Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

By: Chinua Achebe

Summary

The bulk of the novel takes place in Umuofia, a cluster of nine villages on the lower Niger. Umuofia is a powerful clan, skilled in war and with a great population, with proud traditions and advanced social institutions.

Okonkwo has risen from nothing to a high position. Through hard work, he has become a great man among his people. He has taken three wives and his barn is full of yams, the staple crop. He rules his family with an iron fist.

One day, a neighboring clan commits an offense against Umuofia. To avoid war, the offending clan gives Umuofia one virgin and one young boy. The girl is to become the offended party's new wife. The boy, whose name is Ikemefuna, is to be sacrificed, but not immediately. He lives in Umuofia for three years, and during that time he lives under Okonkwo's roof. He becomes like a part of Okonkwo's family. In particular, Nwoye, Okonkwo's oldest son, loves Ikemefuna like a brother. But eventually the Oracle calls for the boy's death, and a group of men take Ikemefuna away to kill him in the forest. Okonkwo, fearful of being perceived as soft-hearted and weak, participates in the boy's death. He does so despite the advice of the clan elders. Nwoye is spiritually broken by the event.

Okonkwo is shaken as well, but he continues with his drive to become a lord of his clan. He is constantly disappointed by Nwoye, but he has great love for his daughter Ezinma, his child by his second wife Ekwefi. Ekwefi has born ten children, but only Ezinma has survived. She loves the girl fiercely. Ezinma is sickly, and sometimes Ekwefi fears that Ezinma, too, will die. Late one night, the powerful Oracle of Umuofia brings Ezinma with her for a spiritual encounter with the earth goddess. Terrified, Ekwefi follows the Oracle at a distance, fearing harm might come to her child. Okonkwo follows, too.

Later, during a funeral for one of the great men of the clan, Okonkwo's gun explodes, killing a boy. In accordance with Umuofia's law, Okonkwo and his family must be exiled for seven years.

Okonkwo bears the exile bitterly. Central to his beliefs is faith that a man masters his own destiny. But the accident and exile are proof that at times man cannot control his own fate, and Okonkwo is forced to start over again without the strength and energy of his youth. He flees with his family to Mbanto, his mother's homeland. There they are received by his mother's family, who treat them generously. His mother's family is headed by Uchendu, Okonkwo's uncle, a generous and wise old man.

During Okonkwo's exile, the white man comes to both Umuofia and Mbanto. The missionaries arrive first, preaching a religion that seems mad to the Igbo people. They win converts, but generally the converts are men of low rank or outcasts. However, with time, the new religion gains momentum. Nwoye becomes a convert. When Okonkwo learns of Nwoye's conversion, he beats the boy. Nwoye leaves home.

Okonkwo returns to Umuofia to find the clan sadly changed. The church has won some converts, some of whom are fanatical and disrespectful of clan custom. Worse, the white man's government has come to Umuofia. The clan is no longer free to judge its own; a District Commissioner judges cases in ignorance. He is backed by armed power.

During a religious gathering, a convert unmasks one of the clan spirits. The offense is grave, and in response the clan decides that the church will no longer be allowed in Umuofia. They tear the building down. Soon afterward, the District Commissioner asks the leaders of the clan, Okonkwo among them, to come see him for a peaceful meeting. The leaders arrive, and are quickly seized. In prison, they are humiliated and beaten, and they are held until the clan pays a heavy fine.

After a release of the men, the clan calls a meeting to decide whether they will fight or try to live peacefully with the whites. Okonkwo wants war. During the meeting, court messengers come to order the men to break up their gathering. The clan meetings are the heart of Umuofia's government; all decisions are reached democratically, and an interference with this institution means the end of the last vestiges of Umuofia's independence. Enraged, Okonkwo kills the court messenger. The other court messengers escape, and because the other people of his clan did not seize them, Okonkwo knows that his people will not choose war. His act of resistance will not be followed by others. Embittered and grieving for the destruction of his people's independence, and fearing the humiliation of dying under white law, Okonkwo returns home and hangs himself.

Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians

By: J.M. Coetzee

Plot:

The story is narrated in the first person by the unnamed magistrate of a small colonial town that exists as the territorial frontier of "the Empire". The Magistrate's rather peaceful existence comes to an end with the Empire's declaration of a state of emergency and with the deployment of the Third Bureau—special forces of the Empire—due to rumours that the area's indigenous people, called "barbarians" by the colonists, might be preparing to attack the town. Consequently, the Third Bureau conducts an expedition into the land beyond the frontier. Led by a sinister Colonel Joll, the Third Bureau captures a number of barbarians, brings them back to town, tortures them, kills some of them, and leaves for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign.

In the meantime, the Magistrate begins to question the legitimacy of imperialism and personally nurses a barbarian girl who was left crippled and partly blinded by the Third Bureau's torturers. The Magistrate has an intimate yet uncertain relationship with the girl. Eventually, he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land, during which they have sex, he succeeds in returning her—finally asking, to no avail, if she will stay with him—and returns to his own town. The Third Bureau soldiers have reappeared there and now arrest the Magistrate for having deserted his post and consorting with "the enemy". Without much possibility of a trial during such emergency circumstances, the Magistrate remains in a locked cellar for an indefinite period, experiencing for the first time a near-complete lack of basic freedoms. He finally acquires a key that allows him to leave the makeshift jail, but finds that he has no place to escape to and only spends his time outside the jail scavenging for scraps of food.

Later, Colonel Joll triumphantly returns from the wilderness with several barbarian captives and makes a public spectacle of their torture. Although the crowd is encouraged to participate in their beatings, the Magistrate bursts onto the scene to stop it, but is subdued. Taking the Magistrate, a group of soldiers hangs him up by his arms, culminating his understanding of imperialistic violence in a personal experience of torture. With the Magistrate's spirit clearly crushed, the soldiers mockingly let him roam freely through the town, knowing he has nowhere to go and no longer poses a threat to their mission. The soldiers, however, begin to flee the town as winter approaches and their campaign against the barbarians collapses. The Magistrate tries to confront Joll on his final return from the wild, but the colonel refuses to speak to him, hastily abandoning the town with the last of the soldiers. The predominant belief in the town is that the barbarians intend to invade soon, and although the soldiers and many civilians have now departed, the Magistrate helps encourage the remaining townspeople to continue their lives and to prepare for the winter. There is no sign of the barbarians by the time the season's first snow falls on the town.

A Grain of Wheat

A Grain of Wheat

By: Ngugi wa Thiong'o

A Grain of Wheat Summary

The events of the novel take place in the days of 1963 before and on the day of Uhuru, Kenya’s liberation from British colonial rule. The novel also features flashbacks of the past.

Mugo, an introverted villager of Thabai, does not want to give a speech at Uhuru, even though town elders ask him to. The village thinks him a hero for his stoicism and courage while he was in detention during Kenya’s State of Emergency, but he labors under a secret: he betrayed their beloved Mau Mau fighter, Kihika. He is restless and can achieve no peace in the village.

Kihika had joined the Mau Mau as a young man and attained fame for capturing the police garrison at Mahee and killing the cruel District Officer (‘DO’) Robson, but after Mugo betrayed him in secret, he was captured and hanged. Those planning Uhuru want to honor him. Mugo had betrayed Kihika because he was unsettled by the young man’s zeal and because of the reward offered for his head, but as soon as he betrayed him he felt remorse. Most people, including General R. and Koina, two Mau Mau soldiers, believe Karanja was the one who betrayed Kihika. They plan on executing him at Uhuru.

Mugo was not the only man from Thabai who spent time in detention camp. Gikonyo, a well-respected businessman and former carpenter, was also taken to a camp. Before the camp he was very much in love with his beautiful wife Mumbi, the sister of Kihika. He had won her love even though many, including Karanja, a friend of Kihika, sought her love as well. He dreamt of her while he was away, and was horrified to find out that Mumbi had borne a child by Karanja while he was gone those years. He does not believe they can ever repair their relationship, and he throws himself into his work.

