job as driver for Mr. Ashok and her wife, Pinky Madam, which takes him to Delhi, far away from his tiresome family. Working as a servant of this man, makes Balram realize about the differences between the daily life of wealthy and poor people and the great opportunities that a successful man can have in this new India and he decides to search for his chance to be part of this incredible world at all costs.   The protagonist’s family play a significant role in the tale, they are his origin. Of course what they give him is not enough, so he decides to go away from home in order to work as a driver, thanks to his family, because they pay him the driving lessons. Another important character in this plot is Balram’s nephew, Dharam, who is aware of the murder his aunt has committed and he can confess his crime so Balram feels threatened.  With the help of Mr. Ashok, Balram enquires about the political-economic models of America and China, which are better than India’s because a country where bribes, ignorance and greed are the norm, cannot restructure itself overnight. Mr. Ashok is one who is always scolding Balram’s attitude not in vain. In the India which Adiga is describing, there are two choices “eat or get eaten up” and the one who inspires the boy to free from the group of the eaten (or as Balram says “break out from the coop”) is Mr. Ashok.       After reading this book, I admit I fell in love with Adiga’s writing. When he writes, he takes the same care over telling about chandeliers, about superstition or even about arranged marriages and I weigh up that aspect as paramount so as to keep the reader’s attention. In my oppinion, the plot is completely perfect indeed because it contains all the ingredients to create a story which grips you and it contrasts everyday events about Indian people with general traditions and rules about their society and thanks to books like this one or films such as “Slumdog Millionaire”, Western people will treat poverty in India as a reality or at least we will be conscious of it.  As a reader, the character of Balram didn’t win over me, I saw him more as a hero than as a fighter for the things he wanted to get in life. I know that probably Adiga wanted to underline the corruption and personify it in a close person to us but I do not think that it is the right way to do it, the end seems happier this way but even a person who has suffered all his lifetime has to be punished. There is no choice. The end, from my point of view was the worst part, too great for being true.  Through the story I had several and conflicting feelings. At the beginning, I felt sorry for Balram and his status, however, later his justifications went up and as far as I know, the end does not justify the means, Balram went too far, nobody is allowed to risk someone’s life for one’s own ambitions. Though I dislike the end of the story, I would recommend it to some friends and relatives, because it shows a moral background that has taught me once again that, in life, if you want something, get it and don’t ever give up because your wishes can come true, not in the way Balram’s did, I hope but anyway the may come true, you just have to try it.   This story has taught me how it would be to see a country from two perspectives: the ruling and the lower one and it does not make any sense because working class has always wanted to live as well as upper class, no matter how cruel they are acting to hold on their position.  To sump up, fortunately times have changed, but interests haven’t. Outside there, white tigers are everywhere, lying in wait to get any opportunity to grow big and  successful. Do you want to know how they do it? Just read it. “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga. 

Ana Vázquez Calzada. 2H.