Ironically, me - a so called budding manager (though that’s not what I prefer to be called as, especially considering the way I’m managing myself these days) could finally manage in a long time to finish reading this so very popular Booker Prize winning book by Aravind Adiga, “The White Tiger”. And as I keep it back to the shelf, my apprehensions are troubling my thoughts. You might wonder, why so? For those of you who have read the book already will most likely share this concern with me on whether this one is a story of a white tiger which is rare to find or of just another brown one!
The protagonist Balram Halwai alias Ashok Sharma in his letter to the Chinese premier talks about almost all the twists and turns his life has taken so far including some of those special instances of a servant-master relationship where at times he is very loyal to the masters and at others, a very selfish being trying to suck out as much money as to satisfy his cravings, the extreme case being the murder of his master.
Well I feel that such a story is not of Balram’s alone but that of every human being, isn’t this our ingrained trait to be looking out for every single opportunity that can be exploited, be it in monetary terms or otherwise!
Doubts apart, I loved these lines by Adiga while summing up the comparative on the scenarios of 1947 and the present, “In the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat- or get eaten up.”
Apt, right?
2 comments:
sardonically saying yes ! but if you see optimistically people do live without eating up or eaten up ... sometimes even helping others to eat :)
U rite PJ..its more of an extreme case where the answer is 'Yes'.
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