The White Tiger

The sixth and seventh nights represent the culmination of Balram’s narrative, showing how he breaks out of the Rooster Coop at great cost, becoming a new man under the name Ashok. While he murders Ashok and likely causes the dissolution of his own family, he becomes the son that his father wanted and the businessman that Ashok could not become. This swapping of roles is foreshadowed by Ashok’s embrace of the Indian family as a concept. Balram creates his own version of family with young relative Dharam while considering Collectivism, Individualism, and the Search for Identity, and becomes an “entrepreneur” by bribing police and running a business with blood money. However, he also fights Corruption, Politics, and India in his own way by taking more responsibility for his actions than Ashok’s family. He unites the Light and the Darkness as he becomes a success in Bangalore.

Balram notices the inverse relationship between the poor and rich in Delhi, as he describes the rich’s obsession with health and fitness. Criticizing the urban planning of Delhi, he notes that the rich create artificial outdoor spaces for exercise by demolishing natural spaces. The rich wish to become thin but grow overweight, while the poor are starved because of the hoarding of the rich. Each group desires to resemble the other. However, Balram’s dreams of being rich soon become nightmares. Foreshadowing his eventual adoption of Ashok’s name and status, Balram seeks out a blonde sex worker as his employer did. He is overcharged a “Working-class surcharge” (198) for a sex worker with dyed hair—a cruel reminder that “the rich always get the best things in life, and all we get is their leftovers” (198). Balram’s callous treatment of this woman mirrors that of other characters of the Light who lose their sense of morality (i.e., Pinky Madam’s family framing Balram for Pinky Madam’s accidental murder, etc.).

Despite seemingly having everything as a rich man, Ashok wants more. He confesses that his comfortable life has become uncomfortable, that his “way of living is all wrong” (202). Ashok desires to have Balram’s so-called leftovers. Sitting in Balram’s apartment, he asks to eat with Balram, to have simple fare. However, this embrace of Balram’s lifestyle signals Ashok’s privilege: Like the rest of the rich, he can pretend to be poor, exercising and eating simply, because the option to do the opposite is always available.

Echoing the Background’s explanation of castes—people with big bellies and those with small bellies—Balram continues to reference weight and eating as markers of caste and Socioeconomic Inequality in India. Rather than offer a nuanced view of the caste system, Balram notes the poor weigh less, eat less, and control less, trapped in the Rooster Coop. As he waits for Ashok, Balram goes to a train station and uses a machine that weighs someone and gives them a fortune. Balram notes only “the children of the rich, or the fully grown adults of the poorer class, who remain all their lives children” use these machines—as rich adults control their own fortune (211). He reiterates that the Rooster Coop works because the poor remain infantilized by those they work for. His fortune predicts nothing, instead imploring him to respect the law. Balram spends money as a servant only to be told to remain a servant. The train station, a potential escape from servitude, is but “the final alarm bell of the Rooster Coop” (212).

The final alarm, however, doesn’t stop Balram. After killing Ashok, Balram escapes with Dharam, presumably the last of his family. At a train station, Balram lies to a man who can’t read, falsifying his own wanted poster by framing himself as a hero. However, he recalls his father, “thinking [the man who can’t read] had just endured what my father must have endured at so many railway stations—being mocked and hoodwinked by strangers” (252); feeling guilty, he buys the man tea. While Balram murders Ashok, his actions don’t fully corrupt his soul: He respects the memory of his father and sees his face in every downtrodden man. As he becomes an anti-hero capable of escaping the Rooster Coop—reinforced by him fainting at the sight of a “disappearing” white tiger—Balram embraces his ties to both the Light and the Darkness. For him, respect and desire are the same, because they both reflect choice, not control or obligation.

As Balram grows his taxi business in Bangalore, he gets the final chance to prove “if a man wants to be good, he can be good. In Laxmangarh, he doesn’t even have this choice” (262). In an echo of Pinky Madam’s accidental murder, one of Balram’s drivers accidentally kills a young man. By taking responsibility for the crime, Balram highlights the distance between his former employer and himself. Although he has bribed the police and the victim’s brother will never get justice, Balram faces the victim’s family and tries to make amends. He becomes a more conscious version of a businessperson in the emerging economy of India, bridging the Light and the Darkness by renaming himself “Ashok Sharma, North Indian entrepreneur, settled in Bangalore” (258). “Balram” no longer exists, having become a servant “who switched sides” (275). Though conscious of morality, he isn’t traditionally heroic, as his embrace of personal freedom causes harm—such as him shaping young Dharam to resemble him. Having escaped the Rooster Coop, “Ashok” becomes imprisoned in another trap, one recognized by Ashok despite his innate privilege.