The White Tiger

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it either, after all it won the Booker you see! In fact, ‘The Man Booker Prize Winner’ tag would alone carry this book forward, and record sales, for we Indians are suckers for recognitions and accolades (just look at Slumdog Millionaire), and the book- reading lot would seldom go to a store and pick up books based on the merit of their blurbs, the publications, or the flash of seconds when some books talk back to you. We probably lack the courage of picking up random books. We would rather stay with the mediocre, and keep discussing the mediocre over and over again, than acknowledge the presence of things lying at the extremes of that mediocre!

Now, the reasons attributed to its success at the Booker were that The White Tiger is “compelling, angry, and darkly humorous” and that it is a book about “real India”. I simply prefer to call it cold; because of thousands who have admired it, it would be extremely difficult to find one who might have heartily chuckled at it; although, there are moments in the book that would induce a response similar to a smirk, but certainly not a response that is synonymous with humor. This write-up is probably on ‘Why, The White Tiger should not have won the booker?’




To begin with, I had absolutely no problem with his protagonist but the point of view had to be shifted from Balram to Adiga himself. Sorry Mr.Adiga, but Balram simply could not pull ‘your’ full weight in the book! I thought it was absurd to make Balram the narrator, as he himself says that he was dragged out of school when they were just beginning on the English alphabet, therefore his story in a language foreign to his thoughts is quite unacceptable. Of course, there is some sort of justification provided in this regard (“Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.”) but when you begin to plumb the book as a product it simply refuses to click! On another spectrum, however, I guess the whole method of the point of view that I am talking about was quite a thought-out ploy by Adiga to take no responsibility for some of the things that Balram says in the book; you know how easy it is to discard allegations by saying “oh, it is the character that speaks, not me!” There are moments when you feel like knowing what’s going on inside the mind of the rich man but all you get to hear are the ravings of Balram, but the quibble in itself is not considerable.




Now, all the other talk about the depiction of the “real India” could be quite irritating, let alone illumining. In “real India”, all interests, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the mind of man, and connect him to a thread of general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consideration of food to be obtained for the family. What an irony, the world finds it singular to India; at least that’s how Indian writers have depicted it over the ages, but why single out India when all over the world, beyond the price of bread, all other news is senseless and impertinent! Oh, that may be because our government is not sophisticated enough to issue food-stamps I guess! It’s a pity how people generalize “reality”, but as some stories are said to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be asserted of this bi-verbal allusion, that it is too good to be natural! No matter how hard we try India would still remain a country of dirt and squalor courtesy books like the one in question.



The White Tiger is a thematically impressive novel, but is ultimately disappointing. Even the prose fails to compensate the other drawbacks, and in the end you perpetually catch yourself wondering, “Gosh, how could this one ever win the Booker?” The book is good as a ‘process’, but unfortunately it fails as a ‘product.’(Of course that’s strictly for me)


My Verdict:: Some books have a knack of putting upon us gifts of no real value or the intention of engaging us in a substantial gratitude; we obviously, thank them for nothing.

Encore & Other Thoughts

I thought books in a great measure had lost their power over me, and I could never revive the same interest in them as formerly. The reason being the obvious that after we’ve spent enough time pursuing our passions or hobbies, whatever you call it, their charm on us begins to wear thin for a while, but the dying embers still remain, and when a chance wind blows over them, they put us by our best thoughts! Isn’t it true that we ‘perceive’ when a thing is good, rather than ‘feel’ it?


At times the existence of this blog, where I write only about books, depresses me a lot for it presents a picture that is indifferent, mute, and lost in itself, seldom caring about the external world. Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. My parents have never read books, or for that matter their parents as well, but they are refined and cultured too. And in the house opposite the window where I write this there are laborers, who like the huge mass of mankind eat and drink, and sleep…..I mean why they should even care what Dickens or Hardy wrote. They move on hardly caring or rather ignorant of all those finely writ theories, philosophies and distinctions that have made ‘us’ lie prostrate on the feet of bards and writers, and what do they know or care about what I am writing about them or what men have written about other men? They are survivors, who care nothing about our scribbling; they are the ones who show there’s life and hope outside of books!


Now, reader, do not let those contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm current of your reflections on books, for confused souls like me would always disharmonize your thoughts and would make you wonder with silly eyes at a far more sillier world! All I wanted to say is that, I was in such a mood before I revived my not-so-auld passion for reading, and my auld delight in books. No wonder old habits die hard!


