The White Tiger

Slumdog Millionaire was great. I said so on this blog the day after I saw it. It opened my eyes to India. In fact, it made me realise just how much I didn't know about their culture.

The White Tiger - a book by Aravind Adiga - assisted this learning.

The novel won the Man Booker Prize last year and is about a boy who grows up in a small village in India and eventually becomes a servant working as a driver to a son of a rich family. By the end of the novel we find out about how Balram murders his master, changes his identity and becomes an entrepreneur of his own.

In Slumdog Millionaire, the hero gets out of the slums by winning a gameshow. In this book, it's hard to see Balram as a hero - especially at the end of the novel - as his actions to secure his release from poverty saw his boss murdered. His family were also killed because of this murderous act so it's hard to find sympathy with the character although you do up to that point in the story.

If anything, the novel can be seen as a social commentary of India. You read about the slums, the servants and the masters and how everything is accepted as routine in that country. Even corruption.

What was also made obvious is how globalisation is changing that country. Modern India is just as rugged as the slums. We see the main characters all change for the worse when living in the city.

As I said, I was ignorant of the Indian way of life before I saw Slumdog Millionaire and read The White Tiger.

There's nothing like a good film or story to open your eyes.