“The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”

Ezra stalks Little India. Singapore, May 2017.

The White Tiger is a novel presented in the form of a long series of letters from our protagonist – the entrepreneurial Balram Halwai – to the visiting Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. In it, we learn the life story of Balram, a transformation from the humble son of a rickshaw puller in deepest, darkest, most backward region of India to a confident businessman in the prosperous south of Bangalore (via a blossoming in Dehli).

This is a dark, funny book that does not shy away from modern, globalising India's cruel realities. It explores the issues at the heart of the Indian experience: the tensions inherent in religion, caste, loyalty, freedom, duty, individualism, greed, corruption and poverty in a country that creates numerous multi-millionaires while so many remain trapped in the most desperate of circumstances.

Tackling issues of masculinity, class and sexuality without fear, there are no simple dichotomies of good and evil or neat and tidy resolutions. It is a hard book. Cruelty exists on every page, yet done so with an incredible lightness of touch.

I loved it. This book hums with energy and throbs with tension and is alive with India's smell, vigour and noise. How the novel stoked my passion and righteous anger! How it led me to accept many of the barbarous and misanthropic justifications of our very flawed narrator as just an fair!

This one is a must-read.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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