Karanja works at Githima, a Forest Research Station started by the British. He tries to cultivate the approval of the DO, Roger Thompson, who is stationed there with his wife Margery. Thompson was once destined for an illustrious career, but it was derailed by a hunger strike and violence at Rira, the camp where Mugo was. Now Thompson is at Githima, but is preparing to return to Britain because he does not want to be around when whites are no longer in charge. Karanja did not join the freedom movement but rather started to work for the whiteman, first joining the homeguard and then becoming Chief during the Emergency. This incurred a lot of resentment from people; however, Karanja was simply looking out for himself.

Mumbi, distressed that her husband no longer loves her, comes to see Mugo. She confides in him the story of how she and Gikonyo fell in love, and how sad she was when he was away in camp. She only fell for Karanja’s advances when she heard Gikonyo was returning and became deliriously happy. She begs Mugo to come to Uhuru; on a second visit to him, she begs him again. Mugo becomes violent and says he betrayed Kihika. Mumbi is shocked, but she does not want any more blood shed for her brother.

Uhuru arrives, the day first rainy and then sunny. People are joyful and all of them want to see Mugo, even though he has said he is not coming. There are games and speeches. There is also a spontaneous race, and Gikonyo and Karanja find themselves competing with each other (much as they competed in a race for Mumbi’s attention long ago). They stumble, though, and Gikonyo breaks his arm and has to go to the hospital.

General R. gives a speech instead of Mugo and calls for the traitor to step forward, assuming it will be Karanja. Mugo comes out of the crowd and says it is he who did it; he feels a sense of freedom at first, quickly followed by terror. No one accosts him, and the confused crowd parts and lets him go.

Later, General R. and Koina come to arrest him and tell him he will have a private trial. Mugo makes peace with this, deciding he will accept his punishment.

Some of the village elders feel that Uhuru did not go well, and that there is something wrong.

Karanja heads back to Githima. He is unhappy and considers killing himself in front of a train. Ultimately, he decides against this.

Gikonyo wakes in the hospital and finds himself ready to make amends with Mumbi. When she visits him, he tells her he is ready to speak of the child he has assiduously ignored since he came back. She tells him it must wait until they can have a serious and heartfelt discussion of their wants and needs. He is happy, and plans to carve a stool featuring an image of a pregnant Mumbi.

The Swamp Dwellers

The Swamp Dwellers

By: Wole Soyinka

About Play

The Swamp Dwellers is a novel written by Soyinka in which he has depicted the real picture of two sides of Modernity vs. tradition. The play is about Yoruba culture in which Makuri and Alu they are living and waiting for their son whose name is Awuchike. Soyinka has presented Yoruba culture which is full of swamp because of food in the village. And they are suffering because of plenty of water and Beggar who comes from Bhukanji and over there they were suffering because of scarcity of water.

Play starts with the description of village which shows traditional side of the play.“A village in the swamps. Frogs rain and other noises. The scan is a hut on stilts, built on one of the scattered semifirm island in the swamp. The walls are marsh stakes plaited with hump ropes. Near the left down stage are the baskets he makes from the rushes which are strewn in front of him.”

These all lines show that they are traditional people doing work but which can’t give them food. At some extent tradition is good because you have your own belief and way of looking towards life but not accepting change in life is bad. Too much exaggeration is bad for your life which is shown through the play. Igwezu went into city to earn more in life but he can’t accept the reality of life which is in city. There is starvation for shelter in city, so cold sophisticated life than village so we can say that Igwezu and Awuchike both are suffering because of their acceptance or to much exaggeration of their life. There is Constance struggle or conflict between the old and new ways of life in Africa. There is the dialogue that old and children are living in village. It means that yougs are living in city.

