An Unexpected Journey of Balram Halwai into a New India in the novel The White Tiger

Topic name: An Unexpected Journey into a New India

Name: Bhatt Urvi P.Role No. : 31

Std: M.A-2 (Sem-4)Paper no. : 13

Paper Name: The New LiteratureSubmitted to: S. B. Gardi Maharaja

Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar UniversityGmail ID: [email protected]

• The White Tiger tells a story about the transformation of a driver in Delhi – a young man from Bihar, a state that always referred to as Darkness- into an entrepreneur in Bangalore.

Transformation

Balram’s character

• A drop- out in a village school, Balram received little knowledge as a student.

• He took a lesson in driving in lieu of a fixed amount.

• Went straight to Dhanbad to the house of the landlord of the village.

• Engaged as a driver-cum-servant in the landlord’s family.

• Balram managed to get the senior driver dismissed and cleared his way to be a driver of the landlord’s son Ashok in Delhi.

Secret grudge

• Ashok was sympathetic to Balram, others in the family used to humiliate him, generating thereby a secret grudge against the master class in Balram’s mind.

• Balram was forced to give a written confession that he drove the car that hit an unidentified person.

• Though luckily for him, there was no police case and Balram could escape imprisonment, the incident increased his anger and hatred for the master class people.

• Balram found that Ashok would regularly draw handsome amount from the banks to bribe politicians in Delhi for a smooth run of their family business in Dhanbad.

Anger and hatred

• Balram planned to kill Ashok when he was alone in the car and to take the money [forty-seven one-hundred rupee notes] drawn from bank.

Trickery

Calm Nature

• Balram’s meek and mild behavior never roused a suspicion in the mind of his masters that he might kill one of them for money.

Magazine Balram came in contact with a roadside bookseller who offered pornographic magazine for sale and informed that some magazines from England even cost five hundred and eight rupees each and these were all meant for the wayward boys of the rich.

A normal reaction from Balram was

“Amazing how much money they have… And yet they treat us like animals”.

Growing hatred

• The normal reaction of provocation along with his growing hatred for the ‘master class’ people brought an inner change in Balram: he stated driving the car on his own, being sure that his master was heavily drunk and unable to come out of his room, playing the music and running the A/C at full blast.

• He had no specific place to go and so he just drove around the malls.

• To express his hatred, he even spat over the seats and wiped them clean.

Hatred towards upper class

• It is interesting to note that he still feels that his employer Ashok was a good man corrupted by others.

• Balram says when Ashok went to hotel, “I kept hopping he’d come

running out, arms failing and screaming, Balram, I was on the verge of making mistake! Save me- let us drive away at once!”

Views on Ashok

Balram’s intention

• Adiga tried to make it clear that in the beginning Balram’s only concern was the money that Ashok was taking for some minister and he had little intention to kill Ashok.

• Balram even had his own logic behind stealing the money, As he was watching the red bag filled up with money kept by the side of Ashok with “ the eyes of a cat watching its prey,” he told his own image on the mirror.

Balram’s love for poetry

• Having heard some Urdu poems, he tells about the true history of poetry.

• Balram developed his own ideas about the origin of poems.

He writes:

“…the four greatest of these wise poets were Rumi, Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib and another fellow whose name, I was told but have forgotten.”

Mirza Ghalib

Past memory in present

• Balram did not leave the area gaining his knowledge of poetry, but moved in the interior areas of old Delhi till he was overwhelmed by the smell of buffaloes.

• He was at butcher’s quarter, he understood and soon a spectacle of a lone buffalo carrying in cart the heads of the slaughtered ones arrested his attention. The buffalo that was pulling the cart turned its face to Balram and told him almost in the voice of his father, “your brother Kishan was beaten to death. Happy?”

Illusion

• For Balram it was like experiencing a nightmare in the minutes before he woke up.

• The buffalo said further,“your aunt Luttu was raped and than beaten to death. Happy? Your grandmother

Kusum was kicked to death. Happy?

• The skulls of the buffaloes in the car seemed to Balram to have the face of his family members.

• This hallucination developed the urges for murder in Balram: he stopped having any soft corner for Ashok.

Urge for murder

Right opportunity

• Now Balram only waited for the right opportunity to steal the money and got prepared with a handy weapon[a broken bottle of imported whiskey ] with which he could slit the throat of Ashok. After a successful operation he went to Bangalore and started his business.

Conclusion • The letters addressed to the

Chinese premier record all these events of his life in a playful manner- the novel is noted for its black humor and wit that offer a grim picture of India in the twenty- first century, a picture that is unexpected.

The White Tiger of the school

Murderer

Driver

Works at tea shop

An Entrepreneur