The White Tiger….
This is not a review, just a rambling post after finishing off the latest “hot” book – Aravind Adiga’s – The White Tiger, an over-night read.
What do I think – it (the book, as in the hype) is completely over-rated.
But I did like the part about the “hero” getting nightmares that — he did NOT commit murder. Nice touch. But I did not like the rest. Managing expectations is always difficult – hype may be bad for the ‘product’ – users expect much ‘more’. If you do not know India, please do not read the book and go away thinking that now you do. The book depicts just one in a million [citation needed] India’s.
The India that is depicted in the book is alien to me. Though I have heard rumors / news / facts of corrupt to core politicians I never had to deal with “that” India personally (Thank god :|). I, like many of my friends, live inside a protected bubble – the middle class bubble of complacence. Much insulated from both the the poor and the rich India. There are so many India’s. And everybody, like me, kind of live in their secluded bubbles, with minimal interaction between the bubbles. Just like the layers of abstraction that we deal with in engineering. The interfaces are kind of defined. You hire the poor, get hired by the rich, so on and so forth, do not get too involved with either(?). It is like different world’s, different countries within one. India even to Indians is never the same, in reality and in perception. There is always something new that comes across – never boring.
