“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

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. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

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...

This will hurt me...

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