The Chennai-born Aravind Adiga is in good company with V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai in the Booker hall of fame. His 'White Tiger' is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity. Isn't it inconceivable that an 'India not shining' tone has got recognition?

On the face of it, the novel is a 250 page letter from one Balram to a visiting Chinese diplomat. It is a powerful study in character that develops through the pages. After all Adiga has had the opportunity to work as a journalist, covering India for the Time Magazine. Naturally, he is familiar with the poor India and the emerging new India. It is the conflict between these two faces of our country that Adiga has so effectively brought out.

The Booker judges rightly said, "In the end, The White Tiger prevailed because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure. The novel undertakes the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader's sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain. The book gains from dealing with pressing social issues and significant global developments with astonishing humour."

Adiga was born in Chennai in 1974. He was staying in his house in Poonamalli High Road. He was a student of Don Bosco till his ninth standard and then he moved to Mangalore. R K Narayan would have been proud of you, Adiga.