So, dear reader, whenever you feel that the idle vein is returning upon you, and you sense that you’re no longer interested in books, I suggest that you take a break from the “words” of contemporary literature, and visit the finely spun sentences of the great Victorians. And, as I had said somewhere that antiquity when revived after ages it acquires a queer grace of novelty and believe me that’s a welcome relief from the dark humour of present day compositions!


For reasons unknown I had a strong itch to return to works that I had already read, in spite of the unread section lying as an unscaled mountain but Henchard simply seemed irresistible! Once seduced, there is a newly acquired confidence and security in the second seduction, as you are assured that you will get what is expected. In other words the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. On reading a book for the second time you not only have the pleasure of imagination and a heightened appreciation for the writer (in my case it is Hardy), but you also have the added pleasure of memories. Memories that make you re-live the same feelings and associations which you had during your first read, and which you are sure that you can never have again in any other way. Boy! It’s like falling in love with the same person all over again!


Periods of such inadvertent swerves saw me applying my knuckles on the doors of Catherine & Heathcliff, and of course the o’Hara babe! It was like visiting the times when early youth fluttered (and Kishore sings pehle bhi main tujhe baahon mein leke jhooma kiya aur jhooma kiya……), a silly romantic pleasure that thrills you, bringing back to mind images of the day when you had got it, the place where you sat to read it, the feeling of the air, and all your early impressions with them. Boy, that’s heavy! No wonder, I am being carried away, but that’s exactly how they impinge on you. At some point of time I even convinced myself that these characters, this countryside, and these feelings that came across me as I retraced the stories and devoured every page are much better than any modern novel that I had ever read. Boy, what an ecstasy it was when I hung I silence over pages where Hardy talks about the “bees and butterflies” of Casterbridge, or when Henchard meets Susan after eighteen years and simply chooses to say, “I don’t drink…….you hear Susan?- I don’t drink now-I haven’t since that night.”; and boy, what language of thought can ever describe the scene where Elizabeth-Jane discovers the dead body of a goldfinch, and if that’s not enough Hardy comes up with Henchard’s will, and then there’s nothing but silence……….a ghostly silence that engulfs all!


Man, Hardy thou maketh tragedy sweet!


If Casterbridge was silently witnessing the irony of fate then Wuthering Heights filled itself with sound. Every scene coming with its concomitant of a storm or rushing wind. A constant sound that seemed to me more important than words and thoughts. The novel is great, but I cannot remember anything in it apart from Heathcliff and Catherine; people who set the ball rolling with their separation and then close it with their union in death!


In most ways I was sorry to get to the end of them but I wouldn’t mind treading these lanes once again in the near future.

Risqué Robbins

It has been a long time since, and my memory usually waxes dim on such subjects, or I would have whole heartedly wished to convey some notion of the manner in which Harold Robbins finds a place on my book shelf. There are two actually; Goodbye Janette, and The Carpetbaggers. These two I think dropped right from heaven, for I don’t remember buying them (that is ever since I started buying books) and for all my expeditions into streets where books are found I’ve never come across a Robbins work! My brother, a healthy contributor to the shelf is equally clueless, and so are mom and dad who do not believe in the concept of reading anyway. Nobody knows whom the books belong to; they are my family’s conundrum I guess, and the legacy is sure to stay unless some insane stroke of fate brings the real owner wandering to our doorstep! But, life isn’t celluloid, and therefore there’s hardly a chance of these ragged veterans getting back to their actual owner.

I believe I was still in my ‘Nancy Drew’ stage, probably in the eighth standard when I happened to flip through the pages of Goodbye, Janette. In many ways it was my first read, however I didn’t manage to complete it, for the sheer lack of patience and my arrant inability to come to terms with that thing called, sexuality. I realized it was one of those books which people call “dirty”, and I would be lying if I say that I did not want to continue, for at that impressionable age, with the hormones running amuck and the mind curious enough to de-cloud the myths about sex, made me flip more number of pages. The more I flipped, the more bedazzled I got, until better sense prevailed and made me drop the book out of sheer exhaustion. Unknowingly, I had become a reader of porn, although that word was quite elusive to me at that time.

Such a reading led to discussions with girl friends and the usual fuss about all matters relating to sex. Gosh, it looks so puerile now. But, what are you smirking at; you too have been there and done that! A dozen thumbs soiled the pages, following my publicity of its content, and a large number of people became porn readers as well!

