Reality Returns with 'The White Tiger'

(Requested for kind favor of publication in Deccan Herald)
UDAY MITRA
76 NTI LAYOUT
3 cross 10 main
Vidyaranyapura
Bengaluru 560097
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M: 9986239737

Reality Returns With 'The White Tiger' By Aravind Adiga
(by UDAY MITRA)
As I ponder my past in my graying years in Bengaluru, India, in 2014 and wonder how it all came to be, I am in for some surprises. I lost all contact with my Indian roots when I worked across the international border for over three decades. I adopted Buddhism and the system of monarchy in Bhutan in a tiny fragile society of 700,000 with gigantic neighbors China and India reminding of smallness. The quaint happy society in the clouds often reminded of a heaven upon earth that it veritably was. The book The White Tiger rescued me from alienation by reminding of the bitter sweet Indian ethos, the churned life in the cities, the evil and the crime- the mesmeric recipe of the 5,000 year old civilization of the Mahabharata of the present.
Innocent Bhutan embraced me in 1980 when I joined the government there as an English teacher in a high school. The co-educational boarding school at Punakha town was tucked away amidst the high altitude pine forest with the Himalayan ranges fading away into infinity in the remote distance. The silent twin river below snaked its way around the imposing fortress built on a little island between. The silence of antiquity enraptured my being from day one.
What did I do before that fateful year when my life suddenly changed? The maddening Indian cities with crowds and pollution had colonized my mind, heart and soul. Crime and cheating was rampant everywhere. The college career in the study of English had prepared me well but I did get into the wrong habits and pretty girls wooed my senses. The heady euphoria of a hectic college existence lasted and lasted through the years. Yet it was a world that offered no rewards or job opportunities, simply a wasteful exercise with no returns, a one way street.
Imagine the difference! The new life was productive indeed with little time to stand and stare. Besides the daily round of teaching several classes that left me exhausted to the bones, lessons had to be prepared during the weekend and note books duly checked. Question papers had to be made and answer papers evaluated besides the conduct of tests and examinations. The hostel had to be supervised. Food had to be cooked and eaten in remoteness that had no eateries, barbers or cinema theaters in the town.
The pretty Bhutanese girls became a vision in every classroom who bounced in and out of the campus hostel and gathered at prayer time and study sessions. The sturdy boys were handsome enough too in their traditional knee length robe like dresses while the girls were covered to the ankles like the Muslim women.
The profound rhapsody of nature greeted me everywhere and whispered sweet nothings, revealing intimate secrets of a world beyond the ordinary existence. Nature poets I had studied like Wordsworth seemed to be speaking out of the grass and the trees. Birds sang as if speaking of Keats and Shelley. The river did portray Kubla Khan by Coleridge. The fantasy dreamland stretched me to my limits as I gave my all to teaching, determined to rise in the profession.
Yet the nothingness was filled by liquor ridden parties in the evenings. Intoxication removed that grimy tiredness of the day in the world without television or the internet, not even videos. The radio and occasional newspapers delivered very late were the only ambassadors of the media that conquers us daily nowadays.
I slowly realized the absence of politics, crime and pollution in my new awakening. Across some years I had completely forgotten my Indian city roots except distant memories of my mother and sister. Knowing that I could not settle permanently in Bhutan, I began to panic about my return to India. Would I be able to adjust to that weird life again? I had got terribly alienated and lived among Buddhists who did not worship money, who did not lie, kill or steal. I was told that their houses remained unlocked when they stepped out to the local market!
I am fortunate that I got the opportunity to read 'The White Tiger' By Aravind Adiga only because it was an Indian writer that had won the Booker prize and created a sensation in the media. I knew nothing about the subject matter till I turned the pages. My wife refused to read it because of some four letter words.
As I read the dark realities of protagonist Balram Halwai in present day India, I underwent a strange transformation. My memories of Delhi, Hyderabad, Calcutta and Lucknow gradually returned. Balram begins life in Bihar, travels to Delhi and finally ends up in Bengaluru. He lives a life of intense crime but escapes the consequences and settles successfully.
The story tells us much more and like any great piece of literature holds the mirror up to nature like the genius of Shakespeare did. What had been erased from my mind for a generation was slowly flowing back. Could I not settle in Bhutan? Complications stared me in the face, the extreme cold exacerbated my asthma and I did not wish to work after my retirement. I grew up in Bengaluru and felt like the fish out of water anywhere else.
Just like the Bhutanese milieu entered my soul in 1980, I was on a reverse trend now with everything Indian seeming encapsulated in that Aravind Adiga book. Who says that books or education cannot change lives? I found a new awareness and confidence to face India again. Long lost courage had now returned to face mega city life after being lost in the forests and mountains like the mythical Rama who spent 14 years in the forest. I had spent twice that length and more!