Focuses on the struggles between the old and the new ways of life in Africa:

The play is about struggle between human being and the unfavorable force of the Nature. Use of River, Serpent, Swamp and use of city life these are polar oppositions in the play. From the beginning of the play they are talking about death of his son but clearly mention that really he is dead or not. Swamp is chaotic and they are living in the chaos.

The Swamp Dwellers focuses on the struggle between the old and the new ways of life in Africa. It also gives us a picture of the cohesion that existed between the individual and southern Nigerian society. The conflict between tradition and modernity is also reflected in the play. The play mirrors the socio-cultural pattern, the pang and the sufferings of the swamp dwellers and underlines the need for absorbing new ideas. The struggle between human beings and unfavourable forces of nature is also captured in the play. Soyinka presents us the picture of modern Africa where the wind of change started blowing.

 The Swamp Dwellers is a close study of the pattern of life in the isolated hamlets of the African countryside as well as an existential study of the simple folk who face rigours of life without any hope or succour. Soyinka tears apart social injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny. The Swamp Dwellers expresses the necessity for a balance between the old and the new. Soyinka is not for excessive glorification of the past. In the play we see Soyinka’s crusade against authoritarianism, complacency and self delusion. Besides, in The Swamp Dwellers Soyinka satirises the betrayal of vocation for the attraction and power in one form or another.

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending: Title
                                                -Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending is about the person’s memory of youthful days. The novella is divided into two divisions. The divisions are entitled as Part-1 and Part-2.The first part begins in the 1960s.It begins with four intellectually arrogant school friends. We are told two friends out of four. The first one is Tony Webster who is the narrator of the story and the second one is Adrian the most talented and intelligent among four. When they were in the last year of the college, a boy killed himself after getting a girl pregnant.

Thus, The Sense of an Ending is not just person’s story; it is a story of a network of relationships between Tony Webster and Veronica but whose ending is this! That we cannot understand.

The title deals with the entire book as the book opens; Tony is spending a good deal of his time thinking about his relationship with his school friend Adrian Finn, who committed suicide as a young man. Tony is Pooterishly content with his life and mediocrity, which he contrasts with Finn's burning and forensic intelligence. Even as a schoolboy, Finn demonstrated a precocious understanding of philosophy and history. He said that "he hates the way the English have of not being serious about being serious" – words quoted twice in the novel. This is a Barnesian theme too, lying behind much of his work, fiction and nonfiction, even when it is at its most playful.

Tony attended school in the 1960s, and many of his memories centre on him and his friends grappling with the new sexual freedoms. Not that these always arrived in their neck of the woods quite in time: one of their schoolmates killed himself after getting a girl pregnant. At the end of their school careers, Adrian Finn goes to Cambridge and Tony to Bristol, where he meets Veronica Ford. Veronica invites him to stay for a few days with her family in Chislehurst, and he feels himself to have been humiliated by her disdainful father and supercilious brother, both of whom are intimidatingly posh. But Veronica's mother, Sarah, takes to him, and even appears to offer him a mysterious warning about her daughter.

Tony Webster is in his mid-sixties when he receives a letter from a lawyer with an unusual bequest from the mother of Veronica, an ex-girlfriend of his from 40 years before. He is left some money and the diary of his old school chum Adrian. Veronica makes it impossible for Tony to acquire the diary so what follows is Tony's recollection of that period of his life.

          In the novel The Sense of an Ending the title plays vital role as the title itself suggests that the sense of an ending means here the question arises in our mind that whose ending is this? and secondly we can also say that according to the sense an individual can interpret the ending of this novel because here in the novel Julian Barnes has left us in thinking at the end of the novel therefore as per my reading it can be said that the ending of the novel is not clearly given or Barnes has deliberately done this to make reader thinking.

