Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

I finished reading Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, the recent winner of the Man Booker, this morning. A quick read, it tells the tale of Balram Halawi's rise from "the Darkness" of India as a driver/servant, then catapulting into an entrepreneur in Bangalore. Adiga paints a dark--but quite entertaining--portrayal of Balram (originally known as "Munna," meaning boy). Balram's life is recounted through a neat device: a letter to a foreigner (Wen Jiabao, premier of China) who Balram feels compelled to explain his ascendancy and the nature of Indian politics and society. The book is coarse and unsettling, a feeling Adiga most likely sought to impress upon the reader.

Balram is propelled by a sense of cunning and, truth be told, an entrepreneurial spirit that he uses to leverage advances up and out of his village of Laxmangarh, but ultimately results in violence as he escapes from the stifling conditions in Delhi. He justifies crime by explaining his transgression as little worse than crimes perpetrated by the rich and noble on the nation at large and those serving them. He finds insight in Muslim poetry and considers himself distant from and above his fellow drivers and servants; he constantly separates himself and desired silence rather than a chorus of voices from those in a similar class/caste. Adiga describes Balram as forward thinking. His focus is "tomorrow" and his story is a linear progression up and away from a life trapped in India's imposed but yet self-policing "Rooster Coop" that preserves social order and obeisance.

Overall, the book wasn't too taxing and Adiga's prose is lively and crisp as he explains Balram's escape from the Rooster Coop. Topics of Marxism or communism are absent from the letter to the Chinese premier, but, clearly, Balram chafes under near-feudalism and he uses capitalism to rise. In other words, Balram is a social climber thanks to capitalism and the Western economy, and he expresses little concern about family he left behind until the very end. But he is not corrupted by money, he rather sees it plainly for what it is. As the book closes, he mentions starting a school for poor children of Bangalore so he can replicate and unleash copies of himself on to the world. Although Adiga doesn't make an explicit comparison to a virus, one finishes the book questioning the moral implications of Balram's acts and measuring them against the social conditions weighing on Balram's India. All in all, a fascinating read.