That’s because we have the coop.
Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent—as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way—to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.
You’ll have to come here and see it for yourself to believe it. Every day millions wake up at dawn—stand in dirty, crowded buses—get off at their masters’ posh houses—and then clean the floors, wash the dishes, weed the garden, feed their children, press their feet—all for a pittance. I will never envy the rich of America or England, Mr. Jiabao: they have no servants there. They cannot even begin to understand what a good life is.
Now, a thinking man like you, Mr. Premier, must ask two questions.
Why does the Rooster Coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively?
Secondly, can a man break out of the coop? What if one day, for instance, a driver took his employer’s money and ran? What would his life be like?
I will answer both for you, sir.
The answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime minister will hand over to you, the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop.
The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed—hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters—can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.
It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.
To go back to my story.
There is a sign in the National Zoo in New Delhi, near the cage with the white tiger, which says: Imagine yourself in the cage.
When I saw that sign, I thought, I can do that—I can do that with no trouble at all.
For a whole day I was down there in my dingy room, my legs pulled up to my chest, sitting inside that mosquito net, too frightened to leave the room. No one asked me to drive the car. No one came down to see me.
My life had been written away. I was to go to jail for a killing I had not done. I was in terror, and yet not once did the thought of running away cross my mind. Not once did the thought, I’ll tell the judge the truth, cross my mind. I was trapped in the Rooster Coop.
What would jail be like? That was all I could think about. What kinds of strategies would I follow to escape the big, hairy, dirty men I would find in there?
I remembered a story from Murder Weekly in which a man sent to jail pretended to have AIDS so that no one would bugger him. Where was that copy of the magazine—if only I had it with me now, I could copy his exact words, his exact gestures! But if I said I had AIDS, would they assume I was a professional bugger—and bugger me even more?
I was trapped. Through the perforations of my net, I sat staring at the impressions of the anonymous hand that had applied the white plaster to the walls of the room.
“Country-Mouse!”
Vitiligo-Lips had come to the threshold of my room.
“Your boss is ringing the bell like crazy.”
I put my head on the pillow.
He came into the room and pressed his black face and pink lips against the net. “Country-Mouse, are you ill? Is it typhoid? Cholera? Dengue?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
“Good to hear that.”
With a big smile of his diseased lips, he left.
I went up like a man to his hanging—up the stairs, and into the apartment building, and then up the elevator to the thirteenth floor.
The Mongoose opened the door. There was no smile on his face this time—not a hint of what he had planned for me.
“You took your time coming. Father is here. He wants to have a word with you.”
My heart raced. The Stork was here! He would save me! He wasn’t useless, like his two sons. He was an old-fashioned master. He knew he had to protect his servants.
He was on the sofa, with his pale legs stretched out. As soon as he saw me his face broke open in a big smile, and I thought, He’s smiling because he’s saved me! But the old landlord wasn’t thinking of me at all. Oh, no, he was thinking of things far more important than my life. He pointed to those two important things.
“Aah, Balram, my feet really need a good massage. It was a long trip by train.”
My hand shook as it turned on the hot-water faucet in the bathroom. The water hit the bottom of the bucket and splashed all over my legs, and when I looked down I saw that they were almost rattling. A trickle of urine was running down them.
A minute later, a big smile on my face, I came to where the Stork was sitting and placed the bucket of hot water near him.
“Put your feet in, sir.”
“Oh,” he said, and closed his eyes; his lips parted and he began to make little moans, sir, and the sound of those moans drove me to press his feet harder and harder; my body began rocking as I did so and my head knocked the sides of his knees.
The Mongoose and Mr. Ashok were sitting in front of a TV screen, playing a computer game together.
The door to the bedroom opened, and Pinky Madam came out. She had no makeup on, and her face was a mess—black skin under her eyes, lines on her forehead. The moment she saw me, she got excited.
“Have you people told the driver?”
The Stork said nothing. Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose kept playing the game. “Has no one told him? What a fucking joke! He’s the one who was going to go to jail!”
Mr. Ashok said, “I suppose we should tell him.” He looked at his brother, who kept his eyes on the TV screen.
The Mongoose said, “Fine.”
Mr. Ashok turned to me.
“We have a contact in the police—he’s told us that no one has reported seeing the accident. So your help won’t be needed, Balram.”
I felt such tremendous relief that I moved my hands abruptly, and the bucket of warm water spilled over, and then I scrambled to put the bucket upright. The Stork opened his eyes, smacked me on the head with his hand, and then closed his eyes.
Pinky Madam watched; her face changed. She ran into her room and slammed the door. (Who would have thought, Mr. Jiabao, that of this whole family, the lady with the short skirt would be the one with a conscience?)
