The White Tiger

  But I could smell the mingling of their perfumes—I knew exactly what was going on behind me.

  I thought he would ask me to drive him home now, but no—the carnival of fun just went on and on. He wanted to go to PVR Saket.

  Now, PVR Saket is the scene of a big cinema, which shows ten or twelve cinemas at the same time, and charges over a hundred and fifty rupees per cinema—yes, that’s right, a hundred and fifty rupees! That’s not all: you’ve also got plenty of places to drink beer, dance, pick up girls, that sort of thing. A small bit of America in India.

  Beyond the last shining shop begins the second PVR. Every big market in Delhi is two markets in one—there is always a smaller, grimier mirror image of the real market, tucked somewhere into a by-lane.

  This is the market for the servants. I crossed over to this second PVR—a line of stinking restaurants, tea stalls, and giant frying pans where bread was toasted in oil. The men who work in the cinemas, and who sweep them clean, come here to eat. The beggars have their homes here.

  I bought a tea and a potato vada, and sat under a banyan tree to eat.

  “Brother, give me three rupees.” An old woman, looking lean and miserable, with her hand stretched out.

  “I’m not one of the rich, mother—go to that side and ask them.”

  “Brother—”

  “Let me eat, all right? Just leave me alone!”

  She went. A knife-grinder came and set up his stall right next to my tree. Holding two knives in his hand, he sat on his machine—it was one of the foot-pedaled whetstones—and began pedaling. Sparks began buzzing a couple of inches away from me.

  “Brother, do you have to do your work here? Don’t you see a human being is trying to eat?”

  He stopped pedaling, blinked, then put the blades to the whizzing whetstone again, as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

  I threw the potato vada at his feet:

  “How stupid can you people get?”

  The old beggar woman made the crossing with me, into the other PVR. She hitched up her sari, took a breath, and then began her routine: “Sister, just give me three rupees. I haven’t eaten since morning…”

  A giant pile of old books lay in the center of the market, arranged in a large, hollow square, like the mandala made at weddings to hold the sacred fire. A small man sat cross-legged on a stack of magazines in the center of the square of books, like the priest in charge of this mandala of print. The books drew me toward them like a big magnet, but as soon as he saw me, the man sitting on the magazines snapped, “All the books are in English.”

  “So?”

  “Do you read English?” he barked.

  “Do you read English?” I retorted.

  There. That did it. Until then his tone of talking to me had been servant-to-servant; now it became man-to-man. He stopped and looked me over from top to bottom.

  “No,” he said, breaking into a smile, as if he appreciated my balls.

  “So how do you sell the books without knowing English?”

  “I know which book is what from the cover,” he said. “I know this one is Harry Potter.” He showed it to me. “I know this one is James Hadley Chase.” He picked it up. “This is Kahlil Gibran—this is Adolf Hitler—Desmond Bagley—The Joy of Sex. One time the publishers changed the Hitler cover so it looked like Harry Potter, and life was hell for a week after that.”

  “I just want to stand around the books. I had a book once. When I was a boy.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  So I stood around that big square of books. Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans.

  Except here what happens is that your brain starts to hum.

  Forty-seven hundred rupees. In that brown envelope under my bed.

  Odd sum of money—wasn’t it? There was a mystery to be solved here. Let’s see. Maybe she started off giving me five thousand, and then, being cheap, like all rich people are—remember how the Mongoose made me get down on my knees for that one-rupee coin?—deducted three hundred.

  That’s not how the rich think, you moron. Haven’t you learned yet?

  She must have taken out ten thousand at first. Then cut it in half, and kept half for herself. Then taken out another hundred rupees, another hundred, and another hundred. That’s how cheap they are.

  So that means they really owe you ten thousand. But if she thought she owed you ten thousand, then what she truly owed you was, what—ten times more?

  “No, a hundred times more.”

  The small man, putting down the newspaper he was reading, turned me to from inside his mandala of books. “What did you say?” he shouted.

  “Nothing.”

  He shouted again. “Hey, what do you do?”

  I grabbed an imaginary wheel and turned it one hundred and eighty degrees.

  “Ah, I should have known. Drivers are smart men—they hear a lot of interesting things. Right?”

  “Other drivers might. I go deaf inside the car.”

  “Sure, sure. Tell me, you must know English—some of what they talk must stick to you.”

  “I told you, I don’t listen. How can it stick?”

  “What does this word in the newspaper mean? Pri-va-see.”

  I told him, and he smiled gratefully. “We had just started the English alphabet when I got taken out of school by my family.”

  So he was another of the half-baked. My caste.

  “Hey,” he shouted again. “Want to read some of this?” He held up a magazine with an American woman on the cover—the kind that rich boys like to buy. “It’s good stuff.”

  I flicked through the magazine. He was right, it was good stuff.

  “How much does this magazine sell for?”

  “Sixty rupees. Would you believe that? Sixty rupees for a used magazine. And there’s a fellow in Khan Market who sells magazines from England that cost five hundred and eight rupees each! Would you believe that?”

  I raised my head to the sky and whistled. “Amazing how much money they have,” I said, aloud, yet as if talking to myself. “And yet they treat us like animals.”

  It was as if I had said something to disturb him, because he lowered and raised his paper a couple of times; then he came to the very edge of the mandala and, partially hiding his face with the paper, whispered something.

  I cupped a hand around my ear. “Say that again?”

  He looked around and said, a bit louder this time, “It won’t last forever, though. The current situation.”

  “Why not?” I moved toward the mandala.

  “Have you heard about the Naxals?” he whispered over the books. “They’ve got guns. They’ve got a whole army. They’re getting stronger by the day.”

  “Really?”

  “Just read the papers. The Chinese want a civil war in India, see? Chinese bombs are coming to Burma, and into Bangladesh, and then into Calcutta. They go down south into Andhra Pradesh, and up into the Darkness. When the time is right, all of India will…”

  He opened his palms.

  We talked like this for a while—but then our friendship ended as all servant-servant friendships must: with our masters bellowing for us. A gang of rich kids wanted to be shown a smutty American magazine—and Mr. Ashok came walking out of a bar, staggering, stinking of liquor; the Nepali girl was with him.

  On the way back, the two of them were talking at the top of their voices; and then the petting and kissing began. My God, and he a man who was still lawfully married to another woman! I was so furious that I drove right through four red lights, and almost smashed into an oxcart that was going down the road with a load of kerosene cans, but they never noticed.

  “Good night, Balram,” Mr. Ashok shouted as he got out, hand in hand with her.

  “Good night, Balram!” she shouted.

  They ran into the apartment and took turns jabbing the call
button for the elevator.

  When I got to my room, I searched under the bed. It was still there, the maharaja tunic that he had given me—the turban and dark glasses too.

  I drove the car out of the apartment block, dressed like a maharaja, with the dark glasses on. No idea where I was going—I just drove around the malls. Each time I saw a pretty girl I hooted the horn at her and her friends.

  I played his music. I ran his A/C at full blast.

  I drove back to the building, took the car down into the garage, folded the dark glasses into my pocket, and took off the tunic.

  I spat over the seats of the Honda City, and wiped them clean.

  The next morning, he didn’t come down or call me up to his room. I took the elevator, and stood near the door. I was feeling guilty about what I’d done the previous night. I wondered if I should make a full confession. I reached for the bell a few times, and then sighed and gave up.

  After a while, there were soft noises from inside. I put my ear to the wood and listened.

  “But I have changed.”

  “Don’t keep apologizing.”

  “I had more fun last evening than in four years of marriage.”

  “When you left for New York, I thought I’d never see you again. And now I have. That’s the main thing for me.”

  I turned away from the door and slapped my fist into my forehead. My guilt was growing by the minute. She was his old lover, you fool—not some pickup!

  Of course—he would never go for a slut. I had always known that he was a good man: a cut above me.

  I pinched my left palm as punishment.

  And put my ear to the door again.

  The phone began to ring from inside. Silence for a while, and then he said, “That’s Puddles. And that’s Cuddles. You remember them, don’t you? They always bark for me. Here, take the phone, listen…”

  “Bad news?” Her voice, after a few minutes. “You look upset.”

  “I have to go see a cabinet minister. I hate doing that. They’re all so slimy. The business I’m in…it’s a bad one. I wish I were doing something else. Something clean. Like outsourcing. Every day I wish it.”

  “Why don’t you do something else, then? It was the same when they told you not to marry me. You couldn’t say no then either.”

  “It’s not that simple, Uma. They’re my father and brother.”

  “I wonder if you have changed, Ashok. The first call from Dhanbad, and you’re back to your old self.”

  “Look, let’s not fight again. I’ll send you back in the car now.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not going back with your driver. I know his kind, the village kind. They think that any unmarried woman they see is a whore. And he probably thinks I’m a Nepali, because of my eyes. You know what that means for him. I’ll go back on my own.”

  “This fellow is all right. He’s part of the family.”

  “You shouldn’t be so trusting, Ashok. Delhi drivers are all rotten. They sell drugs, and prostitutes, and God knows what else.”

  “Not this one. He’s stupid as hell, but he is honest. He’ll drive you back.”

  “No, Ashok. I’ll get a taxi. I’ll call you in the evening?”

  I realized that she was edging toward the door, and I turned and tiptoed away.

  There was no word from him until evening, and then he came down for the car. He made me go from one bank to another bank. Sitting in the driver’s seat, I watched through the corner of my eye; he was collecting money from the automatic cash machines—four different ones. Then he said, “Balram, go to the city. You know the big house that’s on the Ashoka Road, where we went to with Mukesh Sir once?”

  “Yes, sir. I remember. They’ve got two big Alsatian guard dogs, sir.”

  “Exactly. Your memory’s good, Balram.”

  I saw in the spy mirror that Mr. Ashok was pressing the buttons on his cell phone as I drove. Probably telling the minister’s servant that he was coming with the cash. So now I understood at last what work my master was doing as I drove him through Delhi.

  “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, Balram,” Mr. Ashok said when we got to the minister’s bungalow. He stepped out with the red bag and slammed the door.

  A security guard with a rifle sat in a metal booth over the red wall of the minister’s house, watching me carefully. The two Alsatian dogs, roaming the compound, barked now and then.

  It was the hour of sunset. The birds of the city began to make a ruckus as they flew home. Now, Delhi, Mr. Premier, is a big city, but there are wild places in it—big parks, protected forests, stretches of wasteland—and things can suddenly come out of these wild places. As I was watching the red wall of the minister’s house, a peacock flew up over the guard’s booth and perched there; for an instant its deep blue neck and its long tail turned golden in the setting sunlight. Then it vanished.

  In a little while it was night.

  The dogs began barking. The gate opened. Mr. Ashok came out of the minister’s house with a fat man—the same man who had come out that day from the President’s House. I guessed that he was the minister’s assistant. They stopped in front of the car and talked.

  The fat man shook hands with Mr. Ashok, who was clearly eager to leave him—but ah, it isn’t so easy to let go of a politician—or even a politician’s sidekick. I got out of the car, pretending to check the tires, and moved into eavesdropping distance.

  “Don’t worry, Ashok. I’ll make sure the minister gives your father a call tomorrow.”

  “Thank you. My family appreciates your help.”

  “What are you doing after this?”

  “Nothing. Just going home to Gurgaon.”

  “A young man like you going home this early? Let’s have some fun.”

  “Don’t you have to work on the elections?”

  “The elections? All wrapped up. It’s a landslide. The minister said so this morning. Elections, my friend, can be managed in India. It’s not like in America.”

  Brushing aside Mr. Ashok’s protests, the fat man forced his way into the car. We had just started down the road when he said, “Ashok, let me have a whiskey.”

  “Here, in the car? I don’t have any.”

  The fat man seemed astonished. “Everyone has whiskey in their car in Delhi, Ashok, didn’t you know this?”

  He told me to go back to the minister’s bungalow. He went inside and came back with a pair of glasses and a bottle. He slammed the door, breathed out, and said, “Now this car is fully equipped.”

  Mr. Ashok took the bottle and got ready to pour the fat man a glass, when he smacked his lips in annoyance. “Not you, you fool. The driver. He is the one who pours the drinks.”

  I turned around at once and turned myself into a barman.

  “This driver is very talented,” the fat man said. “Sometimes they make a mess of pouring a drink.”

  “You’d never guess that his caste was a teetotaling one, would you?”

  I tightened the cap on the bottle and left it next to the gearbox. I heard the clinking of glasses behind me and two voices saying, “Cheers!”

  “Let’s go,” the minister’s sidekick said. “Let’s go to the Sheraton, driver. There’s a good restaurant down in the basement there, Ashok. Quiet place. We’ll have some fun there.”

  I turned the ignition key and took the dark egg of the Honda City down the streets of New Delhi.

  “A man’s car is a man’s palace. I can’t believe you’ve never done this.”

  “Well, you’d never try it in America—would you?”

  “That’s the whole advantage of being in Delhi, dear boy!” The fat man slapped Mr. Ashok’s thigh.

  He sipped, and said, “What’s your situation, Ashok?”

  “Coal trading, these days. People think it’s only technology that’s booming. But coal—the media pays no attention to coal, does it? The Chinese are consuming coal like crazy and the price is going up everywhere. Millionaires are being made, left, right, and center.”

&n
bsp; “Sure, sure,” the fat man said. “The China Effect.” He sniffed his glass. “But that’s not what we in Delhi mean when we say situation, dear boy!”

  The minister’s sidekick smiled. “Basically, what I’m asking is, who services you—down there?” He pointed at a part of Mr. Ashok’s body that he had no business pointing at.

  “I am separated. Going through a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the fat man said. “Marriage is a good institution. Everything’s coming apart in this country. Families, marriages—everything.”

  He sipped some more whiskey and said, “Tell me, Ashok, do you think there will be a civil war in this country?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Four days ago, I was in a court in Ghaziabad. The judge gave an order that the lawyers didn’t like, and they simply refused to accept his order. They went mad—they dragged the judge down and beat him, in his own court. The matter was not reported in the press. But I saw it with my own eyes. If people start beating the judges—in their own courtrooms—then what is the future for our country?”

  Something icy cold touched my neck. The fat man was rubbing me with his glass.

  “Another drink, driver.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Have you ever seen this trick, Your Excellency? A man steering the car with one hand, and picking up a whiskey bottle with the other hand, hauling it over his shoulder, then pouring it into a glass, even as the car is moving, without spilling a drop! The skills required of an Indian driver! Not only does he have to have perfect reflexes, night vision, and infinite patience, he also has to be the consummate barman!

  “Would you like some more, sir?”

  I glanced at the minister’s sidekick, at the fat, corrupt folds of flesh under his chin—then glanced at the road to make sure I wasn’t driving into anything.

  “Pour one for your master now.”

  “No, I don’t drink much, really. I’m fine.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ashok. I insist—fellow, pour one for your master.”

  So I had to turn and do the amazing one-hand-on-the-wheel-one-hand-with-the-whiskey-bottle trick all over again.

  The fat man went quiet after the second drink. He wiped his lips.