I love books, I have always wanted to read more but somewhere down the line I felt that I was not the typical book lover, who would read in one go. I have picked up various books, fiction, non-fiction, but surprisingly I find myself unable to finish them. However, this quarantine I finally brought myself to read 2 books that I have always wanted to read and since I had all the time in the world, in addition to the fact that these two books were indescribably interesting, I could finish them in few days' time. So I thought it was important for me to continue this habit and not let it go.
Coming to the 2 books that intrigued me, the first being 'The White Tiger', which surprisingly had a movie made on it this year. I have heard of this book ever since Aravind Adiga won the Man Booker for it. The news was everywhere, at school, at home, that a man from my city had won the most prestigious award in literature. I was probably 8 or 9 years old then and wouldn't know what the book was about, but since I always wanted to read it, I picked it up. If you ask me what I think of it, all I can say is, you wont regret reading this book.
The book in its 300 page run aptly presents the Indian class divide, money and muscle politics, red tapism and feudalism, but you wouldn't expect the horrors to unfold the way it does. The book is on point with its memorable satires and one liners, for instance "Its the century of the brown man and the yellow man and god save everybody else". The book wants you to believe that something about Balram, the protagonist, is different, but doesn't exactly convince you until the very end. And then when he does that one act, the depiction of the end of class struggle, you realise, he truly was the White Tiger, one of a kind. Another interesting point that I have always pondered about is that lions are generally in a troope, that’s why they are called A Pride of Lions, however with tigers, they are often solitary. India was at one time, the only country in the world to have both lions and tigers cohabit together and white tigers are the rarest among them. At one point, I thought to myself if Balram had been this way since forever, but it does appear that way seeing his character unfold towards the end of story. Well, the most important lesson from the story has to be to not trust anyone.
The second book that haunted me for two days after I finished reading it was the Haruki Murakami’s 'Norwegian Wood'. I have heard the Beatles song but I couldn't immediately link the song with the book, because for some reason I didn’t think Murakami would title his book after one of the most underrated Beatles' song. It is also the first time George Harrison used the newly learnt Sitar as one of the instruments in the song. Now that I think about the book, it was simply dark and unexpected.
A lot of things just made me wonder if there really were such people out there, the characters in the book except the main protagonist in my opinion were all twisted, even the most simple character, such as Toru's favorite senior's ex girlfriend committing suicide is hard to comprehend. I don't know if Murakami intentionally wanted all of his characters to be that certain way, but it made me think that if only these characters knew what 'life' means and 'living life' means, their lives wouldn't be that hard. Another point I strongly felt was ‘privilege and entitlement' in some way had a huge impact on most of the characters and why they ended up in a certain way, since such events are definitely not possible or seen in people belonging to the lower middle class family or a low income earning family. The book does an exceptional job in explaining the seriousness of mental health issues and how even when the main female lead got help, she still could not save herself. I surely wouldn't want to go through the experience of reading the book again but all I can say is the way Murakami manages to capture your attention is remarkable.
PC: I don’t own any of these pics. Rightful owner: Amazon
