The White Tiger - The fall of the White Man and the Rise of the Yellow and Brown Man

A nice passage that culminates in a suggestion that luxury will destroy the white man while those not so 'developed' shall inherit the world. I can't help but wonder if Balram will become what he deplores...

'On the topic of shampoo advertisements, Mr Premier, I must say that golden-coloured hair sickens me now. I don't think it's healthy for a woman to have that colour of hair. I don't trust the TV or the big outdoor posters of white women you see all over Bangalore. I go from my own experience now, from the time I spend in five-star hotels. (That's right, Mr Jiabao: I don't go to 'red light districts' any more. It's not right to buy and sell women who live in birdcages and get treated like animals. I only buy girls I find in five-star hotels.)
        Based on my experience, Indian girls are the best.
        (Well, second-best. I tell you, Mr Jiabao, it's one of the most thrilling sights you can have as a man in Bangalore to see the eyes of a pair of Nepali girls flashing out at you from the dark hood of an autorickshaw.)

        In fact, the sight of these golden- haired foreigners - and you'll discover that Bangalore is full of them these days - has only convinced me that the white people are on the way out. All of them look so emaciated - so puny. You'll never see one of them with a decent belly. For this I blame the president of America; he has made buggery perfectly legal in his country, and men are marrying other men instead of women. This was on the radio. This is leading to the decline of the white man. Then white people use mobile phones too much, and that is destroying their brains. It's a known fact. Mobile phones cause cancer in the brain and shrink your masculinity; the Japanese invented them to diminish the white man's brain and balls at the same time. I overheard this at the bus stand one night. Until then I had been very proud of my Nokia, showing it to all the call-centre girls I was hoping to dip my beak into, but I threw it away at once. Every call that you make to me, you have to make it on a landline. It hurts my business, but my brain is too important, sir: it's all that a thinking man has in this world.

        White men will be finished within my lifetime. There are blacks and reds too - the radio never talks about them. My humble prediction: in twenty years' time, it will be just us yellow men and brown men at the top of the pyramid, and we'll rule the whole world.
        And God save everyone else.' - pp.304-305

The White Tiger - The Swastika

For some time I did wonder why the devil was the Hindu religious symbol adopted by Hitler to represent the Nazi party. Well, here's a passage that provides a clue:

''...you know that's where the future is.'
        'The south? Bullshit.'
        'Why not? One in every three new office buildings in India is being built in Bangalore. It is the future.'
        'Fuck all that. I don't believe a word. The South i full of Tamils. You know who the Tamils are? Negroes. We're the sons of the Aryans who came to India. We made them our slaves. And now they give us lectures. Negroes.'' - p.272

Wikipedia naturally informs us:

'The use of the swastika was associated by Nazi theorists with their conjecture of Aryan cultural descent of the German people. Following the Nordicist version of the Aryan invasion theory, the Nazis claimed that the early Aryans of India, from whose Vedic tradition the swastika sprang, were the prototypical white invaders. It was also widely believed that the Indian caste system had originated as a means to avoid racial mixing. The concept of racial purity was an ideology central to Nazism, though it is now considered unscientific. For Rosenberg, the Aryans of India were both a model to be imitated and a warning of the dangers of the spiritual and racial "confusion" that, he believed, arose from the close proximity of races. Thus, they saw fit to co-opt the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race. The use of the swastika as a symbol of the Aryan race dates back to writings of Emile Burnouf. Following many other writers, the German nationalist poet Guido von List believed it to be a uniquely Aryan symbol.'

For the full article click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

The White Tiger - The Source of (Male) Evil?

