Page 1-36: "The First Night"

Summary:
The story starts with Balram "Munna" Halwai (the story is told in his view) writing a letter to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, because of Jiabao's visiting India, where Balram is living. Balram is a entrepreneur, who hasn't graduated school and raised up in a poor environment, but still had a successful career.
In the radio it says: "Mr.Jiabao... wants to know the truth about Bangalore." and meet some entrepreneurs to hear their story of success. Balram answers that with saying, that he knows very much about that town and as said, he is also an successful entrepreneur. 
He starts his own story, with telling the Premier about a poster the police made for him. On the poster, it basically reads some rarely precise facts (e.g. age: 25-35) about him and that he is searched for questioning.
Balram gets his real name from his school teacher, because his family only named him Munna (translated as "boy").
He is born in Laxmangarh and lives at the time he writes the letter in Bangalore. He describes his birth town as laid in the "Darkness". India is devided into two parts:
 India of Light: Places near the ocean which are well off.
 India of Darkness: Everywhere the Ganga (as described: the river of death) flows is called the Darkness.
Balram remembers one day, when he went to the Ganga for burrying his mother on the river and she was set on fire and absorbed by black mud. In this moment, he fainted for the first time.

Balram raises up in the city of Laxmangarh (near Delhi, marked on the map as A). He describes the area as poor with defunctional electricity poles, broken water taps and children being too lean and short for their age. The most important member of his family is the water buffalo, because if she's is very fat, the family can get her milk and sell it to have a little more money. The buffalo gets the most of their food, that's why it is the fattest family member.
The women and the men sleep in different corners of the family's house.
Balram's father, Vikram Halwai, has to work very hard as a rickshaw puller near a tea shop, where the buses stop and the rickshaw pullers are trying to get some work. The area around Laxmangarh belongs to four landlords (The Stork owns the river, the Wild Boar owns the good aricultural land, the Raven.owns the worst land and the Buffalo who owns the streets containing the rickshaws). If one wants earn something on their land, he has to pay taxes like fishs, goats or money.
Each year, all the men go to Delhi, Calcutta and Dhanbad and try to earn some money. They come back a month before the rains to work for the landlords as soon as it begins raining, but his father chooses not to work for them. All his hopes are lying in Munna, that's why he wants him to go to school. Balram's scared of lizards and when he saw one at school, his father has to kill it for making Balram go back to school.
His schoolteacher steals every school fund they get from the governement. One day a inspector comes to his school and finds out, that Balram is a very intelligent boy and wants to send him a scholarship and to go to a better school. He thinks Munna is like a white tiger, because he grades him much higher than the other kids.

The inspector says: ("The white tiger") "That's what you are in this jungle."

Short after that things turned bad because a cousin-sister of him married and his family have to give dowries and spend a expensive wedding which ruins them financially. The family takes a big loan from the Stork and as he wants to have his money back, Balram is taken out of school by his brother Kishan to work with him. They have to work in the tea shop by breaking coals or wiping the tables.
In the end of this chapter Balram gives a reason for the police to search for him with the poster: he says he killed his last employer Mr. Ashok by slitting his throat.


My opinion:
1. The reason for the books name is what the inspector calls Balram. He says he is "the white tiger in this jungle". White tigers are very seldom and that is what makes Balram so important: he isn't one in a million, but the one in a million. This is what might makes the book very interesting.


Links:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganga (Some more information about the ganga including a map of the course)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry (A page with information about dowries)