The Curious Case of a White Tiger

In an unprecedented turn of events, just days after the “Crush world by bare hands” Group had demagnetized irony and unanimously decided to chicken out of the chicken business on ethical grounds; it is speculated that the multi gazillion worth conglomerate has decided to start a new bookstore chain. However, few trade analysts believe there is something sinister in the air about the deal not unlike an Agatha Christie novel.

The story began five days ago when suddenly bookstores all over India started getting enquires for bulk purchase of one book viz The White Tiger. The inquiries came also with a big bonus which required them to sign a “Non-Disclosure Agreement”, also known as a “Gag Order”. The move seemed to work and the book became unavailable in any of the stores as of three days ago.

The absence of the booker prize winner confused and irritated some Aravind Adiga enthusiasts who had loved the book cover & blurbs by Senior Citizen Hipsters like Salman Rushdie, Suhel Seth & Alex Padamsee. They decided to confront the lack of this monumental piece of literature with management of a popular book store which caters to a “Cross” section of society. While the upper management was extremely tight lipped about the whole affair, a store clerk Ishaan, who is not supposed to talk to media but did anyway because he found a sweeter deal at McDonalds last week and is on three weeks notice period, said, “There was a deal”.

While Ishaan did not know anything other than the presence of a deal, that was more than enough to start a swash buckling media frenzy across the nation; other than of course the North East, because they don’t get in frenzy like “Real Indians”. They just calmly Re-elect Congress.

A then unknown and now untraceable news agency called “Sansani Nagin” arranged a Sting Operation of multiple bookstore managers, all of whom discovered that it was in fact a sting operation. But one of them told the truth about the deal anyway because he thought that it may make their resume more attractive for a thriller book he was pitching for publishing.

 

Excerpts of the sting operation

SN Correspondent	:	Haan, bhai ab fatak se bata ki manjhla kya hai?
Book Store Manager	:	I am writing this new book called…
SN Correspondent	:	Abe taklu, woh nahi. White Tiger ke bare mein.
Book Store Manager	:	Oh some corporate guys came in and just gaged and strong muscled us into selling them all the copies. It exactly like a chapter in my book…
SN Correspondent	:	Abe par woh C*****a tha kon?
Book Store Manager	:	Oh they routed the transaction through some company in Mauritius but the enquiries had come from a well known corporate domain name. Corporate espionage is so fun. I have this character…

Unfortunately the correspondent could extract the name after about an hour into the conversation and we just don’t have that kind of word limit privilege to continue. To be fair the manager’s book sounds a lot like Vivek Oberoi’s Prince, so you’re not missing anything interesting. We assure our readers once again that we have a Zero Boredom Tolerance policy. Please read on.

After a much edited version of the Sting Operation video was available and a suitable animation and background sound was assembled; the story of the conglomerate buying books in bulk spread like wild fire and the stock market gave a thumbs up to the deal by jumping to a three minute high after which it closed for the week. The market had assumed that similar purchase of other books would follow suit but NO. There were no sly enquiries, no price quotes, no activity of any kind. “WTF”, said many stock traders to each other in a Whatsapp frenzy. 

As the Khobragade-gate became way too complicated to pronounce, media diverted its attention to this issue and angrily proclaimed – The Nation Wants To Know. In a one word press release, the PR department of the company asked everybody to (As the word cannot be published the general summary is as follows) not to enquire into its affairs as they are not any of their concern.

Some independent voices in the country who claim to have actually read the book in question are proposing a conspiracy theory that involves the company protecting some very high placed heavyweights behind the curtain.

According to them, the book has a chapter in which the some poor guy is asked to take the blame for an accident committed by his masters. The theory then recalls a similar incident taking place involving the company which curiously went underreported. The White Tiger Truthists or Whigerists as they call themselves suggest that the move to hijack the book is to avoid people to make the connection and land into an ironical situation. When asked that wouldn’t this be an even more ironical situation than the earlier one, the dude just flipped and called us black chickens, meaning of which is left to speculation.

The word on virtual street has spread like Modiwave <add natural disaster>, some even arranging candle march on Facebook others filing online petitions. One question still remains hasn’t anyone heard of pirated books.

The Aston Martin killed only one thing - journalism.
— some-a-n (@NotSoSnob) December 26, 2013