Summaries.....of the White Tiger

WIKI

Balram Halwai lived in the village of Laxmangarh, a fictional village in Bihar (not the village of Laxmangarh in Rajasthan), a community deep in the "Darkness" of rural India. The son of a rickshaw-puller; his family is too poor for him to be able to finish school. Despite being clever and being promised a scholarship, Balram instead is forced to break coals and wipe tables in a Dhanbad teashop. He originally went by the name “Munna”, as his parents had never named him, but his schoolteacher Mr. Krishna wanted to give him a new name since Munna simply meant “boy” in Hindi.^[3] He named him Balram in reference to the brother of the Hindu god Krishna. His last name, Halwai, is derived from “sweet-maker” in the caste system.^[4]

In Dhanbad, he learns to drive after learning about the high salary paid to drivers. After learning how to drive, Balram gets his break when a rich man from his village (known as "The Stork" because of his penchant for taking a cut of the local fishermen's profits) hires him as a chauffeur for his son, Ashok, who lives in the city of New Delhi. Having recently returned from a stint in America, Ashok is conflicted by the corruption and harshness of life in India, and has to deal with his family’s unhappiness with his foreign marriage to his current wife, a member of a different caste.^[5] The city is a revelation for Balram. As he drives his master and his wife to shopping malls and call centers, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, and the contrast between the master and servant classes. Through these experiences, Balram becomes increasingly worldly and ambitious.

As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one thing he can do to become part of this glamorous new India — murder his employer, and escape from servitude. Ashok's increasing involvement in political corruption and divorce from his wife provides Balram with his opportunity. One day as Ashok is carrying seven hundred thousand rupees in cash as money bribes for politicians in New Delhi, Balram murders him and flees to Bangalore with his nephew Dharam. Balram uses the loot to bribe a police commissioner and create his own taxi company. He changes his name to Ashok Sharma, and becomes a wealthy "entrepreneur" in India's new technological society thus completing his emergence from the Darkness into the Light.

Summary of the pages 1 - 15:
The first part of the chapter one is about an entrepreneur, Balram Halwai, and the prime minister of China, Wen Jiabao. Balram Halwai lives in Bengalore, India. He writes an e-mail to the premier to talk about his arrival after the lady on "All India Radio" told it. She is also publishing, that Mr. Jiabao wants to know the truth about Bangalore. The unreliability of the media is reason for him to ask the prime minister if he really plans to come to Bangalore. About the second aspect Balram thoroughly thinks of. He thinks that he is the best one you could ask about this issue, so he tells about his life´s story and about employers in India. He wrote about children which run up to stopped cars and try to sell some bootlegged american books dealing with businesses. Mr. Halwai goes over to a short situation, in which he´s the driver of an american businessman. In his opinion, most of Indians are half-baked. Balram, which is thinking that all entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay, carries on narrating. He tells about posters, including his face, which hang out in nearly every post, railway and police station. Referring to the poster, Balram explains how he got his name by his former teacher and why Laxmangarh, the place where he grew up, is called darkness. He narrates the moment when his mother were burned on a stage above the river Ganga, which definitly isn´t the same one all american tourists always think of. Full of feces, soggy parts of human bodies, buffalo carrion and so on. This is the reason why he advises the prime minister to not take a dip under any circumstances. In this moment, while he´s watching his mother burn and thinks of his own death, he faint and haven´t been back to see the ganga again.Summary of the pages 15 - 25:
Balram Halwai, which still writes the e-mail to the prime minister and tells about his life, describes within these ten pages his village, Laxmangarh, mentions the rural lifestyle there, talks about his dad and his work as an rickshaw-puller.
At first, Balram talks about Laxmangarh. This village is in the district of Gaya that is famous because of its national history. Some people say Buddha walked through that little village which is in the near of Bodh Gaya - the place where Buddha got his Enlightenment.
Electricity poles and water tap didn´t exist where he grew up. He tells of his house and their buffalo, which the women of his family obvious were feeding more regularly than cooking their man´s dinner. He then tells us of his morning his dad woke him up to take the buffalo to a morning bath. Referring to the poster mentioned in the first 15 pages, he´s saying that he didnt wear the clothes hes accused of having worn.
Next, Balram talks of his dad, how he did an exhausting work as a rickshawk-puller instead of the rural work most of people did, of four men, known as "the animals", who were controlling this area.
Mr. Halwai writes of the employees which rushed into trains and buses to find sufficiently jobs in Delhi, Calcutta and other big cities.
At last, he lets Mr. Jiabao know how his father were reacting when he heard of his sons missing in school. He totally reacted angry and upset. His son, in which he had a lot of expectations, fainted in school for the second time in his life and never had gone back to school since that day.

