Balram Halwai divulges all his secrets in a letter he writes over the course of seven nights. His letter includes full descriptions of "the two Indias" and how he has grown from a boyhood in the Darkness to an entrepreneur in the Light. He divulges all of his secrets. Hit and run accidents, blackmail, prostitution, politics, religion, and every other situation that so clearly divides a society.
Balram is born into a famiy so large that he is not even given a name. He is simply called Munna (boy) by his family. He is given the name "The White Tiger" by a government official that visits his school after he is quizzed and is smarter than all of his classmates. He is told that a white tiger is a magical animal that comes around once in a generation.
Balram's stories of Darkness and Light as well as his master/ slave relationships are fluid and relative to where his is and where he is going. He tells of an India that is full of lies and blackmail at every level. That no one is on the straight and narrow.
At the end of the novel, when his letter is complete, his original blessing has become a curse. A White Tiger keeps no friends.
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