Chapter 1 - "The First Night"

Summary of the pages 25 - 36:

The last part of the first chapter deals with Balrams father in school, a visitation of a school-inspector and a job for Balram in his father´s tea-shop.

One day after the last occurrences, his father takes Balram to school while dawn, willing to kill the lizard leading his son to faint. He kicks and smashes the lizard till death. If his father stops wheezing, a stench of crushed flesh hangs in the air.

Balram tells of Vijay, the bus conductor, which seems to be a person that made it in life.

He´s, one more time, referring to the poster and talks about the declaration of a bag. You learn something about the colour of the bag, but actually he switches over to the issue of his education, which is not mentioned on that poster. Referring to his education, Balram narrates the situation of an unexpected visit of a school-inspector, which comes to examine the schools inventory and its pupils. After Balram impressed the inspector, he gets a promise of a scholarship with an improved teaching. He also gets the nickname of "The white tiger" in consequence of his wisdom compared to the rest of his classmates.

As his family get a loan for a wedding, Balram soon has to cancel the school and has to start working with coal in his dads tea-shop.

When he´s about 13 years old, he decides to go up to a nearby fort on his own. An awesome cow is to blame that Balram actually views the fort at the age of twenty-four. At last, he describes the view over the village you get while standing on the top of the hill and, surprisingly, he´s telling that about eight months later, he slit Mr. Ashok´s throat.

Personal impressions:

I was a bit astonished about the last scene described in this chapter. The only fact that he slit his employers throat without any relation to the rest he told was very unexpected. Apart from that, I imagined a retro-like, matured fort where Balram stands to have a look at his village.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort

If you take a look at some informations on wikipedia, you´ll notice a picture of the Fort "Krak des Chevalier" on the right hand side, which I already know by the movie "Kingdom of Heaven", maybe you know it as well. :)