Do you want to be 'The White Tiger' ?
This week, Netflix brought to us the movie - 'The White Tiger’, based on the novel by Aravind Adiga, with the same name, which depicts the rags-to-rich story of an Indian boy, born in a poverty ridden, small village of India. Now this is not a movie review, but not speaking of the brilliant performances by Adarsh Gourav (Balram Halwai), Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Pinky) and Rajkummar Rao (Ashok) would not let me sleep in the night peacefully. The movie which Netflix characterizes as - Offbeat, Provocative, Gritty, Social Issue drama and Underdog is also Dark and Tragic. And the three main actors have dignified their characters by keeping themselves grounded and accepting the reality of the story. So from here on, we shall not discuss the movie plot, but the question asked in the title of this piece. Also there might be a few spoilers ahead, for references, so I would request you to watch the movie before reading from this point onwards or make peace with the spoilers!
Its not the shackles that hold us but the lack of will power to break the shackles. We have heard a lot of stories to break apart the invisible sackles and the social stigma and grow more into oneself. We prepare for it. We decide we shall break the shackles but we wait for that one lucky and pretty day. And alas!, most of us never made to that day. And we blame the situational irony to hide lack of will power. The story revolves around the dreams of its characters and value of their true nature. All the main characters have different upbringings at different places hugely different from each other. The societal differences made their shackles different. It need not be one fit-for-all solution to delve into the ocean and learn swimming, but every one has to find their ocean. The movie shows two dreams, changing into other duties and way of living. It shows the shackles can't just be broken by money and power. And it shows the will power might come from something tragic. The dream might not be an inherent one, but how one grows into it.
And then comes - "The way for a poor person to reach the top is either by Crime or by Politics"! Now this line might not be a fit-for-all epilogue, but it tells one thing, you need to get your hands dirty. The movie shows Balram killing his master, Ashok, to free himself from slavery, he had thought himself to be destined for quite long, and just before being replaced from his job by another person. We, most of the times, respond to occurence of an even rather than to a possibility of occurence of the event. This sometimes put us at some unprecedented results to be followed by. The connection between the upbringing of a person and his/her response to a situation might be highly correlated but its also the survival instinct that brings the best or worst in us out. And as they said, 'The White Tiger' is born once in many generations, to break the notions set by the society, was actually lesser born than transformed into one.
Well, so coming back to the question... "Do you need to be 'The White Tiger'?" Well the White Tiger is not really a person or a conscience. It's the moment, the moment which makes you realise your worth. And that moment, that very moment is when the shackles are the weakest. Ofcourse I don't agree completely with all the dialogues of the movie, but I do feel strongly, every person has his/her own "White Tiger" moments! And yes they are scarce, but they are not once in a life time moments. So you defintely need to have your 'White Tiger' moment and cut loose of your shackles to achieve what you want for yourself, cause destiny was never written, its a word choosen by cowards for coincidence!
CIAO!