'This...is the famous 'red-light district' (as they say in English) of Delhi.
        An hour here would clear all the evil thoughts out of my head. When you retain semen in your lower body, it leads to evil movements in the fluids of your upper body. In the Darkness we know this to be a fact.' -p.250

Daily Times article re. image

The White Tiger - Trapped in The Rooster Coop

Servitude is engrained in the Oriental. Give them freedom and they won't know what to do with it. Supplication, propitiation and obsequiousness certainly have their place in a generalised view of the characteristic Indian steriotype. Genetically predisposed to be of service, even when being dishonest. A behaviour full of contradiction. And this is the kind of sense Adiga creates in the character of Balram Halwai, who attempts to break free of this 'Rooster Coop'. But what exactly does it mean and how does it work:

'When you get here, you'll be told we Indians have invented everything from the Internet to hard-boiled eggs to spaceships before the British stole it all from us.
Nonsense. The greatest thing to come out of this country in the ten thousand years of its histor is the Rooster Coop.
        Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly coloured roosters, stufed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench - the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they're next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.
        The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.

        Watch the roads in the evenings in Delhi; sooner or later you will see a man on a cycle-rickshaw, pedalling down the road, with a giant bed, or a table, tied to the cart that is attached to his cycle. Every day furniture is delivered to people's homes by this man - the deliver-man. A bed costs five thousand rupees, maybe six-thousand. Add the chairs, and a coffee table, and it's ten or fifteen thousand. A man comes on a cycle-cart, bringing you this bed, table, and chairs, a poor man who may make five hundred rupees a month. He unloads all this furniture for you, and you give him the money in cash - a fat wad of cash the size of a brick. He puts it into his pocket, or into his shirt, or into his underwear, and cycles back to his boss and hands it over without touching a single rupee of it! A year's salary, two years' salary in his hands, and he never takes a rupee of it.
........
Why?
        Because Indians are the world's most honest people, like the prime minister's booklet will inform you?
        No. It's because 99.9 per cent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market.
        The Rooster Coop doesn't always work with miniscule sums of money. Don't test your chauffeur with a rupee coin or two - he may well steal that much. But leave a million dollars in front of a servant and he won't touch a penny...The trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy...The Great Indian Rooster Coop.
.......
A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 per cent - as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way - to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.
.......
I will never envy the rich of America or England...they have no servants there. They cannot even begin to understand what a good life is.
        Now, a thinking man like you...must ask two questions.
        Why does the Rooster Coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively?
        Secondly, can a man break out of the coop? What if one day, for instance,  driver took his employer's money and ran? What would his life be like?
.......
        The answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice...the indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied in the coop.
        The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed - hunted, beaten, adn burned alive byu the maasters - can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.
        It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.' pp. 173-177

The White Tiger - Value for Money

The reason behind 3hr+ movies with intermissions and tasteless excess:

'That evening, while driving back to the apartment, I looked into the rearview mirror. Mr Ashok was wearing a T-shirt.
It was like no T-shirt I would ever choose to buy at a store. The larger part of it was empty and white and there was a small design in the centre. I would have bought something very colourful, with lots of words and designs on it. Better value for the money.' - p.149

[please post any pics to best communicate this]

The White Tiger - Murder

'Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his foetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life; only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire beofre its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.' -pp.46-47

Reminiscent for me of Clint Eastwood's excellent portrayal of the reality of violence in Unforgiven:

 
                               MUNNY
                   Well, that fella today, you shot
                   him alright.

                              THE KID
                          (forced bravado)
                   H-hell yeah.  I killed the hell
                   out of him... three shots... he
                   was takin' a sh-sh-shit an'...
                   an'...

     The Kid is shaking, becoming hysterical, he can't go on, and
     Munny hands the bottle back.

                               MUNNY
                   Take a drink, Kid.

                              THE KID
                      (breaking down, crying)
                   Oh Ch-ch-christ... it don't... it
                   don't seem... real... How he's...
                   DEAD... how he ain't gonna breathe
                   no more... n-n-never.  Or the
                   other one neither... On account
                   of... of just... pullin' a
                   trigger.

     Munny walks back to the edge of the rise and watches the
     rider and it is a lovely sunset happening and he is talking
     to no one in particular.

                               MUNNY
                   It's a hell of a thing, ain't it,
                   killin' a man.  You take
                   everythin' he's got... an'
                   everythin' he's ever gonna have...

                              THE KID
                        (trying to pull him-
                           self together)
                   Well, I gu-guess they had it...
                   comin'.

                               MUNNY
                   We all got it comin', Kid.