The Stork watched her go into her room and said, “She’s gone crazy, that woman. Wanting to find the family of the child and give them compensation—craziness. As if we were all murderers here.” He looked sternly at Mr. Ashok. “You need to control that wife of yours better, son. The way we do it in the village.”
Then he gave me a light tap on the head and said, “The water’s gone cold.”
I massaged his feet every morning for the next three days. One morning he had a little pain in his stomach, so the Mongoose made me drive him down to Max, which is one of Delhi’s most famous private hospitals. I stood outside and watched as the Mongoose and the old man went inside the beautiful big glass building. Doctors walked in and out with long white coats, and stethoscopes in their pockets. When I peeped in from outside, the hospital’s lobby looked as clean as the inside of a five-star hotel.
The day after the hospital trip, I drove the Stork and the Mongoose down to the railway station, bought them the snacks they would need for their trip home, waited for the train to leave, and then drove the car back, wiped it down, went to a nearby Hanuman temple to say a prayer of thanks, came back to my room and fell inside the mosquito net, dead tired.
When I woke up, someone was standing in my room, turning the lights on and off.
It was Pinky Madam.
“Get ready. You’re going to drive me.”
“Yes, madam,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “What time is it?”
She pu
t a finger to her lips.
I put on a shirt, and then got the car out, and drove it to the front of the building. She had a bag in her hand.
“Where to?” I asked. It was two in the morning.
She told me, and I asked, “Isn’t Sir coming?”
“Just drive.”
I drove her to the airport, I asked no questions.
When she got out at the airport, she pushed a brown envelope into my window—then slammed her door and left.
And that was how, Your Excellency, my employer’s marriage came to an end.
Other drivers have techniques to prolong the marriages of their masters. One of them told me that whenever the fighting got worse he drove fast, so they would get home quickly; whenever they got romantic he let the car slow down. If they were shouting at each other he asked them for directions; if they were kissing he turned the music up. I feel some part of the responsibility falls on me, that their marriage broke up while I was the driver.
The following morning, Mr. Ashok called me to the apartment. When I knocked on the door, he caught me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me inside.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said, tightening his hold on the collar, almost choking me. “Why didn’t you wake me up at once?”
“Sir…she said…she said…she said…”
He grabbed me and pushed me against the balcony of the apartment. The landlord inside him wasn’t dead, after all.
“Why did you drive her there, sister-fucker?”
I turned my head—behind me I saw all the shiny towers and shopping malls of Gurgaon.
“Did you want to ruin my family’s reputation?”
He pushed me harder against the balcony; my head and chest were over the edge now, and if he pushed me even a bit more I was in real danger of flying over. I gathered my legs and kicked him in the chest—he staggered back and hit the sliding glass door between the house and the balcony. I slid down against the edge of the balcony; he sat down against the glass door. The two of us were panting.
“You can’t blame me, sir!” I shouted. “I’d never heard of a woman leaving her husband for good! I mean, yes, on TV, but not in real life! I just did what she told me to.”
A crow sat down on the balcony and cawed. Both of us turned and stared at it.
Then his madness was over. He covered his face in his hands and began to sob.
I ran down to my room. I got into the mosquito net and sat on the bed. I counted to ten to make sure he hadn’t followed me. Then, reaching under the bed, I took out the brown envelope and opened it again.
It was full of one-hundred-rupee notes.
Forty-seven of them.
I shoved the envelope under the bed: someone was coming toward my room. Four of the drivers walked in.
“Tell us all about it, Country-Mouse.”
They took positions around me.
“Tell you what?”
“The gatekeeper spilled the beans. There are no secrets around here. You drove the woman somewhere at night and came back alone. Has she left him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We know they’ve been fighting, Country-Mouse. And you drove her somewhere at night. The airport? She’s gone, isn’t she? It’s a divorce—every rich man these days is divorcing his wife. These rich people…” He shook his head. His lips curled up in scorn, exposing his reddish, rotting, paan-decayed canines. “No respect for God, for marriage, family—nothing.”
“She just went out for some fresh air. And I brought her back. That gatekeeper has gone blind.”
“Loyal to the last. They don’t make servants like you anymore.”
I waited all morning for the bell to ring—but it did not. In the afternoon, I went up to the thirteenth floor, and rang the bell and waited. He opened his door, and his eyes were red.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, sir. I came to…make lunch.”
“No need for that.” I thought he was going to apologize for almost killing me, but he said nothing about it.
“Sir, you must eat. It’s not good for your health to starve…Please, sir.”
With a sigh, he let me in.
Now that she was gone, I knew that it was my duty to be like a wife to him. I had to make sure he ate well, and slept well, and did not get thin. I made lunch, I served him, I cleaned up. Then I went down and waited for the bell. At eight o’clock, I took the elevator up again. Pressing my ear against the door, I listened.
