You know the feeling when something sticky - like e.g. glue left over when you have pealed the strip off something – is clinging to your palm and you just can’t get rid of it, no matter what you do? I am feeling exactly like that after reading “The White Tiger”.

I am ashamed to admit it but there is an element of snobbishness in this. Though I wasn’t born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, I was blessed enough to be born in an upper middle class family – one that doesn’t frown upon a girl child, if I may add. So make it doubly blessed! My education, though not an ivy-leagued one, was in some of the best schools and colleges in Mumbai. So I don’t have any first-hand experience of the kind of life that driver Balram has led in what he calls the Darkness. Touch Wood! Therefore, like many of my class, I have sympathy but not any real understanding of his life and struggles.

This sympathy is exactly like that glue. There are moments, not many I must admit, when I am reminded of his city of identical shops selling stale identical stuff, where children run amok, where water buffaloes occupy prime space in front of the homes and where people don’t have a choice but to accept their lot in life. There are moments too, when I think about how corruption is threatening to be part of our normal lives.

There are several ways to get the actual glue off my palms – soap bars, liquid hand wash or clawing it away using nails as the last resort. But there is no way I can get rid of this sick helpless feeling that seems to have clung to my very soul – despite my stance that the circumstances cannot be the justification for Balram to kill his employer. I cannot do anything to improve the lives of so many who need help and I can do zilch to stem the rot of corruption that’s eating away India’s future. And you know what the worst part of this all is? I cannot get rid of this feeling that it is people like me and you who should do something about it. I cannot say it’s the politicians’ job and shrug it all away. That’s making me mad as hell.

Try as I might, I simply cannot get this glue off me :-(