The White Tiger

Two days wasted, forty eight hours of my life that I am not going to get back. 48 hours that could have been better spent either sleeping or even watching some mindless Bollywood masala film. These were my initial reactions after reading this Booker prize winning work by Arvind Adiga.

Let’s just try to be objective for a few minutes and evaluate this book on a few parameters:

Setting:
Imagine you are a journalist and you want to write about Bihar, you could either actually go to Bihar or visit a slum in your city and set that up as Bihar. Mr. Adiga has done the latter. The setting in this novel is as unrealistic as it gets. Here is why I think so:

1. If a village in Bihar has even an open drain, then it isn’t one of the most backward villages in Bihar simply because in the most backward villages; there isn’t a drainage system to speak of. Wait a minute, haven’t I seen an open drain somewhere. Actually I have, but each of those open drains is in Bangalore and from what I know, Mr. Adiga is a Kannadiga. Lazy journalism anyone.

2. “Kissing a god’s arse”. Where the hell did this expression come from? I am totally clueless here. I have spent a majority of my life in a hostel (read away from my parents), and I both know and have used almost every invective in vogue. I seriously doubt if the translated version of this expression has an equivalent in any Indian language. Why this expression has been used will be clearer in the second half of this post, hopefully.

3. A devout Muslim masquerading as a Hindu and staying in a Hindu household: Mr. Adiga, you can hide the dates concerned by not revealing them to your
audience; but sirjee ”real” people would notice if somebody fasts for a whole month at a stretch (Especially if it is the month of Ramadan and the people are as bigoted as the Zamindars mentioned in the novel).

4. Has the author ever been to a police station in Bangalore? I once went there to lodge a complaint. This is precisely what I was told, “Tum North Indians Bangalore aana, aur humaari jobs lena. Tumhaara Saaman chori hona to kiski galti hona, tumhari galti hona ya Police ki galti hona.” (You North Indians come to Bangalore and take our jobs. If you lose some of your belongings, then is it your fault or is it the fault of the Police?) Imagine a scenario where a North Indian’s employee is actually accused of murdering a Bangalorean in Bangalore; it’s anybody’s guess as to how friendly the Police would be.

Language: The language used in the novel is pedestrian at best. I can name dozens of people (engineers / phd students etc) who can write better than this so called author. Enough said on this.

Characters: One-dimensional. Straight out of a 50s/60s Bollywood flick. Other than the narrator and his employer (the one he murders), almost all of the characters are
unreal.

Having read this piece of garbage, and I am still being charitable to this so called novel, I was left wondering as to how did it win the Booker prize. That’s when the
cynic in my analyzed this novel’s success by using some of the basic concepts of marketing.

Segmentation and Targeting: The way I see it, there are three groups of people who are going to read this “offering”

1. Bihari: I have sub-segmented India into two simply because most of India has never been to Bihar, and isn’t likely to go there anytime soon. So as long as the depiction is ghastly enough, some of the audience may buy it. But I seriously doubt if any Bihari can identify with the way Bihar has been depicted here. This novel definitley doesn't target any Bihari.

2. Rest of India: They may buy what is written about Bihar, but selling them stories regarding Bangalore and Gurgaon is slightly difficult. Even if it were
true, selling us a story we all know isn’t going to work. Once again, not the target audience.


3. Foreigners: This is where the author has hit the jackpot. I mean most of this segment has never been to India and all they know about India is from movies like Slumdog Millionaire, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom etc. They aren’t likely to have a problem in identifying with a character who mouths lines about kissing someone’s arse, after all the origin of that expression is Western.

Positioning: This book seems to be positioned as a “primer on India for dummies”. What is really unfortunate is that the Booker prize committee seems to have one too many dummies on its list.



It is a well marketed novel and it does a good job of continuing from where Slumdog Millionaire left off. Even amongst its target audience, anyone with an IQ in double/triple digits should have stayed far away from this book. But, apparently not too many did.