the letter i wrote to balram n sent to sunshine...

(Miss Sunshine, Career launcher's English faculty has asked us to send her a sort of review cum character sketch cum affect of urbanisation on Balram halwai FROM THE WHITE TIGER by Arvind Adiga. so here's what is crapped...)

From the desk of

Abhishek Kumar

Student of DCE

Somewhere in Delhi

 

To

"The white tiger" Mr. Balram Halwai

Bangalore

 

 

So is murdering your master the last resort to break the rooster coop Mr.Balram halwai?

Ive read your letters. Sure, Mr Jia Bao would be amused. Your letters make a real interesting and humorous read.

You’ve given an unabridged description of darkness and the rooster coop. I know it because I've seen it. I've come from the places you tell about in darkness. And I've seen how it gets you. The moment one takes birth here. Slow yet plenary. The tentacles of its miseries turning to shackles of serfdom. I've seen it.

I unequivocally understand, agree and resent the very existence  rooster coop. Its reality is undisputable.

 

But I resent the way you chose to break free.

 

I understand the realities of India as well. From corrupt politicians and property dealers to dysfunctional state machinery for uplifting the poor. Plights are many. But even with your "half baked" knowledge I know you see and understand that India is progressing. Urbanization has given us its share of positives.

Not all those who try to break free from the rooster and the darkness rot in urban cities. Millions from darkness have seen the light of a future here. Sure many of them work as construction workers and  as drivers and as menial workers but they are not bonded here. To be exploited as you were.

 I know it surely did not make any difference to your father who died in misery waiting for a doctor. But you! Mr. Balram made your way out of darkness; NOT by killing NOT by chance but by your will to progress. You found your way to Delhi and saw the ubiquity of rooster coop.

 

But what I fail to understand is what you did not see, was a better way. You could have left your Ashok the moment he asked you to agree to go to police and accept the crime you never committed.

You could have left him and progressed as a driver.  You could have Joined any travel agency or some call center vehicle. Don’t tell me that’s its impossible to find such job in Delhi.

 

Had you chosen your freedom then, your contemptible yet your own grandmother Kusum and her minions would not have perished, which I presume are dead by now solely because of the way you chose.

 

What you did was to take a shortcut. To kill a man. To commit a thievery.

Ashok was a schmuck. But no one, not you, not stork nor anyone else has  a right to kill.

 

And even as I write this, its tempting to believe that you had no other way and what the end result lead to the freedom of a soul from the coop. But deep down I know and firmly believe that this very acceptance of your way is root of the rooster coop.

 

Should I condone you, why would I bother to say anything about that schmuck Ashok and the stork and the socialist? Why whine about the system?  And ignorance in darkness?

Should I condone you, I must accept chaos. Everyone's right to kill everyone. Sacrifice a human, nay! a few and break free.

The very fact that people like you, me and the ones in darkness condone it makes the rooster coop what it is. I cannot condone you.

 

There is only a right path or a wrong one. And nothing that can be partial or eclipsed. You took the wrong one.

 

Am happy for you Mr. Balram. But I regret how you did it. I disagree.