Roosters coop

Hello friends, hope you all are doing your best to move forward in your lives. Recently I saw the movie “ The White Tiger”(available on Netflix). An adaptation of Aravind Adiga's 2008 booker prize-winning novel of the same name, the story is about Balram Halwai, who comes from a poor Indian village and uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty

The Rooster Coop is Balram’s metaphor for describing the oppression of India’s poor. Roosters(Chicken) in a coop at the market watch one another slaughtered one by one, but are unable or unwilling to rebel and break out of the coop. Similarly, India’s poor people see one another crushed by the wealthy and powerful, defeated by the staggering inequality of Indian society, but are unable to escape the same fate. In fact, he argues that the poor actively stop each other from escaping, either willfully by cutting each other down, or less purposely but just as powerfully, through a culture that makes them expect such abuse and servitude. The Rooster Coop Balram describes is one that’s “guarded from the inside.”

Balram believes that the traditional Indian family unit keeps the Rooster Coop of social inequality alive. If a servant attempts to escape or disobeys his employer, the superior’s family will punish the servant and which will affect his bread and butter of the whole family. In this way, familial loyalty and love become weaknesses in the context of rooster coop logic. In a country where the rules are stacked so overwhelmingly against the poor, Balram comes to believe that to create a better life and “break out of the Rooster Coop,” one must be willing to sacrifice everything, including attachment to traditional morals and to one’s family.

I want to relate the concept of Rooster’s coop to all of us, especially the aspirants. Let me break down the concept into two fields. Firstly, All of us are bounded by the barriers in our lives (coop), we see in front of us that people are unhappy when they are doing the work they are not enjoying, yet we all are moving in the same directions as others are and this is a never-ending process. There is an internal fear among us all. Doing something different and going against the flow is a big nightmare for us and we are afraid that it will lead to a colossal failure in future.

Secondly, as described in the book, Balram comes to an economically weaker section of society, and yet he excels through his smart and cunning ways to be at the top. Like all others, he could end up like the others if he had fear in himself about the failure.  

The question is can we break free from this rooster coop. Yes, we can but we need bold steps, we need that change, not from outside,  but before that in our own mindset.

We need to stand up in our own lives and try to remove this barrier on our daily basis, we need to stand up and become a White tiger as described by Arvind Adiga in his book.

Try to be different and follow your passion, work hard, and get out of the cage inside of your mind.

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