What would you do if you found a bag full of money during this pandemic just when you were at your savings had been spent and you were trying to make ends meet? Would you keep it? Would you understand why Balram does what he does? Is it justified? Would you hand it over to the police who may keep it for themselves?
The trouble with movies made from books is that most of them are teeth-gritting awful. Only a handful of books, and I include The English Patient and The Matrix among those whose cinematic adaptations are far superior to the books.
Danny Boyle gave us the India-centric game-show movie - Slumdog Millionaire - which will make you shudder involuntarily because the only thing that is memorable is the disgusting, unforgettable image of ambition emerging through faeces. I did not want to read Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger because it looked like a similar mirror to ambition. I did eventually, because I chanced on this passage at the bookstore while waiting in the queue for another bunch of books.
“So I stood around that big square of books. Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans. Except here what happens is that your brain starts to hum.”
I loved the content, I just hated the format: a story told in letters to the Chinese premier. Thankfully writer-director Ramin Bahrani gives the story more prominence than the letter format. Although the constant inner monologue that is happening inside Balram’s head gets annoying after a while.
So, the story has a running metaphor of chickens (roosters he says) in a smelly, bloody coop, unable to rebel against a certain fate. Fair warning, the literal showing of the butcher hacking away at the chickens is just plain awful.
The first half of the film where Balram sees his salvation in the form of the younger son Ashok (played rather well by Rajkummar Rao) of the zamindar (called The Stork, essayed by Mahesh Manjrekar).
Ashok has returned from New York with his Christian wife, hence in pants always (their observation!) played rather well by Priyanka Chopra who also produces the film. Priyanka Chopra is called Pinky Madam and becomes Balram’s connection between the darkness and the light.
The book goes on and on about this metaphor, but thankfully the film simply shows the contrast better: The sahebs live in well lit, hi-rise apartments, while the drivers live in the belly of the beast, in darkness, in the flickering lights of the tube lights, with mosquitoes and cockroaches
Both Priyanka Chopra and Rajkummar Rao do not seem to fit in this world where drivers are treated like indentured servants and made to do everything from cleaning the house to cleaning up after their masters.
The scene where Balram - played wonderfully by Adarsh Gourav - is made to sign a confession in the presence of the family lawyer, the zamindar, his nasty older son (nicknamed the Mongoose, played by Vijay Maurya) and the contrite Ashok, is so amazing that you suddenly realise that Balram is well cast! He is at once vulnerable and helpless and frustrated too because he knows what is being done to him is wrong.
The book has Pinky madam speak scathingly about the chandelier that Balram aspires to own. And, that was the essence of social climbing for me. What the new rich aspire to (gold bathroom fittings for some people!) is considered tacky by some who know "showing off their wealth is bad". It is missing in the movie, but she does teach him the value of cleanliness.
Balram looks at the mirror the first time he brushes his teeth, and instead of being put off, it made me run for cover to get a cup of tea really and not find parallels with my own past.
How many of us want to acknowledge the ghastly people associated with our lives and our pasts. I empathise with Balram who does not want to be associated with the vitiligo affected driver or his awful granny Kusum and I understand why he does not want to get married to someone in the village.
The chandelier matters to Balram because it is his place under the light. But the darkness of his soul remains, I suppose…
"We have your confession letter, and it will always be with us," The Mongoose says that to Balram as he leaves for Dhanbad.
"You were looking for the key for years, but the door was always open," Pinky madam says, as she is leaving for good.
What will Balram choose? This part of the movie seems terribly hurried and hasty. As if the filmmakers did not like turning the vulnerable Balram into this unconscionable creature.
I hated the predictability of Ashok’s drunken stupor, the singing, the confession, "I wish my life were as simple as yours".
The never-ending monologue was necessary, I guess, because the book is in the form of letters to the Chinese premier who is about to visit India. The book is sharp and critical of the Indian mentality that smacks of servitude mixed with hate.
The film surprisingly captures that well without showing Balram spitting in Mongoose’s food. The crass ‘brown man, yellow man’ type of dialogue is jarring to hear but apt, I suppose in Balram’s context.
The concept that drivers learn to lip read and learn from the ‘masters’ is not new to cinema. In fact every version of the film Sabrina (first starring Humphrey Bogart and the second with Harrison Ford) has the scene where the driver says, "I learned to listen. When he (the master) bought (stocks), I bought, when he sold, I sold."
Thankfully, the story is set in 2008 and in Delhi. Bombay drivers make it very clear, "I am a driver. I will not run errands for you or pick up the dry cleaning," when they are joining, and end up bringing fish curry made by their wife for your child because, "Kya madam, aap vegetarian kyon hain?!"
The movie does offer a flight out of the rooster coop to Balram. But it is not the solution that an enlightened audience likes. After talking about moving into the light that he hankers for, the journey out of darkness is not a good one. Movies adapted from books rarely live up to expectations. But, this - like its title - is like that rare sighting: a white tiger.
The White Tiger Cast & Crew
Writers: Aravind Adiga (book), Ramin Bahrani (screenplay) Producers: Mukul Deora, Ramin Bahrani, Prem Akkaraju Director: Ramin Bahrani
Music: Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans Cinematography: Paolo Carnera Editing: Ramin Bahrani, Tim Streeto
Cast:Priyanka Chopra, Rajkummar Rao, Adarsh Gourav, Mahesh Manjrekar
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