Servant Relationship In White Tiger

How do a master and a servant form a relationship? Is it through respect? Is it through hatred? Is it through a constant power struggle? In White Tiger this relationships is played out through Bal Ram and Ashok, a servant and a master with a complicated history. We see the relationship played out through the eyes of the servant, and that lends an interesting perspective into the normalcy of servants and masters in India and how this was both a typical, and an unusual, master servant relationship.

The relationship starts off with admiration and that fuels into love. The first time Bal Ram sees Ashok he notices how strikingly different he is than his father. Ashok seems to treat him as a person. He respects him and trusts him with personal information

Bal Ram goes through a few episodes that reveal to him that Ashok is nothing special, and that as he has stayed longer in India, Ashok has morphed into a typical master. It started with little things, like Ashok sleeping with an old girlfriend after his wife Pinky Madame left. Bal Ram felt this was a weak move on his master’s part, that Ashok was wallowing in self pity and Bal Ram looked down on him because of it. This feeling grew when Ashok yelled at Bal Ram for giving a beggar a rupee. Bal Ram actually states that in that moment, he realized Ashok was just like every other master. All he cared about was money and power, and although Bal Ram thought they had a strong relationship, it was slipping and crashing fast. The string that broke the camel’s back is when Ashok hired a new driver. Bal Ram felt that he was being replaced and that he was going to lose his job. After this, everything Ashok did was horrible in the eyes of Bal Ram. This tipping point is when a switch went off in Bal Ram’s body and he knew he needed to find a way out of this situation. He started cheating Ashok little by little and finding ways to get money and cheat others. Bal Ram works up enough steam towards Ashok to actually kill him, take his money, and move to the

However, it seems that in the acts that followed the murder is what shaped how Bal Ram truly felt about Ashok. First off, he went back to get his cousin before the family found out Ashok was dead. This shows that Bal Ram cared about someone, even though he always said he was just looking out for himself. It was through Ashok caring and looking out for him that I think Bal Ram felt the need to go back and save his cousin. Another interesting twist is that Bal Ram actually took Ashok’s name whe he moved to the city. He killed a man, but he still took his name. This is interesting to dissect. It shows there was a level of love in their relationship. Bal Ram wanted Ashok’s name to live on, and he felt the best way to honor the man who started him on the right path was by taking his name. Another possibility is that Bal Ram wanted to be better than Ashok and not just get stuck in the master and servant relationship Ashok was stuck in. Thus he took the name to make it better and show that there is good in the world when you are a master and your name is Ashok. And even though Bal Ram condemned much of Ashok’s behavior in the latter part of the novel, I think there was still a level of admiration amidst the hatred. Bal Ram wanted to emulate, almost mimic, the ways of Ashok. He tried to sleep with the same women, he tried to make money by being nice to people higher up than him. Most likely in the city