Seizing control of the narrative in amusing voiceover, he cuts to Bangalore three years later, admitting right off the bat that despite the multitude of higher powers available to Muslims, Christians and Hindus in his country, he chooses “to play it both ways.” Balram, who now has a shiny new wardrobe and slick ponytail, concedes, “The Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, all at the same time.” The fallout from that accident gradually transforms Balram from a man raised to believe in the honorable destiny of the selfless servant into a self-made businessman lining his pockets in an India of booming economic growth. For once, he’s not in the driver’s seat but a passenger when Pinky ( Priyanka Chopra Jonas), the wife of his American-educated boss Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), takes the wheel in a drunken joy ride and hits a pedestrian in a poor part of the city. Adiga’s novel, with its themes of class struggle and murky morality, is a good fit for the filmmaker, even if the granular literary detail of the material gets him bogged down in a meandering midsection.īahrani starts in Delhi, with the life-changing 2007 mishap that opens the eyes of ingratiating manservant Balram (Gourav). Being respectively Iranian American and Indian, they connected as outsiders before either of them had found his professional destination and have been looking for a joint project for years. The association between Bahrani - who surveyed the American economic divide in 2014’s blistering 99 Homes - and novelist Adiga goes back to their days as classmates at Columbia.

The white tiger 2008