Summary of the pages 25 - 36:
The last part of the first chapter deals with Balrams father in school, a visitation of a school-inspector and a job for Balram in his father´s tea-shop.
One day after the last occurrences, his father takes Balram to school while dawn, willing to kill the lizard leading his son to faint. He kicks and smashes the lizard till death. If his father stops wheezing, a stench of crushed flesh hangs in the air.
Balram tells of Vijay, the bus conductor, which seems to be a person that made it in life.
He´s, one more time, referring to the poster and talks about the declaration of a bag. You learn something about the colour of the bag, but actually he switches over to the issue of his education, which is not mentioned on that poster. Referring to his education, Balram narrates the situation of an unexpected visit of a school-inspector, which comes to examine the schools inventory and its pupils. After Balram impressed the inspector, he gets a promise of a scholarship with an improved teaching. He also gets the nickname of "The white tiger" in consequence of his wisdom compared to the rest of his classmates.
As his family get a loan for a wedding, Balram soon has to cancel the school and has to start working with coal in his dads tea-shop.
When he´s about 13 years old, he decides to go up to a nearby fort on his own. An awesome cow is to blame that Balram actually views the fort at the age of twenty-four. At last, he describes the view over the village you get while standing on the top of the hill and, surprisingly, he´s telling that about eight months later, he slit Mr. Ashok´s throat.
Chapter 2 - "The Second Night"
Summary of the pages 37 - 45:
In the second chapter, Balram starts to tell about his ex-employer Mr. Ashok´s face. It is such a handsome one that sometimes Balram couldn´t take his eyes off it. He also remembers his wife´s face, Pinky Madam. Even though he killed him, Balram tells that you won´t find him saying one bad thing about him.
Next, he narrates of his father´s death. After he spit blood, Balram and Kishan, his elder brother, take him to a regional government hospital.
Since no doctor is available, they lower his father to some newspaper sheets some muslims, which are also waiting for medical suppor, had added to the ground. The next day, their father dies because of his tuberculosis.
One month later, Kishan marries his wife and moves to Dhanbad. Balram and his cousin follow him to Dhanbad where they soon get work in a tea-shop.
Balram spends time in spying and overhearing customers to educate himself on his own. At last, he´s begging random strangers for a gratis driving license.

Summary of the pages 45 - 54:
Within these pages, Balram talks about the way he got the job as Mr. Ashok´s driver.
At first, he´s talking about the real indian situation referring to the issue of getting a good job. Instead of big cities, in which a lot of companies look for employees via advertisements, tens of thousands living in "Darkness" give up to find a way out of poverty.
When he got badly disappointed, Balrams granny agrees to spend her money on his driving license. In consequence of his good results, his driving instructor takes him to a brothel for free where Balram has "his first time".
Next, he narrates of his search of a job. After he went from door to door, he got the luck to meet his former landlord, which arranged a test drive for Balram.
At last, Balram describes the way their castes have been changed. Nowadays there are only two types of casts compared to the past in which there have been thousands of casts in India.

Summary of the pages 54 - 78:
At first, Balram talks about the situation, in which he has to answer some questions about his caste, family and social aspects by Mukesh Sir and the Stork after he made a test drive for Mr. Ashok. Furthermore, he also bargains for his salary.
Next, Balram describes the room he lived in and had to share with an other servant, Ram Persad. Next to the issue of acting as a Maruti Suzuki driver, he tells of the duties he and servant number one also have to graduate, massaging the master, sweep the courtyard and so on.
Once Balram has to massage the Storks feets, he got, while the Stork was drinking whiskey and chatting with his sons, some hits due to his too strong massage.
There is only one activity that servant number one and servant number two have to do together.
Regularly, mostly once a week, Balram and Ram Persad went to an "English Liquor Shop" to buy an especial expensive one whiskey for his lord.
When Mr. Ashok surveys the servants room Balram and Ram live in, he gets shoked and awards them to get a better and larger one.
Mr. Ashok also awards Balram to be his and Pinky Madams driver of the Honda City when he used to be going to Laxmangarh, Mr. Ashoks and his native village.
In Laxmangarh, Balram visits his family while Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam eat for dinner by an old man in the landlords quarter.
Proud of his uniform and fame, he got in quarrel with his family because of his wedding and left ahead of schedule.
When he returned to the car, Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam already waited for him. On the way home, they got in a traffic jam due to a demo.

