THE WHITE TIGER - Aravind Adiga

The first thing that crossed my mind when I completed reading THE WHITE TIGER ( By ARAVIND ADIGA, winner of the BOOKER PRIZE for 2008) was an advertisement of MTR gulab jamoon. A kid tells to his father that he got 2nd prize in running race at his school and eats an extra gulab jamoon, only to reveal later that there were only 2 participants in the race !!  THE WHITE TIGER seems to be one such lucky book which might have won the prize just because there were no other better books competing  for the BOOKER PRIZE in 2008.

This book is a recap of the life of the protagonist from his poverty ridden miserable childhood at Laxmangarh to his hay days of entrepreneurship in Bangalore. The book does start interestingly with the crazy idea of a hardly educated protagonist writing a letter to the Chinese Premier who will be visiting Bangalore in a couple of weeks. The language and the choice of words ( to indicate that the protagonist is hardly educated) does tickle your bones a bit initially. But , when you see it drag till the end of the story, it would no longer sounds funny to you.

The story is as old as any 70's movie which could have been shortly told by amalgamating the following phrases --- Start: poor village dumbo- comes to city- becomes car driver-changes due to city life- kills boss- runs away with cash- changes identity and starts business- becomes succesful :End---Arvind Adiga drags this storyline to 300+ pages :) ... He really seems to be a talent that we were all waiting to bring in revolution in the world of fiction:)....

To make things interesting, Adiga puts in loads and loads of naked truths that are observed in day-today India.  Caste system, hypocrisy, dirty roads, bad government, bad politicians, corrupt officers, illegal business, millions of Gods, huge difference between rich and poor, double standards towards muslims , feudalism etc etc etc, everything finds a mention in this book with most of them being mentioned in a sarcastic way. Though the points mentioned are all true, I wonder how long will authors keep writing about the negativities of a hugely diverse and complex society in India and surprisingly how long will they keep getting rewarded for writing such thing? Aren't we saturated with these facts? What new thing does the author do by retelling the same facts repeatedly? Wont it make a better and innovating book if the author tries to address even a few of these issues and show us how that can be improved, even if it does not sound practical?? More than being upset about Adiga, I am upset on the panel which gave a prize to this book in the name of encouraging budding talents!!

In short, If Adiga things that he is telling a new story then I suggest he needs to wake up and If he thinks that the mentioned the naked truth about Indian society in a funny way is the USP of his novel, then I feel that it is the basic mistake of his book :) ....By the way, the book does have few interesting moments which make you appreciate it. But, once you finally reach the end, you realize that they are no longer worthy enough to be mentioned..