Every once in a while a writer appears who would prefer to write about reality as it is instead of writing about illusion we created for ourselves. Being blinded by our own success and opportunities we miss to see real life around us with all its drawback and negative issues.
Arvind Adiga falls under the aforementioned category and his Man Booker Prize winning Debut work "The White Tiger" exposes the problems of a common man from the villages trapped in a societal bondage which he terms as the "Rooster Coop".
The White Tiger is a powerful social commentary on injustice and power in the form of a class struggle in India. It portrays the anti-hero Balram, who represents the downtrodden sections of society, juxtaposed against the rich.
Balram Halwai, the protagonist of The White Tiger, having no identity of his own, like any other protagonist dreams of going from rags to riches. Eventually, he becomes a maniac who slits his boss' throat and confesses the mystery surrounding his rise to entrepreneurship. It makes one think this might be the only way to be an entrepreneur in India as the successful ones seem to have some dark side to them almost always. He labels his life’s story, ‘The Autobiography of a Half-Baked Indian’. He coins the idea of the Rooster Coop, Adiga examines how Balram is trapped in it and subsequently breaks out to freedom. He is a rare and eccentric like a “White Tiger” which is a very uncommon rare occurrence.
the following are some intriguing topics and snippets from the book during the course of his narration
“Go to Old Delhi ...and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages...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.”
the analogy made above might seemed too poetic or even clichéd to some.. but the essence he is trying to bring out from a perspective of a servant is an interesting thing to sit back and take a note.
"Indians are the world's most honest people, like the prime minister's booklet will inform you?
No. It's because 99.9% of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those guys in the poultry market.
The Rooster Coop doesn't always work with minuscule sums of money. Don't test your chauffeur with a rupee coin or two - he may well steal that much. But leave a million dollars in front of a servant and he won't touch a penny of it... He's no Gandhi, he's human, he's you and me. But he's in the Rooster Coop."
kinda true right... i felt that every person who works 'FOR' someone as a servant of any order will feel that he is tied to some unknown rules.. some mysterious laws of social slavery. Like Adiga quotes from a famous poet "You were in search of the key all these time, But the door was open all along"
Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 per cent - as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way - to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse."
He also draws attention to the way a master-servant relationship is established, based on a philosophy of trust, by which servants are caught in the Rooster Coop. It maintains the perpetual servitude of the poor, letting a minority possess all the wealth of the nation. As the protagonist says, “The Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop….only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed – hunted, beaten, and burned alive by masters – can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.”
It was a gripping tale which made me go wild with thoughts after reading this. I was trying to relate myself to the Rooster Coop and what would be the consequences if I even tried something in the minimal as an effort to come out of it. Even though there seemed to be possibilities it was also evident that there are imminent side-effects of it which will come back to haunt me and the very reason of my being. I do agree that in a country like India it takes balls of steel, cold blood and a heart made of stone to be a White Tiger.
For Indian Buyers:
http://www.flipkart.com/white-tiger-aravind-adiga/8172237456-yv23ftp8lb
http://www.indiaplaza.in/white-tiger-adiga-arvind/books/9788172237455.htm
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