But, I should hold my thoughts there and warn you from drawing conclusions based on the above statements! Now, Robbins isn’t appreciated much in the literary circles for his often graphic sexual detail, but boy, it’s amazing and almost unbelievable that he could actually write a book like, A Stone for Danny Fisher. For one, the book is absolutely “clean”, and not once does it come across as risqué, and boy, did Segal write Acts of Faith after reading Danny Fisher, coz it was out and out Segal-isque, and it had these deja-vu moments reminding me of Daniel Luria and all those Jewish traditions that one comes across in Segal’s Acts of Faith. I know Segal fans would probably kill me for such an analogy, but sorry guys, can’t help this time around!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think of Robbins of all to generate such magnitude of emotions. But isn’t it always good to be pleasantly surprised once in a while, as these final words of Danny Fisher:

I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast……….for I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes, with ordinary dreams and ordinary fears. I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, and legends are never remembered.

My Verdict: As readers we have a strong itch to show off all the great men whose works we have ever read. We even have our own individual lists of writers whom we consider to be great, and at times we are over-possessed with a sadistic pleasure of putting that which flutters the brain idly for a moment and then is heard no more in competition with some of the greatest works of art. And that is exactly where we fail as readers, for each writer has a unique ability and in the end everything boils down to the fact that, “different people have different ways of telling stories”, and it never serves good to reject someone based on first impressions!

Boy, I’m blessed with a soul so democratic!

The Triad & Other Stories

Even a careful eye would have missed it coz it refused to reveal itself; it was meant only for those eyes which had the patience and the ability to sit down alone and struggle with the writer, for the best way to know what a book contains is by reading it. Oblivious of its co-habitation with some of the greatest names in English Literature, it lay lambent, confident of its existence amongst such talismanic works of art. It was an old book redolent with the smell of antiquity and every time I opened it, the spine cracked, putting its health in jeopardy! I believe I was the first person to take it out of the library! And I had a tough time reading it, not because of its theme or manner of presentation but due to the constant feeding to the brain to handle the book “carefully”! Every turning of a leaf seemed like a requiem, almost as if it were accusing me of killing it!

It isn’t a classic (not in all senses though) and certainly not a book to be read in present times, and I wonder how many might have read it even in its own times. The book is a paradox, not because of its content, but due to its inappropriate timing. For, what may appear to readers of one generation as winning genius of the author, another generation may discard it as a thing of antiquity, or may seem to the next as a heavy dose of patriotism! Worse luck, Kanthapura would find itself on a sticky wicket in every age!! But, the vogue of an author is directly proportional to the taste of the age, and even classics are exposed to fluctuations in fashion, Kanthapura is no exception to this law!

R K Narayan & Mulk Raj Anand

Now, Raja Rao along with R K Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand formed the ‘Triad’ or the ‘Big Three’ of Indian fiction in English. But, unlike the other two, Raja Rao seems to be a little classic, and I whole-heartedly echo the New York Times Book Review, which says, “It has all the content of an ancient Indian classic, combined with a sharp, satirical wit and a clear understanding of the present…Raja Rao is perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most interesting writer of modern India.”

If you’ve read the Triad, then you’ll probably acquiesce, when I say that Rao is a little classical in his story telling. As far as, style is concerned, though his graces are not those most in favor at the moment, but the triumphs of his style are clear to all who understand the “art of writing”. It is a very bookish style, a kind of mannered-manner I suppose! He himself says in the foreword that,
“We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indians. We have grown to look at the large world as part of us. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove to be as distinctive and colorful as the Irish or the American…………the tempo of the Indian life must be infused into our English expression, even as the tempo of American or Irish life has gone into the making of theirs. We, in India, think quickly, we talk quickly, and when we move we move quickly. There must be something in the sun of India that makes us rush and tumble and run on……………episode follows episode, and when our thoughts stop our breath stops, and we move on to another thought. This was and still is the ordinary style of our story telling. I have tried to follow it myself in this story.”

And it was actually these lines which made me read the book,
“it may have been told of an evening, when as the dusk falls and through the sudden quiet, lights leap up in house after house, and stretching her bedding on the veranda, a grandmother might have told you, newcomer, the sad tale of her village.”

My Verdict: Incorporation of the oral tradition into modern fiction makes it an excellent read, and I say, it’s a must for all those who wonder about the miracle of India’s struggle to freedom! Happy reading!