The White Tiger: another point of departure

I've noticed that my blogging habits have taken on the same pattern as the Indian monsoons: periods of intense productivity followed by painful dry spells.

On an interesting and unrelated note, yesterday I attended a scientific conference where several speakers were talking about how to end malnutrition in India. One of the speakers (a woman!) made the surprising point that women who were more educated were just as likely to have malnourished children as women who were less educated. At this point another speaker interrupted, "that's because women aren't empowered, so they can't put their education into practice." For years, NGOs and government groups have intitiated women's literacy programs in hopes that female literacy will help end female disenfranchisement. But female illteracy and child malnutrition continue to spring from that seemingly ineradicable seed: female disempowerment. What is the way forward under these circumstances? (A yet more feminist speaker dared to suggest: "we spend too much time talking about female empowerment as a way to improve children's lives, when female empowerment is a good thing even outside the context of motherhood and childrearing")

Speaking of empowerment, I recently read "White Tiger." I suspect my copy was bootleg (peddlers walk up to stopped cars offering Xerox-ed copies of popular books for half the bookstore price.) Most authors and publishers think these bootleg peddlers are the scum of the earth, but like it or not they represent India's much-noted entrepreneurial spirit. If there was no market, there would be no product.

on the other hand, it would be almost hypocritical for Aravind Adiga to complain about these pseudo-criminal businessmen, since the hero of his novel is a successful businessman with a much shadier past.

Adiga's hero, the White Tiger, is a villager in a small socialist state. The politicians are crooks and the crooks are politicians (political dons are a proud Indian tradition. After the most recent election a newspaper editorial noted that a surprisingly low number of mob bosses had been elected) There is no way forward for the common man, so the Tiger runs away to the nearby city, where he gets a job as a driver. His boss is a crook who spends his time extorting farmers. Eventually the Tiger gets dispatched to Delhi. He drives his boss from government building to government building, slowly coming to realize that his boss' main job in Delhi is to bribe politicians in exchange for tax-related favors. The "red bag" that his boss takes everywhere is in fact full of raw cash.

One day he's driving his boss along an abandoned road. In a fit of "entrepreneurship," the Tiger drags his defenseless boss from the car, slits his throat with a shard of glass, and steals the contents of the "red bag." He flees Delhi and resettles in Bangalore, where he sets himself up as in a law-abiding business. It's a happy ending, except for the vicious murder.

Adiga's satire is either very ham-fisted or very deft, because I never know whether Adiga wants us to see his protagonist as an atypical hero or a rank sinner. The description of India's moneyed classes is, I realize, tragically apt. The evils of whiskey are humorously explored. The sexual charms of blondes are extolled but ultimately abandoned. The hyprocrisy of the police is lamented and then turned to advantage.

I don't know how many people live in the White Tiger's desperate world. I don't know how many drivers fantasize about slitting their employers' necks. I don't even know what Adiga is trying to say about India. That only crooks get ahead? And if so, does that make India unique?

In an interview, Adiga said, "At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the West, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of (Indian) society." I don't know if Adiga succeeds in this grand mission. I don't feel at all bad for the protagonist - in fact, quite the reverse. But then, maybe I've already been in India too long.