Here it can be also interpreted that Tony Webster is also in his ending means he is very much near to his end so he thinks about his past and memories that he had spent in his college days with his friends and he remembers all these obviously because at the stage of 60s an individual person also want his/her youthful days as in the novel The Old man and the Sea the central character of it feels nostalgic about his past therefore he remembers his days when he was young and also craves for playing with lion and all other things.

so far as my understanding is concerned in other words title of the novel can also be interpreted or if we look in depth of the novel then it can also be said that the end is not the ending of tony but rather it is taking new shape or reaching to the new understanding and newer perspective in self not outside.

In this novel there are ending of two lives such as Robson and Adrian as they commit suicide but in the first part He ends his life after getting a girl pregnant therefore his friends feel jealousy for him 

So Tony Webster says about his friend, who committed suicide when they were at university.

At the end of the book, Tony feels even more guilt about sending his hateful letter to Adrian as he imagines that his letter could have practically driven Adrian into the arms of Veronica’s mother setting off the chain of events that lead to Adrian’s suicide.  You might think that Tony is being overly hard on himself because who would take a letter of passionate anger so seriously?  However, there are some reasons to think that the letter could have really had a significant impact.  First, Tony wrote a quick card to Adrian when he received Adrian’s letter and didn’t write his really nasty letter until weeks later after he had a lot of time to think it over so Adrian may have thought that the letter was not just written in a time of extreme emotion. 

Da vinci code

Da vinci code

By: Dan Brown

Summary

Louvre curator and Priory of Sion grand master Jacques Saunière is fatally shot one night at the museum by an albino Catholic monk named Silas, who is working on behalf of someone he knows only as the Teacher, who wishes to discover the location of the "keystone," an item crucial to the search for the Holy Grail. After Saunière's body is discovered in the pose of the Vitruvian Man, the police summon Harvard professor Robert Langdon, who is in town on business. Police captain Bezu Fache tells him that he was summoned to help the police decode the cryptic message Saunière left during the final minutes of his life. The message includes a Fibonacci sequence out of order. Langdon explains to Fache that Saunière was a leading authority on the subject of goddess artwork and that the pentacle Saunière drew on his chest in his own blood represents an allusion to the goddess and not devil worship, as Fache thinks.

Sophie Neveu, a police cryptographer, secretly explains to Langdon that she is Saunière's estranged granddaughter, and that Fache thinks Langdon is the murderer because the last line in her grandfather's message meant for Sophie said "P.S. Find Robert Langdon," which Fache had erased prior to Langdon's arrival. Neveu is troubled by memories of her grandfather's involvement in a secret pagan group. However, she understands that her grandfather intended Langdon to decipher the code, which leads them to a safe deposit box at the Paris branch of the Depository Bank of Zurich. Neveu and Langdon escape from the police and visit the bank. In the safe deposit box they find the keystone: a cryptex, a cylindrical, hand-held vault with five concentric, rotating dials labeled with letters. When these are lined up correctly, they unlock the device. If the cryptex is forced open, an enclosed vial of vinegar breaks and dissolves the message inside the cryptex, which was written on papyrus. The box containing the cryptex contains clues to its password.

Langdon and Neveu take the keystone to the home of Langdon's friend, Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on the Holy Grail, the legend of which is heavily connected to the Priory. There, Teabing explains that the Grail is not a cup, but a tomb containing the bones of Mary Magdalene. The trio then flees the country on Teabing's private plane, on which they conclude that the proper combination of letters spell out Neveu's given name, Sofia. Opening the cryptex, they discover a smaller cryptex inside it, along with another riddle that ultimately leads the group to the tomb of Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.

During the flight to Britain, Neveu reveals the source of her estrangement from her grandfather ten years earlier. Arriving home unexpectedly from university, Neveu secretly witnesses a spring fertility rite conducted in the secret basement of her grandfather's country estate. From her hiding place, she is shocked to see her grandfather with a woman at the center of a ritual attended by men and women who are wearing masks and chanting praise to the goddess. She flees the house and breaks off all contact with Saunière. Langdon explains that what she witnessed was an ancient ceremony known as Hieros gamos or "sacred marriage."

