The White Tiger

The internet will decide the faith of book publishers. And I think it’s going to be as grim as hell. Few days ago, I downloaded The White Tiger e-book illegally. Hah! Eat that publisher! Come and arrest me, if you dare!

But probably not; just yesterday when I was floating around Sudirman, the Aksara bookstore sucked me with a gigantic force, at that moment some strange mystical power made me succumbed and bought The White Tiger legal version. Oh yeah!

I just finished the book.

Well the thing is, just before I read the book I had just finished watching Slumdog Millionaire. The theme resemblance is striking. It is not 100% the same but it deals with this one common issue: social caste climbing.

The main story revolves around this one boy – or two if it is in Slumdog – who wants to get rich, period. And the ways they climb the social ladder are through murdering, cheating, bribing, and all other degenerated doings that you could ever imagined.

What makes it different is of course the story telling style. What I like best from The White Tiger is the sense of humor that the writer seems posses. It is bitter and surprisingly funny at the same time. You could laugh intensely and without any guilty feeling doing so to the misfortune of the main character, Balram Halwai. Just like when Mr. Ashok, the employer of Balram, asked Balram a few questions in front of Pinky Madame, Mr. Ashok’s wife. The questions were as simple as how many planets on our solar system and the name of the continent where India is, yet Balram answered it incorrectly. Mr. Ashok continued, unintentionally mocking Balram, that to this kind of half-baked people the future of India is being entrusted as if Balram was not there.

So my final conclusion is that the story is not extraordinary, it is just another Hindi movie being written in a book. But, I must admit, the story telling is such a page turner that I cannot lay the book for hours.

I rate this as a good reading! Buy it folks or if you are too broke just download it from the internet! The publisher would not know. Hah!