Image of India as delineated by Adiga.

M.A.Part-2 Sem-3

New Literature

Image of India as delineated by Adiga.

By: Jayshree Kunchala Submitted To: Dr.Dilip Barad Dept.Of English M.K.Bhavnagar University Bhavnagar

Aravind Adiga’s the White Tiger

Introduction

Indian writing in English holds the sway and continues to make waves on the international scene. Detractors may not like it, but it goes without saying that Indian writers have made a mark. Writing from India or form the diasporas speeches they have been writing international awards including the Nobel prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Commonwealth Prize, Sahitya Akademi Awards and many others. 

Aravind Adiga was born to Dr.K.Madhava Adiga and Usha Adiga on 23 October 1974, in Chennai. He spent his child hood in Mangalore by the Malabar Coast; he studied at Canara High School and then at. Aloysius High School where he completed his SSLC in 1990. After immigrating to Sydney, Australia with his family, he studied at James Ruse Agricultural High School. For further education he went to the state and studied English literature at Columbia University in New York Where he Studied with Simon Schama and graduated as Salutatorian in 1997. He also studied at Magdalena Collage Oxford having secured a scholarship and had Hermione Lee as one of his tutors.

The social evils that are projected, and often suggested in these skeptches are elaborated in the novel The White Tiger. Adiga comes out as a angry young man of India who shouts at the politicians for not taking basic steps to lift the 400 million Indians who lives in extreme poverty, at the executives whose Corrupt practices erode the effectiveness of the meager anti poverty programmes currently in place, At the religious fanatics who are behind riots and tensions and last but not least at the well of citizens who go on arguing about corruption. Adiga is a promising writer who tries to make his fellowmen understand the world we live in.

The Postcolonial creative writers from Third World countries, including India, have been waging intellectual war in the form of literary cult. The writers of this movement are characterized by their defiance of the imposed Western aesthetics, coining of indigenous aesthetics and asserting their voice through their own brand of English. The novelists such as Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga and even Vikas Swarup are found making experiments with architectonics of the plot-construction and the structure of the novel; there is playfulness with the art of story-telling and narrative technique, use of literary devices, syntax, aesthetics and even language. The novels The God of Small Things, Q & A and The White Tiger propose a novel form and style of writing, totally discarding the stipulated aesthetics of the West. These typical Postcolonial Indian writers propound a novel linguistic and formalistic idiom in these novels; they deviate from the conventions of Western aesthetics through quintessential Postcolonial narrative style, architectonics, Indianized English etc. Mixing vernaculars with English words and phrases, excessive use of pidgin words, typical Indianized imageries and allusions in the structural design, deliberate violation of sense of time, place and action----all characterize these novels as literary end-products of Postcolonial counter politics through style and unprecedented aesthetics from Third World countries.

Image of India As Delineated By Adiga

There is a lot of darkness, disharmony and suffering in our world today. There is a lot of injustice and violence too. Balram Halwai unfolds his journey from the Darkness of the Laxmangarh to India of light. Indians hate politicians and love Politics: that’s great paradox of the Indian democracy. The novel uncovers the shady deals of the corrupt politicians. The unusual journey of Balram Halwai is the major theme of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. Aravind Adiga asks‘ Where’s this shining India everyone is talking about? He says”it was time someone broke the myth.”  The journalist turned writer broke the myth. The myth the West likes to read. Adiga said his book was an “attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India. The voice of the colossal under class.” It is alleged that the Indian writers write on a themes, which are normally expected by the Western readers e.g. arranged marriages, partition, spirituality, caste clashes etc. In India the social discontent is rising, but there is a very little violence around us. Is it not a surprising thing? The novel begins with the sentence: Mr. Premier Sir Neither neither you nor I speak English but there are some things that can be said in English.

With this sentence begins the journey of Balram Halwai who is given the name ‘white Tiger’ by a visiting inspector in his school. The entire episode of receiving the name of ‘White Tiger’ is funny.

Aravind Adiga 's famous novel The White Tiger is an unflattering portrait of India as a society racked by corruption.TheWhite Tiger is presented as an epistolary novel- a series of letters written over the period of seven nights to the Chinese premier who is going to visit India in the coming week after being very much impressed with India's economical growth and development. The plot of the novel revolves round Balram Halwai alias Munna, the son of a rickshaw puller who becomes the owner of a famous company named The White Tiger by involving in crime and corruption. Through his letters Balram explores the burning issue of corruption and bureaucrats and entrepreneurs and something of the new India.

Educational institutes are the sacred places where the lesson that honesty is the best policy is taught to the students .Schools are supposed to be free from corruption. But what do we see in India's village school. There is midday meal scheme in government schools. Uniforms are also provided free of cost to the poor students ,but the school teacher has stolen money allotted for the mid day meals of the children. Their uniforms are sold in neighboring villages.

BalramHalwai says-.If the Indian village is a paradise, then the school is a paradise within a paradise. There was supposed to be free food at my school a government program gave every boy three rotis, yellow daal, and pickles at lunch time. But we never ever saw rotis or yellow daal,or pickles ,and everyone knew why: the school teacher had stolen our lunch money..

There is no duster in the classrooms, there are no chairs the money for these articles has been digested by the school teacher. When asked by the inspector while inspecting Munna's school about children's uniforms and furniture in the school the school teacher accepts his cheating and gives the excuse to steal the money as he hadn't pay his salary in sixmonths.

As the stories of rottenness and corruption are always the best story, India's government hospitals' condition is also pathetic. They are meant for the poor people for their treatment but the fact is that they are meant for the doctors to make money. The government doctors take their postings in village hospitals only to get their salary .For this purpose they bribe the govt. Medical superintendent for considering

‘The White Tiger’ is the black story of an escape from the Rooster Coop. In this story we observe the protest, anger, disgust, and a sense of compassion. There is a concern for the sufferings of others. The sad story of our hospital reads like this:

Kishan and I carried our father in, stamping on the goat turds which had spread like a constellation of black stars on the gound. There was no doctor in the hospital. The ward boy, after we bribed him ten rupees, said that a doctor might come in the evening. The doors to the hospital’s rooms were wide open; the beds had metal springs sticking out of them, and the cat began snarling at us the moment we stepped into the room.

It’s not safe in the rooms- that cat has tasted blood.’ A couple of Muslim men had spread a newspaper on the ground and were sitting on it. One of them had an open wound on his leg. He invited us to sit with him and his friend. Kishan and I lowered Father onto the newspaper sheets. We waited there.

Balram Halwai wants to escape from the India of Darkness to become man of big belly. The journey is not an easy one. Balram knows that experience is hard teacher, because it gives the test first, the lesson afterward. About his journey he clearly states that – “In his journey from village to city, from Laxmangarh to Delhi, the entrepreneur’s path crosses any  number of provincial towns that have the pollution and noise and traffic of a big city – without any hint of the true cities, built on half-baked men”. Balram decides to learn driving. Initially his granny doesn’t approve the idea. She thinks that he is a greedy pig. “She wants you to all the gods in heaven that you won’t forget her once you get rich”.

At last the granny agrees to give money to learn a driving. Balram along with Kishan came to an old man in a brown uniform. Kishan explains the situations to him. At first he is reluctant to let Balram join the driving class: “The old driver asked, ‘what caste are you?’ Halwai , sweet maker, the old driver said shaking his head. “That’s what you people do. You make sweets. How can you learn to drive? He pointed his hookah at the live coals. ‘That’s like getting coals to make ice for you. Mastering a car”.

Arivind Adiga represents India 's picture deeply rooted in the mess of corruption and rottenness, dominated by entrepreneurs who use money to achieve their ends. The basic factor responsible for this corruption is either poverty or the ambition to get power over the others. The poor persons indulge in corruption to meet their needs while the entrepreneurs and the politicians use money to achieve their ends. With no moral standards and value system, a dismal and murky picture of India emerges. Hence I feel a study of the works like The White Tiger will open the eyes of our common people who can see the height of corruption shadowing the society and politics of India.

The old driver adds that only a boy from the warrior castes can manage that. He presumes that Muslim, Rajputs, Sikhs-can be good drivers as they are fighters. At last  the lessons begin but each time Balram makes a mistake with the gears, the old man slaps on his skull and asks: “Why don’t you stick to sweets and tea?”