By the time they arrive at Westminster Abbey, Teabing is revealed to be the Teacher for whom Silas is working. Teabing wishes to use the Holy Grail, which he believes is a series of documents establishing that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and bore children, in order to ruin the Vatican. He compels Langdon at gunpoint to solve the second cryptex's password, which Langdon realizes is "apple." Langdon secretly opens the cryptex and removes its contents before tossing the empty cryptex in the air. Teabing is arrested by Fache, who by now realizes that Langdon is innocent. Bishop Aringarosa, head of religious sect Opus Dei and Silas' mentor, realizing that Silas has been used to murder innocent people, rushes to help the police find him. When the police find Silas hiding in an Opus Dei Center, he assumes that they are there to kill him and he rushes out, accidentally shooting Bishop Aringarosa. Bishop Aringarosa survives but is informed that Silas was found dead later from a gunshot wound.

The final message inside the second keystone leads Neveu and Langdon to Rosslyn Chapel, whose docent turns out to be Neveu's long-lost brother, whom Neveu had been told died as a child in the car accident that killed her parents. The guardian of Rosslyn Chapel, Marie Chauvel Saint Clair, is Neveu's long-lost grandmother. It is revealed that Neveu and her brother are descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. The Priory of Sion hid her identity to protect her from possible threats to her life.

The real meaning of the last message is that the Grail is buried beneath the small pyramid directly below the inverted glass pyramid of the Louvre. It also lies beneath the "Rose Line," an allusion to "Rosslyn." Langdon figures out this final piece to the puzzle in the last pages of the book but he does not appear inclined to tell anyone about this. He follows the Rose Line to La Pyramide Inversée, where he kneels before the hidden sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, as the Templar knights did before him.

The White Tiger

The White Tiger

By: Arvind Adiga’s

Summary

The entire novel is narrated through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India.

Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished background, born in the village of Laxmangarh. Early on, he describes his basic story: he transcended his humble beginnings to become a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore, largely through the murder Mr. Ashok, who had been his employer. Balram also makes clear that because of the murder, it is likely that his own family has been massacred in retribution.

In Laxmangarh, Balram was raised in a large, poor family from the Halwai caste, a caste that indicates sweet-makers. The village is dominated and oppressed by the “Four Animals,” four landlords known as the Wild Boar, the Stork, the Buffalo, and the Raven. Balram's father is a struggling rickshaw driver, and his mother died when he is young. The alpha figure of his family was his pushy grandmother, Kusum.

Balram was initially referred to simply as “Munna,” meaning “boy," since his family had not bothered to name him. He did not have another name until his schoolteacher dubbed him Balram. The boy proved himself intelligent and talented, and was praised one day as a rare “White Tiger” by a visiting school inspector. Unfortunately, Balram was removed from school after only a few years, to work in a tea shop with his brother, Kishan. There, he furthered his education by eavesdropping on the conversations of shop customers.

Balram feels that there are two Indias: the impoverished “Darkness” of the rural inner continent, and the “Light” of urban coastal India. A mechanism that he dubs the “Rooster Coop” traps the Indian underclass in a perpetual state of servitude. It involves both deliberate methods used by the upper class and a mentality enforced by the underclass on itself.

Balram’s father died from tuberculosis in a decrepit village hospital, where no doctors were present due to abundant corruption within all the government institutions in the Darkness. After the father’s death, Kishan got married and moved with Balram to the city of Dhanbad to work. There, Balram decided to become a chauffeur, and raised money to take driving lessons from a taxi driver.

Once trained, Balram was hired by the Stork - whom he crossed path with coincidentally - as a chauffeur for his sons, Mushek Sir (known as the Mongoose) and Mr. Ashok. Officially, Balram was the “second driver,” driving the Maruti Suzuki, while another servant, Ram Persad, drove the more desirable Honda City.

