With the world embracing Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, it’s perhaps become “safe” to embrace future narratives that display a side of India without the feel good dance number finale. Comparisons between the Oscar best Picture winner and everything that comes after it is inevitable – but My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid scribe Hanif Kureishi’s take on Aravind Adiga’s novel The White Tiger should be a dark one that has extreme poverty and outlandish wealth of India in clear view.
The novel is told by the POV of Balram Halwai – the smartest boy in his village, a community deep in the “Darkness” of rural India. Balram is the son of a rickshaw-puller; his family is too poor for him to be able to finish school, and instead he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. Through these experiences, Balram learns much about the world and later states that the streets of India provided him with all the education he needed. Later, Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centers, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India.
Smuggler Films’ Patrick Milling Smith and John N. Hart will produce the film alongside Jolyon Symonds for Ascension Entertainment.