After the completion of the driving lessons Balram gets a job as a driver at the Stork. Balram drives straight at the Stork’s feet. Balram says that he is from Laxmangarh, the Stork’s village. The Stork says “Ah the old village. Do people there still remember me? It’s been three years since I was there”. The Stork enjoys the following remarks: “Of course Sir – people say our father is gone. The best of the landlords is gone, who will protect us now?”. Blaram gets the job as a driver. He quickly adjusts to the rhythm of the house. He gathers details of the Stork and his son Ashok who has come back from America. Balram beholds India as a country having two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. ‘And only two destinies: eat or get eaten up’. Balram says that “this country, in its days of greatness, when it was richest nation on earth  was like a zoo. On the 15^th August 1947- the day British left – the cages had been left open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law”.

Balram begins his stereotyped existence in the Stork’s family only to realize that in India- or, at least, in the Darkness – the rich don’t have drivers, cooks, barbers, and tailors. They simply have servants. When Balram is not driving the car, he has to sweep the floor of the courtyard, make tea, clean cobweb with a long broom, or chase a cow out of the compound. At the beginning , he is not allowed to touch the Honda City.

Ashok tells his wife Pinky that in India, no one follows any rules. Unpleasant reality is described in the pages to come: “A tractor was coming down road at full speed, belching out a nice thick plume of black diesel from its exhaust pipe”.

His scene is not uncommon in rural India where the traffic police pay hardly any attention to law- breakers. It is through Balram Halwai, the central consciousness of the novel, that we are given a glimpse into the privet lives of the politicians and businessmen. Balram is proud that we have ideal democracy.

The novel presents deep crises of identity in any democratic set up. The leaders are projected as vote- buyers. They have no vision but to rule the darkness for years. Balram calls himself as India’s most faithful voters   who steel have not seen the inside of a voting booth.

Balram is driving the Honda city in New Delhi now as Ramprsad has left the service. While driving the Honda city Balram has no difficulty as he has the follow the buses. There are buses and jeeps all along the road. And they were bursting with passengers who packed the inside the huge out of the door. And even goat of the roofs.they was all headed from the darkness to Delhi. You would think the whole world migrating.

In a few days Balram learns many things about Delhi and its people. He has hear the air is so bad in Delhi. Adiga’s novel is a trenchant critique of contemporary India. India is emerging as a powerful country in the globalized world. He talks about the progress in almost all the fields but behind this bright shine there are billions who are deprived of basic necessities of life. The novelist exposes and explores this grim facet of Indian life. The novel presents the negative aspects of modern India through a narrator in a humorous way. Because of the Globalization the economic growth has accelerated but the rich-poor gap has widened.

                     The novel undertakes the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader’s sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain. The Narrator says,-

“The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”

The novel is a study of metamorphosis of an uneducated chauffer. It’s written in confessional mood. He communicates to the communist leader the rags-to-riches story of his own life as a microcosm of the ‘new India’. The seven night actions cover the whole lifespan of Balram which has brought important change in his life. Balram becomes ‘entrepreneur’; the word refers to a person who takes risk in order to make profit.

            The undercurrent of this simple story of murder is sufferings of poor Balram. He curses his poverty and lack of education-

“Why had my father raised me to live like an animal?”

            Adiga deals with the psyche of a poor Indian who is not able to materialize his dream. His character’s pain is revealed-

“All my life I have been treated like donkey. All I want is that one son of mine- at least one- should live like a man.”

Balram’s two remarks about the city(Delhi) are

Ü  Unsystematic housing lane and traffic

Ü  The second one is people live like animals in a forest do. Minute description of urban and rural life is remarkable.

                        The novelist exposes how money given for students meal is manipulated and stolen by teachers, how the uniforms are stolen and sold by teachers on the pretext of their poor salary, how free coal can be arranged from government mines by paying regular installment of bribe, how culprits and criminals protect themselves by grassing the palm of carried out openly and brazenly. In Delhi Balram explores ‘new India’. Gradually he adopts Ashok’s living style. He starts drinking and going to red areas. This is how villagers are eager to live the city life. Adiga writes about two destinies- eat or get eaten. Like Macbeth to lead a lavish life like wealthy, Balram killed Ashok.

                        Through the heinous act of the protagonist, the novelist warms the society that the increasing gap between upper and lower class may produce many criminals like Balram. He further hints to stop corruption at all the levels, create social awareness and close monitoring of functioning of the government machinery.

Bibliography

Adiga, Arvind. "The White tiger." novel (2008): cover page.

R.K.DHAWAN. "A Symposium of Critical Response." tiger, The new morality Indian the white. A Symposium of Critical Response. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2011. 187-193.