This is a wickedly funny and satiric tale with a dose of idiosyncrasy of a man who took matters into his own hands to change the course of his life from a life of total servitude to one of being a master of servants.
Balram Halwai was not even named by his parents at birth. He was only known as Munna, meaning boy in Indian, to his family until it was at school where he had to register himself that the teacher gave him a name. It was much later that he got his birth date from a local official in order to facilitate the stealing of his vote.
Balram speaks his story in the form of seven letters to the Premier of China Mr Wen Jiabao who was to come to India to find out the truth about India.
So in these seven letters, Balram has taken upon himself to expose the whole truth about India based on his own rags-to-riches life.
To start of, Balram explains that India was divided in two – the Darkness and the Light – and the Light is always out to screw the Darkness. Those in the Darkness will remain in the Darkness and those in the Light will remain in the Light. He analogues life in the Darkness like chickens in a coop – far too many packed into a tiny space and always knowing that the end is slaughter. The caste system which dominated India in the pass has now reduced simply to “Men with Big Bellies” and “Men with Small Bellies”. That was how life was in India.
It was at a very early age that Balram was convinced that those in the Darkness can come to the Light. It was this believe and maybe also the fact that he was quite gifted in such that he was able to take what little he learnt from eavesdropping and having experiences fall on himself to take them and turn them into something that would better his life.
From being shoved by his family to work as a clean-up boy at a local tea shack at Laxmagarth rather than going to school, he learnt that he can earn so much more by being a driver to a lord at Delhi. So he learnt how to drive and through luck and a little cunning quick thinking and some little white lies, he became the second driver to the family of the Mongoose whose sons were Mr Mukesh and Mr Ashok. Mr Mukesh was set in the ways of his father but Mr Ashok was different. He had just come back from America and his views and values on human rights did not go well with his family. Despite Mr Ashok trying to live based on the values of the West, the ways of India is too big for him and in the end he had to succumb to it. And it is him who succumbed to Balram in the end.
While I was reading this, I managed to catch the award winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire" which was a brilliant movie. No wonder it won so many awards. Anyway, some of the description of India in the book was disturbing in terms of cleanliness and the general ambiance of India but having seen the movie, I now totally believe in how bad it really is.
Being true to myself, I love finding the message behind a story and same goes to this.
What I gathered:
1. It is the people inside our community and society that keep us inside with their taunts and insults; making us feel unwilling and afraid to venture outside where we are.
2. Sometimes with all the best intentions, we cannot live the life that we want because we are bogged down by commitments, loyalty and societal pressures. Should we be loyal to ourselves or should we be loyal to our families? It’s a tug-of-war.
3. The road to the top is never easy and sometimes it takes darkness, immorality and evil, even in the smallest measurements, just to push ourselves up.
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