The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

We've all known for a few years now that the Man Booker prize is no longer what it used to be - in fact, it's a given that the book actually winning the award will be less deserving than the other four shortlisted works of fiction put together. That's certainly been the case with the ones I've read - the last Booker winner I picked up, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, was a predictable and too-long ramble, made readable - memorable, even - only by the sheer beauty of Hollinghurst's prose, and the subtlety with which he evoked the atmosphere of 1980s Britain. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that redeems this year's winner, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

Allegedly 'blazingly savage and brilliant', and a work that exposes 'India's rotting heart' (much to the chagrin of jingoistic Indians, who spent the better part of newsprint condemning Adiga for having pandered to 'Western' conceptions of a backward and corrupt India while not uttering a word about the literary merit - or otherwise - of the book), the book tells the story of Balram Halwai, a man from one of the innumerable poverty-stricken villages dotting India's rural landscape, this one in the heart of UP, who lands a job as chauffer to one of the local landlords' sons, and with him arrives in New Delhi where he learns of the darkness that lies beneath the sophisticated, glamourous cityscape, as well as that which lies within his own heart. Balram's story - and his life - appears to be a allegory for an India that is furiously developing and growing at the expense of the greater number of its citizens, and those Indians who, seduced by the consumerism that this 'development' brings in its wake, give in to the soulless hedonism that money can buy. In itself a great concept, in the hands of an experienced - and good - writer, this could have been the masterpiece it's masquerading as. In Adiga's, on the other hand, it turns into a shallow, confused, unbelievable ramble along paths that Adiga has certainly never trodden.

There's no denying that the 'seamy underbelly' of India that Adiga wishes to expose does exist. What is in dispute, however, is his knowledge of it. His description of Balram's village, Laxmangarh, for instance - the river, the sewage, the tea shop with its huddle of young men, the main road down which the bus arrives, passengers greeted by emaciated rickshaw-pullers, the Hanuman temple, the pigs, the buffaloes - is that of a generic Indian village, a description culled from books and films focusing on the same sights. How many Laxmangarhs, one would like to know, has Adiga visited, or even lived in? How many Balram Halwais has he interacted with? Adiga's Delhi, too, is the Delhi experienced by an NRI, who flies in for short visits, and hangs out at the places most frequented by those of his ilk - the Gurgaon malls, Connaught Place, and - no, that's it. Just how limited his knowledge of Delhi's geography and even the lifestyles favoured by rich yuppies, among whom Balram's master, Ashok, and Pinky, Ashok's wife, feature, is revealed when one considers two instances: in The White Tiger, all Ashok and Pinky do on their days out is spend an inordinate amount of time at the mall; and on Pinky's birthday, they decide to go all the way from Gurgaon to a TGIF outlet located in CP. Anyone who's spent even a year in the city knows that CP's dead by 11 PM, and that TGIF, Vasant Vihar, is way more happening than a lot of Delhi pubs. And which politician, pray, lives on Ashok Road, that beautiful avenue given over to headquarters of political parties and a few colonial bungalows that serve as residences of high-profile judges?

Adiga's corrupt politicians are larger-than-life, his evil landlords straight out of a 1970s Bollywood movie. One is only too aware of the fate that befalls the bulk of the country's poor - but Adiga's descriptions are strangely devoid of emotion, or empathy. While devoting large sections to rigged elections in rural areas, he misses out one crucial reality in rural India of present times - the panchayati raj. One could be forgiven for suspecting that Adiga's knowledge of India is gleaned from Bollywood, news footage of elections held about 10 years ago, preferably somewhere in Bihar, a few months spent in Delhi, and a few conversations held with bored chauffers and south Delhi residents. No wonder, then, that the book fails to connect with anything remotely real, including the imagination of discerning readers. I mean - where in India could you begin a brand new life, complete with a new identity and a whole new business enterprise on a mere sum of seven lakh rupees, a sum that Balram ends up selling his soul for? And going by Adiga's own reckoning, wouldn't the rich and the powerful have spent every resource they owned to make sure that he paid for that most heinous crime of all - dared to think for himself, stand up to, and hurt a member of, the upper class?

The disconnect reveals itself in Adiga's style of writing - as a first-person narrative, the book veers widly between two extremes - exaggerated 'Indian English' ('See, when you come to Bangalore, and stop at a traffic light, some boy will run up to your car and knock on your window ...'), and youthful, urban American colloquialisms ('Don't waste your money on those books. They're so yesterday.), strangely out of place on the lips of a supposedly semi-literate man. Until you remember that Adiga has spent a large chunk of his life abroad - clearly, this is an author who cannot quite distance his character's voice from his own. The language is banal, the syntax barely there, and punctuations virtually absent - or is a semi-literate chauffer, though well-versed in yuppie lingo, not supposed to know his commas from his semi-colons? Editorial slips-up rule - why, for instance, does Balram encounter his fellow-chauffer 'Vitiligo Lips' everywhere he goes, even when Ashok demands to be driven to TGIF on a sudden whim late at night? Perhaps Vitiligo Lips' master is stalking Ashok? Perhaps Adiga - and certainly his editor - should have paid a wee bit more attention to the details?

Adiga's complete ignorance of north Indian cultural norms comes through in his treatment of north-eastern women - defined as 'slant-eyed Nepalis', they apear to be the stuff that most north Indian men's fantasies are made of. And why is that so? Because of their eyes, of course - their beautiful eyes that drive men wild. Again, one doesn't need to have lived in Delhi for a decade to know that most 'slant eyed women' - derogatorily called 'Chinks' or Chinkies' - hail from the north-east of India, in Delhi either for higher education, or for jobs; and one knows all too well why these women are viewed with either suspicion or naked lust - no, it's not their eyes, but the commen stereotype of them as 'cheap, loose, fast and easy', all because the matriarchal societies and culture from which a lot of them come ensures that they're comfortable with their bodies and with men, dress in 'Western' clothes, and do not consider themselves inferior to men, least of all those from north India. For Adiga to to lump them all under the category 'Nepali' and romanticise the sexual aggression they encounter on a daily basis is offensive, and his ignorance of cultural codes, especially coming from a writer who claims to know every bit of India, down to its murkiest depths, laughable.

As a first novel, and left to itself, the book would have gone relatively unnoticed, a mediocre effort on the part of a first-time novelist. But awarding it the Booker, and hailing it as one of the greatest things Indian writing in English had to offer in recent years, was ridiculous (on a recent visit to Crossword, one of the young boys at the counter asked us if we'd read the book - 'I read about 150 pages, and it was nothing special! Why would this win such a big award?' he asked in bewilderment. Our feelings exactly.). Adiga's second novel was given a quiter launch - the first chapter, printed in the Sunday Brunch a month and a half ago, read better than The White Tiger. But was it tempting enough for me to pick up yet another Aravind Adiga and spend four more hours of my life reading through it? I don't think so.