In a week's time, we will be celebrating our Independence Day. What will you be doing then? Waking up late, watching a movie or reading a book, or beginning a long-weekend holiday? The significance of our freedom from foreign rule has been reduced to a break from our whirlwind urban lives. Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger, which has recently been long-listed for the Booker Prize, is about a more active and contemporary process of independence that is gathering momentum across the country. It's about an independence from the evils of our heritage: caste and illiteracy. It's about an independence from the bondage of Karma, a mental block that has stunted the growth of billions of Indians for millennia.
Balaram Halwai, the anti-hero, is a self-made man, who strives to live a life that is different from the ones that his ancestors have lived for centuries as poverty-stricken labourers, eternally in the clutches of the village zamindar. His family members continue to live that shackled life. He first becomes a driver in his birth place, Laxmangarh and then Delhi. He also yearns to break free from the "rooster-coop" mentality and behaviour of his driver colleagues, which he does. After murdering his master, he becomes a taxi-service entrepreneur in Bangalore with ambitions to become a real estate tycoon. He exhibits courage, endurance, intelligence and decisiveness - characteristics of today's super-successful businessmen.
But this freedom from India's past comes at very high cost. The book is about the moral and spiritual corruption of this once-innocent villager. In a delightful, yet sarcastic passage entitled, "How Does The Entreprising Driver Earn a Little Extra Cash?" that author suggests ways in which Balram cheats his boss. Balram, while exhibiting the rampant selfishness of the new India, essentially sacrifices his family for his freedom. The village landlord of Laxmangarh massacres Balram's family once Balram flees Delhi for Bangalore after murdering the landlord's son, his former master. In Bangalore, Balaram uses his money to bribe the local police in advance to prevent his impending arrest. He uses the lesson he learned from his former master effectively - money is used by the rich to protect themselves from the law, which the poor are powerless against.
An important idea in the book which the author revealed to me during a conversation was that it's amazing that the number of national servant larcenies/murders is very low despite ample opportunities for servants to steal/murder their masters. Most of us living in India have encountered loyal servants who serve their masters late into old age. Adiga is sure that this is going to change. Household crime will be on the rise, as servants realize that they are masters of their own fate.
Adiga captures the positives of change, but warns us that that the downside of "progress" is goddamn dark.
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