Indian Tiger Caste division
The White Tiger 15
Arvinda Adiga’s 2008 Booker Prize-winning bestseller The White Tiger’s adaptation with coruscating wit, blistering suspense, and questionable morality.
Bright young Indian entrepreneur Balram Halwai played by Adarsh Gourav, a newcomer raised in a dirt poor Indian village, dubbed by his teacher as the “White Tiger” ignoring his underclass fate, narrates his journey from servitude to financial success while looking back at the pivotal moment during his employment. According to Balram, there are only two castes, the haves, and the have-nots, and the latter is reared to be as servile as battery-farmed roosters, waiting obediently to have their heads slaughtered.
Balram, however, sticks his neck out, enticing his way into and up the household of a wealthy crime family, as he starts off as a second driver to their youngest son Ashok (Rajkumar Rao)” and his liberated modern wife Pinky ( Priyanka Chopra) who have just returned from the US.
Balram’s values are challenged when a birthday joy ride goes very wrong, as his loyalty is dramatically tested.
Balram is writing to a Chinese CEO set to visit Bangalore for a tech conference, as Balram delivers a humorous, unabashed narration to ease us into the scrappy journey his entrepreneur embarked on in order to better his life and escape the poverty caused by familial obligations and the continuing stranglehold of India’s caste system.
The working caste’s struggle is a subject for Balram as the young privileged couple makes a progressive statement about education and opportunity when they continue to expect submissive obedience from their loyal servant as he tries to puts into his ethically dubious race to the top of the ladder.