Chapter 3 - "The Fourth Morning"
Summary of the pages 79 - 95:
The third chapter starts off with Balrams explanation of the way he got his date of birth. When there was an elections coming up, a man with a governmental uniform visited the school to collect the pupils ages. Balram, unknowing of his age, was supposed to be in the age of eighteen to take part in the election.
The opponents of the great socialist´s party, which never seemed to be as numerous as before, finally made a regardless deal with the communists about the politics in Laxmangarh.
Balram tells how he were able to eavesdrop a dialogue between two guests when he still worked in the tea-shop. He heard about a man´s dead who was disturbing the official celebration of the socialistic election-win.
Next, you hear about the visit from the great socialist and Vijay, the former bus conductor from Laxmangarh who became Laxmangarh´s deputy.
One morning Balram got up ahead of schedule. Ram, the servant number one, made some noises when he used to eat earlier of time. Balram found out about the reason - Ram was a Muslim what displeased the Stork, which was thinking all along that Ram is a hindu. This leads to his dismissal whereby Balram became the servant number one.
Chapter 4 - "The Fourth Night"

Summary of the pages 97 - 145:
The fourth chapter deals with the abidance from Balram and his masters in Delhi.
Balram, who obviously has some navigational problems in Delhi at the beginning, whereof Pinky Madam and the Mongose are annoyed, soon gets in contact with other servants, especially with a guy with diseased lips.
This servant offers him the magazine most of servants are reading while waiting for some orders - "MURDER WEEKLY". The kindly servant, who´s named Vitiligo-Lips, provides Balram with some supplies for his master´s gratification while waiting previous to a mall, thereunder golf balls, foreign wine and women.
Two nights later, the servant´s harassment leads Balram to sleep in a segregated room infested of mosquitos. The next day, he´s supposed to drive the Mongoose and Mr. Ashok to the President´s House in the politics quarter. When they drove back, darkness already had been taking over the country and both of them obviously seemed to be pissed off about the political system in India.
After all, the Mongoose lost a rupee, got skeptical of Balram and forced him to search until he finally gave him one of his own. Then, unexpectedly, the Mongoose left Delhi by train and just Pinky Madam and Mr. Ashok still remained.
Balram tells, that in the ensuing period, he often hung out with the kind servant, started to brush regularly his teeth and always got a growing dick when caught sight of Pinky Madam in short skirts. More and more often, his master and his wife got laugh at their servant´s pronunciation.
The last part of the chapter took place in the Honda City after Balram waited, like he was supposed to, ahead of a building for Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam. It was two 2 a.m. in morning, when they both joined the car. Pinky Madam, drunken and nonsensically, took over the car and kicked Balram out of. When she drove along to pick him for the way home, she suddenly crashed a child till death. Balram drove back the way to the hotel after Pinky Madam apathetically and shocked took seat in the backseat.
In the end, the fourth chapter drew to an end with an audience between the Mongoose, a judge and Balram, in which he is supposed to sign a document indicating the guilt of Balram of killed a little child, without any relation neither to Mr. Ashok nor to Pinky Madam.
Chapter 5 - "The Fifth Night"
Summary of the pages 147 - 167:
The fifth chapter starts off with Balram talking of hens squeezed in Rooster Coops in indian marketplaces and sales booths. He referred this situation to the social system in India, tells that the servants are like string puppets of their lords and the most honestly people on earth. Balram talks about the same effect, the effect of being caught of system, that servants can´t get out of their way and that they harass each other as well as competition.
Soon, Balram gets to know in favour of him, that nobody got notice of the accident Pinky Madam have had and that he hasn´t to go to jail.
Some days later, Pinky Madam suddenly broke up with Mister Ashok, left and returned to America. That´s the reason why Mr. Ashok starts to drink excessively alcohol more and more often. By reason of his support, Balram and his lord got a better personal contact and first of all, it seemed to become the first exactly lord-servant friendship.
In the end, this chapter concludes by Balram waiting for his lord in the Honda city. To calm down, he made some Yoga, whereof other servants started to laugh at, the Rooster Coop doing its work quiet well.
Chapter 6 - "The Sixth Morning"
Summary of the pages 167 - 189:
Balram starts off with his continuation of telling, that he actually thought he knew Mr. Ashok. When he drove him to the Sheraton Hotel, they both got a kind of horny due to a handsame girl crossing the road, while they stood in front of a red light.
Next, he switches over to the conversation with the diseased lips servant ahead of the hotel. They talked about driver´s prospects in future, till he´s supposed to show up for his master. Balram tells, that he conversed with a book-seller about the ambitious Nexals, after he carried his lord and his foreign companion to a cinema.
After Mr. Ashok and this foreign woman boozed went to bed, Balram eavesdropped a conflict between the both of them. He suspects, that Uma - the woman - is his former lady-love.
In the end of the chapter, Mr. Ashok had a meeting with an politician´s assistent. After they took seat in the Honda of Balram and drank a couple of whiskey, this assistent nearly forced Mr. Ashok to meet a russian girl in the car, which had golden hair.
Later, when Balram wiped the car, he found a strand of her golden hair, which he still has on his desk today.
Chapter 7 - "The Sixth Night"
Summary of the pages 191 - 247:
The seventh chapter begins with the diseased servant and Balram, both of them standing ahead of the hotel and holding their masters water, which are jogging.
Next, Balram talks to this servant and arranged a meeting with a gold-haired whore for his master, but actually he´s going to have it by himself. They also talk about methods of cheating his master and you get informed about a list of the best ones. Soon, Balram needs to use these methods of getting further salaries by cheating his lord.
When he negotiates a price in amount of 7000 rupees with her pimp, Balram soon recognizes that he gets screwed. He ordered a girl with light hair but instead of that, he gets one with tinged hair and looses, finally, all of his 7000 rupees.
In the further progress of the chapter, the Mongoose comes to have political and commercial consultancies with Mr. Ashok.
More and more often, Balram gets tempted to steal Mr. Ashoks bag, which obviously is often in use for handling oodles of money for the election. Additionally, he catches up on escape ways, especially on railways, for the case he´ll decide to escape with the money.
Balram meets a bookseller, who´s going to teach him a bit about peotry and literature, and he´s mentioning one significant sentence which will take an important part of Balrams behaviour. Then, Balram receives a letter from his granny Kusum. She sends his nephew Dharam and threatened him to call on his lord if he wouln´t start to send any money to her.
Obviously, the way the election runs out gets a kind of desaster for Mr. Ashok. His political opponents screw him.
Back to Balram, which goes to zoo with Dharam to get to know each other better, meanwhile plans his final strike. The next day, if Balram is supposed to drive Mr. Ashok to the Sheraton, suddenly the car stopped and Balram simulates a problem with the wheels. Mr. Ashok, requested to assist with looking for the problem, left the car and gets killed by Balram, which decides in the very last moment to pick Dharam up when he escapes.
Summary of the pages 249 - 276
In the last chapter of the book, Balram Halwai talks about two different situation. First, he narrates the story itself until the very end. After that, he talks about the reason for a work break and some hours in absence.