As a driver in the Stork’s household, Balram lived a stable and satisfactory life. He wore a uniform and slept in a covered room which he shared with Ram Persad. When Ashok and his wife, Pinky Madam, decided to visit Laxmangarh one day, Balram drove them there, and thus had a chance to visit his family. They were proud of his accomplishments, but Kusum pressured him to get married, which angered him since that would cede what he saw as his upward mobility. He stormed out of the house and climbed to the Black Fort above the village, spitting from there down upon the view of Laxmangarh far below.

Balram describes at length the corrupt nature of politics in the Darkness. A politician known as the Great Socialist controls the Darkness through election fraud. The Stork’s family, involved in shady business dealings in the coal industry, must regularly bribe the Great Socialist to ensure their success.

As part of these political maneuverings, Ashok and Pinky Madam made plans to go to Delhi for three months. When Balram learned that only one driver would be brought with them, he spied on Ram Persad to discover that the man was secretly a Muslim who had lied about his identity to gain employment. Once his secret was out, Ram Persad left, and Balram was brought to Delhi as the driver of the Honda City.

Balram considers Delhi to be a crazy city, rife with traffic jams and pollution, and with illogically numbered houses and circuitous streets that are difficult to navigate. Ashok and Pinky Madam rented an apartment in Gurgaon, the most American part of the city, since Pinky Madam hated India and missed New York. Balram lived in the servant’s quarters in the basement of the building. Teased and ostracized by the other servants, he nevertheless found a mentor in a fellow driver he refers to as Vitiligo-Lips, since the pigment of the man's lips is affected by the skin condition vitiligo. To escape the teasing, Balram chose to live in a tiny, decrepit room swarming with cockroaches.

After a while, the Mongoose returned to Dhanbad, leaving Ashok as Balram’s sole master in Delhi. One night, a drunk Pinky Madam insisted on driving the car, and she accidentally killed a child in a hit-and-run. The next morning, the Mongoose arrived and announced that Balram would confess to the crime, and serve jail time on Pinky Madam’s behalf. Balram was terrified by the prospect of going to jail, but was relieved when the Stork arrived and casually mentioned that they had gotten out of the incident through their police connections.

During this time, Balram's political consciousness grows more intense, and his resentment towards the upper class more violent. Much of the novel traces his growth from a meek peasant to an inflamed individual capable of murder in pursuit of his own success.

A few days later, Pinky Madam found Balram and asked him to drive her to the airport. With this abrupt departure, she ended her marriage to Ashok. When Ashok discovered that Balram took her to the airport without informing him, he furiously attacked the driver, who defended himself by kicking Ashok in the chest.

Dealing with the divorce, Ashok began to live a debauched lifestyle, frequently getting drunk and going out to clubs, while Balram cared for him like a wife. Ashok rekindled a relationship with his former lover, Ms. Uma. Their relationship grew more serious, but he remained anxious about telling his family about her. Meanwhile, on his family's behalf, Ashok frequently collected large sums of money in a red bag, using it to bribe government ministers.

Balram’s family sent a young male relative, Dharam, for Balram to care for. Dharam is a sweet and obedient companion. One day, Balram took Dharam to the zoo, where Balram observed a white tiger in a cage.

Finally deciding to break free of the Rooster Coop, Balram fashioned a weapon from a broken whiskey bottle, and lured Ashok from the car. He rammed the bottle into Ashok’s skull, and then stabbed him in the neck, killing him. He stole the red bag, filled with 700,000 rupees, and escaped with Dharam to Bangalore. In revenge for his actions, the Stork’s family likely murdered all of Balram’s family, though Balram remains unsure of their exact fate. Nevertheless, he chose to commit the murder knowing this was a likely outcome.

In Bangalore, Balram found great success. He launched a taxi service for call center workers, which he calls White Tiger Technology Drivers. By bribing the police, Balram was able to gain influence and make his business successful. Demonstrating how far he has come, he is able to cover up a fatal accident through his connection to the authorities. He considers himself to be a quintessential entrepreneurial success story that represents the future of India, and presents himself as such to the Premier.