Chapter 1. Part.3 "the first night"

Chapter 1.Part.3

Page. 19-36

The first night

Summary:

Balram remembers.

He tells about the tea house which was the central point of his village and he tells about the landlords.
There were some landlords in Laxmangarh. Every one of them owned parts of the village. The people had to pay them their feed.
The buffalo owned the rickshaws and the roads. Everybody who ran a rickshaws or used the roads had to pay him one third of whatever he earned.

Balrams father ran one of the rickshaws.
He also describes is father as a man of honor and courage and as a man with a plan.
Balram was his plan. He wanted him to finish school and have a career.

One day Balram left school early because he was scared of a lizard in his classroom.
The next day Balrams father went up to the school and he killed the lizard which is against the mural of Lord Buddha surrounded by the gentle animals.
He killed the lizard because he wanted “at least one of his sons to live like a man” and go to school.

Balrams school was in a bad shape. They never got any uniforms or food because the teacher kept everything for himself or he selled it.

One morning there was a surprise inspection in his school.

The suspector asked the students to read a sentence he wrote on the board.
None of them was able to read it.
The teacher told the suspector to ask Balram he is the smartest in class.
He asked him a couple of questions. Balram knew every single one of them.
The suspector called him an “ intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in a crowd of thugs and idiots”. That’s how Balram got his second name “the white tiger”.

The white tiger is the rarest animal in the jungle.
Before the suspector left he promised Balram a scholarship.

Balram tells how they took him out of school. Because his family needed money for his cousins wedding. He had to break coals at the tea shop.

At the last part of the chapter he talks about the Black fort and how he wanted to go up there and go through the entrance way, and into the fort. He tried it a couple of times but he always lost his nerves. The first time he finally went there was when he came back to his village for a short visit.

The last words of Balram in the chapter are” eight month later, I slit Mr. Ashok’s throat.”



Personal part:


Something I found particularly interesting is the discussion on page 24-25.

“ You let Kishna drop out of school, but I told you this fellow had to stay in school. His mother told me he’d be the one who made it through school. His mother said- “

“Oh to tell with his mother!” Kosum shouted “she was a crazy one, and she’s dead, and thank goodness.Now listen to me: let the boy go to the tea shop like Kishna, that’s what I say.

I think it's interesting to see how there is one woman in the family who tells everybody else what they’re supposed to do. She doesn’t seem very nice. She talks about Balrams mother like she would be happy to be rid of her.
They always pretend family would be the most important thing in life but It actually seems like everybody is just thinking about themselves and just pretends it would be for the family.
They take Balram out of school because he needs to earn money for the family but they don’t care about his future.
I thought family would be more important for the people in India.

Links:

ttp://family.jrank.org/pages/859/India-Family-Life-Family-Values.html
http://countrystudies.us/india/83.htm

An Indian family