When Balram and his nephew Dharam are on the third day on traveling, he sees his face on a police poster. Another man, recognizing his face, asks him what´s the sense of the poster because he can´t read. Balram tells him that the man on the post had killed two dangerous terrorists.
He mentions the habits of Bangalore and the people which live there. Balram tells about how he corrupts the police, gets a new job and how his company grows up.
In the end, he talks about a case, in which one driver of his company killed a man on a bicycle. Because he corrupted the police, as you already know, his driver was innocent and the inspection has been closed.
However, Balram, the head of the company, visited the family, condolatories and presented the family with 25.000 rupees.
In the very end of the bock, he mentions one more time, that killing somebody is an occurence that is profoundly bad. But, and this is the most important, like he says, you can get this chance, even if you have to kill somebody, to leave the darkness and join the light. Anything he did, he actually misses Mr. Ashok, would never say that killing him was a mistake he did.


Personal impressions:
Well, in my opinion, I´m not capable to give any statements about what he said in the very end. Of course, there is no reason for nobody to kill anybody. But, and this is actually the reason why I don´t feel able to say anything in this case, when you were born and grown up in darkness, always fighting for water and food, you certainly would have another view about those things.
However, my finally impression about this book is, that I found it really interesting to take a dip in another world, in pain, emotions and fight you normally ain´t confroted with at all.

The result is, that I like that book and these emotions you get while reading.