Nothing. Not a sound.
I rang the bell: no response. I knew he couldn’t be out—I was his driver, after all. Where could he go without me?
The door was open. I walked in.
He lay beneath the framed photo of the two Pomeranians, a bottle on the mahogany table in front of him, his eyes closed.
I sniffed the bottle. Whiskey. Almost all of it gone. I put it to my lips and emptied the dregs.
“Sir,” I said, but he did not wake up. I gave him a push. I slapped him on the face. He licked his lips, sucked his teeth. He was waking up, but I slapped him a second time anyway.
(A time-honored servants’ tradition. Slapping the master when he’s asleep. Like jumping on pillows when masters are not around. Or urinating into their plants. Or beating or kicking their pet dogs. Innocent servants’ pleasures.)
I dragged him into his bedroom, pulled the blanket over him, turned the lights off, and went down. There was going to be no driving tonight, so I headed off to the “Action” English Liquor Shop. My nose was still full of Mr. Ashok’s whiskey.
The same thing happened the next night too.
The third night he was drunk, but awake.
“Drive me,” he said. “Anywhere you want. To the malls. To the hotels. Anywhere.”
Around and around the shiny malls and hotels of Gurgaon I drove him, and he sat slouched in the backseat—not even talking on the phone, for once.
When the master’s life is in chaos, so is the servant’s. I thought, Maybe he’s sick of Delhi now. Will he go back to Dhanbad? What happens to me then? My belly churned. I thought I would crap right there, on my seat, on the gearbox.
“Stop the car,” he said.
He opened the door of the car, put his hand on his stomach, bent down, and threw up on the ground. I wiped his mouth with my hand and helped him sit down by the side of the road. The traffic roared past us. I patted his back.
“You’re drinking too much, sir.”
“Why do men drink, Balram?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Of course, in your caste you don’t…Let me tell you, Balram. Men drink because they are sick of life. I thought caste and religion didn’t matter any longer in today’s world. My father said, ‘No, don’t marry her, she’s of another…’ I…”
Mr. Ashok turned his head to the side, and I rubbed his back, thinking he might throw up again, but the spasm passed.
“Sometimes I wonder, Balram. I wonder what’s the point of living. I really wonder…”
The point of living? My heart pounded. The point of your living is that if you die, who’s going to pay me three and a half thousand rupees a month?
“You must believe in God, sir. You must go on. My granny says that if you believe in God, then good things will happen.”
“That’s true, it’s true. We must believe,” he sobbed.
“Once there was a man who stopped believing in God, and you know what happened?”
“What?”
“His buffalo died at once.”
“I see.” He laughed. “I see.”
“Yes, sir, it really happened. The next day he said, ‘God, I’m sorry, I believe in You,’ and guess what happened?”
“His buffalo came back to life?”
“Exactly!”
He laughed again. I told him another story, and this made him laugh some more.
Has there ever been a master-servant relationship like this one? He was so powerless, so lost, my heart just had to m
elt. Whatever anger I had against him for trying to pin Pinky Madam’s hit-and-run killing on me passed away that evening. That was her fault. Mr. Ashok had nothing to do with it. I forgave him entirely.
I talked to him about the wisdom of my village—half repeating things I remembered Granny saying, and half making things up on the spot—and he nodded. It was a scene to put you in mind of that passage in the Bhagavad Gita, when our Lord Krishna—another of history’s famous chauffeurs—stops the chariot he is driving and gives his passenger some excellent advice on life and death. Like Krishna I philosophized—I joked—I even sang a song—all to make Mr. Ashok feel better.
Baby, I thought, rubbing his back as he heaved and threw up one more time, you big, pathetic baby.
I put my hand out and wiped the vomit from his lips, and cooed soothing words to him. It squeezed my heart to see him suffer like this—but where my genuine concern for him ended and where my self-interest began, I could not tell: no servant can ever tell what the motives of his heart are.
Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love—or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?
We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.
The next day I went to a roadside temple in Gurgaon. I put a rupee before the two resident pairs of divine arses and prayed that Pinky Madam and Mr. Ashok should be reunited and given a long and happy life together in Delhi.
A week passed like this, and then the Mongoose turned up from Dhanbad and Mr. Ashok and I went together to the station to collect him.
The moment he arrived, everything changed for me. The intimacy was over between me and Mr. Ashok.
Once again, I was only the driver. Once again, I was only the eavesdropper.
“I spoke to her last night. She’s not coming back to India. Her parents are happy with her decision. This can end only one way.”
“Don’t worry about it, Ashok. It’s okay. And don’t call her again. I’ll handle it from Dhanbad. If she makes any noise about wanting your money, I’ll just gently bring up that matter of the hit-and-run, see?”
“It’s not the money I’m worried about, Mukesh—”