Saturday, August 08, 2009

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

So, I'm reading Aravind Adiga's Booker-winning The White Tiger and I'm thinking "My God, is there really a place in the world that works like this?" The "place" is India and the answer is, yes, of course there is. Let's talk a little about Mr. Adiga's work - it's charming, engaging and thoroughly treacherous; I loved the narrative frame of a letter, which in itself was a very clever way to establish its thoroughly unreliable narrator. Anytime something is written as an entirely first-person account, I get immediately suspicious. In this case, the narrator doesn’t even try to hide his duplicity - he introduces himself a Wanted Man, who has had many names in his lifetime. Spidey senses tingling. Wanted for what? Murder! Spidey senses rioting! And is he writing his memoirs in jail? no, but in an office bedecked in chandeliers? Spidey senses go poof! What follows is a fascinating story of a bright boy turned tea shop attendant turned driver turned murderer turned entrepreneur. You think I've spoiled the plot? Hardly - all that’s within the first chapter. I also really enjoyed Adiga's writing style: it is easy to read, yet still perspicacious; it's full of effulgent description that sometimes I wished wasn't quite so… potent; it is, in short, fun.

White Tiger is compared to Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. That was a huge selling point for me - I love Ellison's work and is superbly layered novel really turned all sorts of ideas on its head. Knowing that, I couldn't help but read White Tiger in much the same way. Just as Ellison turned the apocalyptic Harlem riots into a carnival, Adiga seemed to successfully turn this tale of murder and deceit into a comedy of the Robin Hood nature. I can't really expand on that any more without truly giving away what I believe to be highlights of the story. This is the kind of book that could depress even the most persistent Pollyanna and somehow… it doesn't. I couldn’t help but feel that this was a modern-day Indian fairy tale. I mean, some perspective: did Cinderella ever think about what happened to her stepsisters after she left? Did Beauty think about her father once the Beast transformed? Did we admonish Hansel and Gretel for burning the witch alive? think about it.

Even though it took me six weeks to finish this short book, once I bit into the third chapter, I couldn't let go and ended up reading the bulk of the book over two days. Seriously, though, read it. It's amazing.

***
As much as I loved this book, it really made angry. But I get ahead of myself. Some context first.
The narrator talks about the "Rooster Coop" within which most of India's population lives. His description is blunt:
The greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its history is the Rooster Coop. Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly coloured roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench — the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.
I found this to be one of the most insightful paragraphs in the book. If you're like me, you probably thought of something else that seems fairly analogous: the scene in Finding Nemo that finds Marlon and Dori trapped in a fish net with all the fish just waiting to be pulled out, gutted and served to us. Marlon convinces all the fish to push down together, to resist the net and as a result all the fish are free and the fishermen sail away empty-handed. Who didn't cheer for those silly fish?

So why, if animated fish can figure it out, can't humans? Why don't the impoverished masses that dominate India's population rise up and revolt against their masters? Alas, how can they… they are uneducated and are easily crushed by the caste machinations of that society. India would seem to be a living and breathing Manichean Allegory, with people living in either Light or Darkness. But those living in the Light hoard its riches, unwilling to share even a pittance of its wealth for fear that they would somehow lose prestige. The poor are shoved into Darkness, made to seem stupid and perfidious, and thus robbed of any power. In a country that boasts the world's largest democracy, India still has one of the most corrupt political systems in the world.

And why? Because the rich get richer if the poor stay poor. Can you imagine if every master had to pay his driver / maid / gardener / cook / nanny / Friday a fair wage? That would certainly take away from their own wealth. And what is the motivation to educate your servants' children? What's more important: a servant who can read or a servant who can clean your toilet? Educating the darkness will only lead to more people wanting to better themselves and there's not enough money in India to support a billion workers earning a fair wage. It's not easy to rise up in a country that's made to keep you down, a country steeped in a faith that tells you to never aspire outside your destiny, a country too small for its big dreams.

I am torn between sympathy and apathy. Yes, the Servants' life is close to slavery: servants live in a state of poverty, working not 9-5 but from an hour before their masters awake to an hour after they go to sleep. If they ask for a day off, it is only at the convenience of their masters. If they make a mistake, they face a beating or worse. And if they do not do everything they are asked, they are threatened with harm to themselves or their family. They are called family, but treated more like work horses. And what life awaits them if they are not servants? Driving rickshaws and handing over most of their earnings to goondas under the auspices of rental fees. Scrubbing floors in tea shops they aren't allowed to actually frequent. Or, worst of all, professional beggaring. Either way, there seems to be very little dignity to be had for anyone unlucky enough to be born in the Darkness.

It is this drowning sense of injustice that leaves me bitter and frustrated.

No comments: