The White Tiger

“When you were in America you must have had a lot of women? I mean—the local women.”

  “No.”

  “No? What does that mean?”

  “I was faithful to Pinky—my wife—the whole time.”

  “My. You were faithful. What an idea. Faithfully married. No wonder it ended in divorce. Have you never had a white woman?”

  “I told you.”

  “God. Why is it always the wrong kind of Indian who goes abroad? Listen, do you want one now? A European girl?”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” he said. “A female from Russia. She looks just like that American actress.” He mentioned a name. “Want to do it?”

  “A whore?”

  The fat man smiled. “A friend. A magical friend. Want to do it?”

  “No. Thanks. I’m seeing someone. I just met someone I knew a long—”

  The fat man took out his cell phone and punched some numbers. The light of the phone made a blue halo on his face.

  “She’s there right now. Let’s go see her. She’s a stunner, I tell you. Just like that American actress. Do you have thirty thousand on you?”

  “No. Listen. I’m seeing someone. I’m not—”

  “No problem. I’ll pay now. You can pay later. Just put it into the next envelope you give the minister.” He put his hand on Mr. Ashok’s hand and winked, then leaned over and gave instructions to me. I looked at Mr. Ashok in the rearview mirror as hard as I could.

  A whore? That’s for people like me, sir. Are you sure you want this?

  I wish I could have told him this openly—but who was I? Just the driver.

  I took orders from the fat man. Mr. Ashok said nothing—just sat there sucking his whiskey like a boy with a soda. Maybe he thought it was a joke, or maybe he was too frightened of the fat man to say no.

  But I will defend his honor to my deathbed. They corrupted him.

  The fat man made me drive to a place in Greater Kailash—another housing colony where people of quality live in Delhi. Touching my neck with his icy glass when I had to make a turn, he guided me to the place. It was as large as a small palace, with big white columns of marble up the front. From the amount of garbage thrown outside the walls of the house, you knew that rich people lived here.

  The fat man held open the car door as he spoke into a phone. Five minutes later he slammed the door shut. I began sneezing. A weird perfume had filled the back of the car.

  “Stop that sneezing and drive us toward Jangpura, son.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  The fat man smiled. He turned to the girl who had got into the car and said, “Speak to my friend Ashok in Hindi, please.”

  I looked into the rearview mirror, and caught my first glimpse of this girl.

  It’s true, she did look like an actress I had seen somewhere or other. The name of the actress, though, I didn’t know. It’s only when I came to Bangalore and mastered the use of the Internet—in just two quick sessions, mind you!—that I found her photo and name on Google.

  Kim Basinger.

  That was the name the fat man had mentioned. And it was true—the girl who got in with the fat man did look exactly like Kim Basinger! She was tall and beautiful, but the most remarkable thing about her was her hair—golden and glossy, just like in the shampoo advertisements!

  “How are you, Ashok?” She said it in perfect Hindi. She put her hand out and took Mr. Ashok’s hand.

  The minister’s assistant chuckled. “There. India has progressed, hasn’t it? She’s speaking in Hindi.”

  He slapped her on the thigh. “Your Hindi has improved, dear.”

  Mr. Ashok leaned back to speak to the fat man over her shoulder. “Is she Russian?”

  “Ask her, don’t ask me, Ashok. Don’t be shy. She’s a friend.”

  “Ukrainian,” she said in her accented Hindi. “I am a Ukrainian student in India.”

  I thought: I would have to remember this place, Ukraine. And one day I would have to go there!

  “Ashok,” the fat man said. “Go on, touch her hair. It’s real. Don’t be scared—she’s a friend.” He chuckled. “See—didn’t hurt, did it, Ashok? Say something in Hindi to Mr. Ashok, dear. He’s still frightened of you.”

  “You’re a handsome man,” she said. “Don’t be frightened of me.”

  “Driver.” The fat man leaned forward and touched me with his cold glass again. “Are we near Jangpura?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you go down the Masjid Road, you’ll see a hotel with a big neon T sign on it. Take us there.”

  I got them there in ten minutes—you couldn’t miss the hotel, the big T sign on it glowed like a lantern in the dark.

  Taking the golden-haired woman with him, the fat man went up to the hotel reception, where the manager greeted him warmly. Mr. Ashok walked behind them and kept looking from side to side, like a guilty little boy about to do something very bad.

  Half an hour passed. I was outside, my hands on the wheel the whole time. I punched the little ogre. I began to gnaw at the wheel.

  I kept hoping he’d come running out, arms flailing, and screaming, Balram, I was on the verge of making a mistake! Save me—let’s drive away at once!

  An hour later Mr. Ashok came out of the hotel—alone, and looking ill.

  “The meeting’s over, Balram,” he said, letting his head fall back on the seat. “Let’s go home.”

  I didn’t start the car for a second. I kept my finger on the ignition key.

  “Balram, let’s go home, I said!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When we got back to Gurgaon, he staggered out toward the elevator. I did not leave the car. I let five minutes pass, and then drove back to Jangpura, straight to the hotel with the T on it.

  I parked in a corner and watched the door of the hotel. I wanted her to come out.

  A rickshaw-puller drove up next to me, a small, unshaven, stick-thin man, who looked dead tired as he wiped his face and legs clean with a rag, and went to sleep on the ground. On the seat of his rickshaw was a white advertising sticker:

  IS EXCESS WEIGHT A PROBLEM FOR YOU?

  CALL JIMMY SINGH AT METRO GYM: 9811799289

  The mascot of the gym—an American with enormous white muscles—smiled at me from above the slogan. The rickshaw-puller’s snoring filled the air.

  Someone in the hotel must have seen me. After a while, the door opened: a policeman came out, peered at me, and then began walking down the steps.

  I turned the key; I took the car back to Gurgaon.

  Now, I’ve driven around Bangalore at night too, but I never get that feeling here that I did in Delhi—the feeling that if something is burning inside me as I drive, the city will know about it—she will burn with the same thing.

  My heart was bitter that night. The city knew this—and under the dim orange glow cast everywhere by the weak streetlamps, she was bitter.

  Speak to me of civil war, I told Delhi.

  I will, she said.

  An overturned flower urn on a traffic island in the middle of a road; next to it three men sit with open mouths. An older man with a beard and white turban is talking to them with a finger upraised. Cars drive by him with their dazzling headlights, and the noise drowns out his words. He looks like a prophet in the middle of the city, unnoticed except by his three apostles. They will become his three generals. That overturned flower urn is a symbol of some kind.

  Speak to me of blood on the streets, I told Delhi.

  I will, she said.

  I saw other men discussing and talking and reading in the night, alone or in clusters around the streetlamps. By the dim lights of Delhi, I saw hundreds that night, under trees, shrines, intersections, on benches, squinting at newspapers, holy books, journals, Communist Party pamphlets. What were they reading about? What were they talking about?

  But what else?

  Of the end of the world.

  And if there is blood on these streets—I asked the city—do you promise that he’ll be
the first to go—that man with the fat folds under his neck?

  A beggar sitting by the side of the road, a nearly naked man coated with grime, and with wild unkempt hair in long coils like snakes, looked into my eyes:

  Promise.

  Colored pieces of glass have been embedded into the boundary wall of Buckingham Towers B Block—to keep robbers out. When headlights hit them, the shards glow, and the wall turns into a Technicolored, glass-spined monster.

  The gatekeeper stared at me as I drove in. I saw rupee notes shining in his eyes.

  This was the second time he had seen me going out and returning on my own.

  In the parking lot, I got out of the driver’s seat and carefully closed the door. I opened the passenger’s door, and went inside, and passed my hand along the leather. I passed my hands from one side of the leather seats to the other three times, and then I found what I was looking for.

  I held it up to the light.

  A strand of golden hair!

  I’ve got it in my desk to this day.

  The Sixth Night

  The dreams of the rich, and the dreams of the poor—they never overlap, do they?

  See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?

  Losing weight and looking like the poor.

  Every evening, the compound around Buckingham Towers B Block becomes an exercise ground. Plump, paunchy men and even plumper, paunchier women, with big circles of sweat below their arms, are doing their evening “walking.”

  See, with all these late-night parties, all that drinking and munching, the rich tend to get fat in Delhi. So they walk to lose weight.

  Now, where should a human being walk? In the outdoors—by a river, inside a park, around a forest.

  However, displaying their usual genius for town planning, the rich of Delhi had built this part of Gurgaon with no parks, lawns, or playgrounds—it was just buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and more buildings. There was a pavement outside, but that was for the poor to live on. So if you wanted to do some “walking,” it had to be done around the concrete compound of your own building.

  Now, while they walked around the apartment block, the fatsos made their thin servants—most of them drivers—stand at various spots on that circle with bottles of mineral water and fresh towels in their hands. Each time they completed a circuit around the building, they stopped next to their man, grabbed the bottle—gulp—grabbed the towel—wipe, wipe—then it was off on round two.

  Vitiligo-Lips was standing in one corner of the compound, with his bottle and his master’s sweaty towel. Every few minutes, he turned to me with a twinkle in his eyes—his boss, the steel man, who was bald until two weeks ago, now sported a head of thick black hair—an expensive toupee job he had gone all the way to England for. This toupee was the main subject of discussion in the monkey-circle these days—the other drivers had offered Vitiligo-Lips ten rupees to resort to the old tricks of braking unexpectedly, or taking the car full speed over a pothole, to knock over his master’s toupee at least once.

  The secrets of their masters were spilled and dissected every evening by the monkey-circle—though if any of them made the divorce a topic of discussion, he knew he would have to deal with me. On Mr. Ashok’s privacy I allowed no one to infringe.

  I was standing just a few feet from Vitiligo-Lips, with my master’s bottle of mineral water in my hand and his sweat-stained towel on my shoulder.

  Mr. Ashok was about to complete his circle—I could smell his sweat coming toward me. This was round number three for him. He took the bottle, drained it, wiped his face with his towel, and draped it back on my shoulder.

  “I’m done, Balram. Bring the towel and bottle up, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and watched him go into the apartment block. He took a walk once or twice a week, but it clearly wasn’t enough to counter his nights of debauchery—I saw a big, wet paunch pressing against his white T-shirt. How repulsive he was, these days.

  I signaled to Vitiligo-Lips before going down to the parking lot.

  Ten minutes later, I smelled the steel man’s sweat and heard footsteps. Vitiligo-Lips had come down. I called him over to the Honda City—it was the only place in the world I felt fully safe anymore.

  “What is it, Country-Mouse? Want another magazine?”

  “Not that. Something else.”

  I got down on my haunches; I squatted by one of the tires of the City. I scraped the grooves of the tire with a fingernail. He squatted too.

  I showed him the strand of golden hair—I kept it tied around my wrist, like a locket. He brought my wrist to his nose—he rubbed the strand between his fingers, sniffed it, and let my wrist down.

  “No problem.” He winked. “I told you your master would get lonely.”

  “Don’t talk about him!” I seized his neck. He shook me off.

  “Are you crazy? You tried to choke me!”

  I scraped the grooves of the tire again. “How much will it cost?”

  “High-class or low-class? Virgin or nonvirgin? All depends.”

  “I don’t care. She just has to have golden hair—like in the shampoo advertisements.”

  “Cheapest is ten, twelve thousand.”

  “That’s too much. He won’t pay more than four thousand seven hundred.”

  “Six thousand five hundred, Country-Mouse. That’s the minimum. White skin has to be respected.”

  “All right.”

  “When does he want it, Country-Mouse?”

  “I’ll tell you. It’ll be soon. And another thing—I want to know another thing.”

  I put my face on the tire and breathed in the smell of the leather. For strength.

  “How many ways are there for a driver to cheat his master?”

  Mr. Jiabao, I am aware that it is a common feature of those cellophane-wrapped business books to feature small “sidebars.” At this stage of the story, to relieve you of tedium, I would like to insert my own “sidebar” into the narrative of the modern entrepreneur’s growth and development.

  HOW DOES THE ENTERPRISING DRIVER

  EARN A LITTLE EXTRA CASH?

  1. When his master is not around, he can siphon petrol from the car, with a funnel. Then sell the petrol.

  2. When his master orders him to make a repair to the car, he can go to a corrupt mechanic; the mechanic will inflate the price of the repair, and the driver will receive a cut. This is a list of a few entrepreneurial mechanics who help entrepreneurial drivers:

  Lucky Mechanics, in Lado Serai, near the Qutub

  R.V. Repairs, in Greater Kailash Part Two

  Nilofar Mechanics, in DLF Phase One, in Gurgaon.

  3. He should study his master’s habits, and then ask himself: “Is my master careless? If so, what are the ways in which I can benefit from his carelessness?” For instance, if his master leaves empty English liquor bottles lying around in the car, he can sell the whiskey bottles to the bootleggers. Johnnie Walker Black brings the best resale value.

  4. As he gains in experience and confidence and is ready to try something riskier, he can turn his master’s car into a freelance taxi. The stretch of the road from Gurgaon to Delhi is excellent for this; lots of Romeos come to see their girlfriends who work in the call centers. Once the entrepreneurial driver is sure that his master is not going to notice the absence of the car—and that none of his master’s friends are likely to be on the road at this time—he can spend his free time cruising around, picking up and dropping off paying customers.

  At night I lay in my mosquito net, the lightbulb on in my room, and watched the dark roaches crawling on top of the net, their antennae quivering and trembling, like bits of my own nerves: and I lay in bed, too agitated even to reach out and crush them. A cockroach flew down and landed right above my head.

  You should have asked them for money when they made you sign that thing. Enough money to sleep with twenty white-skinned girls. It flew away. Another land
ed on the same spot.

  Twenty?

  A hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred, a thousand, ten thousand golden-haired whores. And even that would still not have been enough. That would not start to be enough.

  Over the next two weeks, I did things I am still ashamed to admit. I cheated my employer. I siphoned his petrol; I took his car to a corrupt mechanic who billed him for work that was not necessary; and three times, while driving back to Buckingham B, I picked up a paying customer.

  The strangest thing was that each time I looked at the cash I had made by cheating him, instead of guilt, what did I feel?

  Rage.

  The more I stole from him, the more I realized how much he had stolen from me.

  To go back to the analogy I used when describing Indian politics to you earlier, I was growing a belly at last.

  Then one Sunday afternoon, when Mr. Ashok had said he wouldn’t need me again that day, I gulped two big glasses of whiskey for courage, then went to the servants’ dormitory. Vitiligo-Lips was sitting beneath the poster of a film actress—each time his master “hammered” an actress, he put her poster up on the wall—playing cards with the other drivers.

  “Well, you can say what you want, but I know that these jokers aren’t going to win reelection.”

  He looked up and saw me.

  “Well, look who’s here. It’s the yoga guru, paying us a rare visit. Welcome, honored sir.”

  They showed me their teeth. I showed them my teeth.

  “We were discussing the elections, Country-Mouse. You know, it’s not like the Darkness here. The elections aren’t rigged. Are you going to vote this time?”

  I summoned him with a finger.

  He shook his head. “Later, Country-Mouse, I’m having too much fun discussing the elections.”

  I waved the brown envelope in the air. He put his cards down at once.

  I insisted that we walk down to the parking lot; he counted the money there, in the shadow of the Honda City.

  “Good, Country-Mouse. It’s all here. And where is your master? Will you drive him there?”

  “I am my own master.”

  He didn’t get it for a minute. Then his jaw dropped—he rushed forward—he hugged me. “Country-Mouse!” He hugged me again. “My man!”