The White Tiger

  But a pair of suspicious Nepali eyes spotted me out: “Don’t loiter in the courtyard. Go and sit in your room and wait for the masters to call you.”

  “All right.”

  Ram Bahadur glared at me, so I said, “All right, sir.”

  (Servants, incidentally, are obsessed with being called “sir” by other servants, sir.)

  The next morning, when I was blow-drying Puddles and Cuddles after having shampooed them, Ram Bahadur came up to me, and said, “Have you ever been to Delhi?”

  I shook my head.

  “They’re going to Delhi in a week. Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam. They’re going to leave for three months.”

  I got down on my knees and directed the blow dryer under Cuddles’s legs, pretending not to be interested, and asked, as casually as I could, “Why?”

  The Nepali shrugged. Who knew? We were just servants. One thing, though, he did know.

  “Only one driver will be taken along. And this driver will get three thousand rupees a month—that’s how much they’ll pay him in Delhi.”

  The blow dryer fell out of my hand. “Serious? Three thousand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will they take me along, sir?” I got up and asked pleadingly, “Can’t you make them take me?”

  “They’ll take Ram Persad,” he said with a sneer of his Nepali lips. “Unless…”

  “Unless?”

  He minted coins with his fingers.

  Five thousand rupees—and he would tell the Stork that I was the man to be taken along to Delhi.

  “Five thousand—where will I get such money? My family steals my whole paycheck!”

  “Oh, well. In that case, it’ll be Ram Persad. As for you”—he pointed to Cuddles and Puddles—“you’ll be cleaning the dogs for the rest of your life, I guess.”

  I woke up, both nostrils burning.

  It was still dark.

  Ram Persad was up. He was sitting on his bed, chopping onions on a wooden board: I heard the tack, tack, tack of his knife hitting the board.

  What the hell is he chopping onions so early for? I thought, turning to a side and closing my eyes again. I wanted to go back to sleep, but the tack, tack, tack of the knife hitting the board insisted:

  This man has a secret.

  I stayed awake, while the man on the bed chopped onions. I tried to figure it out.

  What had I noticed about Ram Persad in the past few days?

  For one thing, his breath had gone bad. Even Pinky Madam complained. He had suddenly stopped eating with us, either inside the house or outside. Even on Sundays, when there would be chicken, Ram Persad would refuse to eat with us, saying he had already done so, or he wasn’t hungry, or…

  The chopping of the onions continued, and I kept adding thought to thought in the dark.

  I watched him all day. Toward evening, as I was expecting, he began moving to the gate.

  From my conversation with the cook, I had learned that Ram Persad had started to head out of the house at the same time every evening. I followed at a distance. He went into a part of the city I had never seen before, and walked around a few alleys. At one point I distinctly saw him turn around, as if to make sure no one was following him; then he darted.

  He had stopped in front of a two-story building. The wall had a large metal grille divided into square units; a series of small black taps jutted out from the wall below the grille. He bent down to a tap, washed his face and gargled and spat. Then he took off his sandals. Shoes and sandals had been folded and stuffed into the squares of the grille—he did the same with his sandals. Then he went into the building and closed the door.

  I slapped my forehead.

  What a fool I’d been! “It’s Ramadan! They can’t eat and drink during the day.”

  I ran back to the house and found the Nepali. He was standing at the gate, rubbing his teeth with a twig broken from a neem tree—which is what many poor people in my country do, Mr. Premier, when they want to clean their teeth.

  “I just saw a film, sir.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “A great film, sir. Lots of dancing. Hero was a Muslim. Name of Mohammad Mohammad.”

  “Don’t waste my time, boy. Go clean the car if you’ve got nothing to do.”

  “Now, this Mohammad Mohammad was a poor, honest, hardworking Muslim, but he wanted a job at the home of an evil, prejudiced landlord who didn’t like Muslims—so, just to get a job and feed his starving family, he claimed to be a Hindu! And took the name of Ram Persad.”

  The twig fell out of the Nepali’s mouth.

  “And you know how he managed to pull this off? Because the Nepali guard at this house, whom the masters trusted absolutely, and who was supposed to check up on Ram Persad’s background, was in on the scam!”

  Before he could run, I caught him by the collar. Technically, in these servant-versus-servant affairs, that is all you need to do to indicate: “I have won.” But if you’re going to do these things, it’s better to do them in style, right? So I slapped him too.

  I was servant number one from now on in this household.

  I ran back to the mosque. Namaz must have ended by now. And indeed, Ram Persad—or Mohammad or whatever his name really was—came out of the mosque, took his sandals down from the window, slapped them on the ground, wriggled his feet into them, and began walking out. He saw me—I winked at him—and he knew that the game was up.

  I did the needful in a few precise words.

  Then I went back to the house. The Nepali was watching me from behind the black bars. I took his key chain from him and put it in my pocket. “Get me some tea. And biscuits.” I pinched his shirt. “And I want your uniform too. Mine is getting old.”

  I slept in the bed that night.

  In the morning someone came into the room. It was ex–driver number one. Without a word to me, he began packing. All his things fitted into one small bag.

  I thought, What a miserable life he’s had, having to hide his religion, his name, just to get a job as a driver—and he is a good driver, no question of it, a far better one than I will ever be. Part of me wanted to get up and apologize to him right there and say, You go and be a driver in Delhi. You never did anything to hurt me. Forgive me, brother.

  I turned to the other side, farted, and went back to sleep.

  When I woke up, he was gone—he had left all his images of gods behind, and I scooped them into a bag. You never know when those things can come in handy.

  In the evening, the Nepali came to me with a grin on his face—the same fake servant’s grin he showed to the Stork all day long. He told me that, since Ram Persad had left their service without a word, I would be driving Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam to Delhi. He had personally—and forcefully—recommended my name to the Stork.

  I went back to my bed—all mine now—stretched out on it, and said, “Great. Now clean those webs off the ceiling, won’t you?”

  He glared at me, but said nothing, and went away to get a broom. I shouted:

  “—Sir!”

  From then on, every morning, it was hot Nepali tea, and some nice sugar biscuits, on a porcelain platter.

  Kishan came to the gate that Sunday and heard the news from me. I thought he was going to bugger me for how abruptly I had left them at the village, but he was overcome with joy—his eyes were full of tears. Someone in his family was going to make it out of the Darkness and into New Delhi!

  “It’s just like our mother always said. She knew you were going to make it.”

  Two days later, I was driving Mr. Ashok, the Mongoose, and Pinky Madam to Delhi in the Honda City. It wasn’t hard to find the way—I just had to follow the buses. For there were buses and jeeps all along the road—and they were bursting with passengers who packed the insides, and hung out the doors, and even got on the roofs. They were all headed from the Darkness to Delhi. You’d think the whole world was migrating.

  Each time we passed by one of these buses, I had to grin; I wished I could roll down the win
dow and yell at them, I’m going to Delhi in a car—an air-conditioned car!

  But I’m sure they saw the words in my eyes.

  Around noon, Mr. Ashok tapped me on the shoulder.

  From the start, sir, there was a way in which I could understand what he wanted to say, the way dogs understand their masters. I stopped the car, and then moved to my left, and he moved to his right, and our bodies passed each other (so close that the stubble on his face scraped my cheeks like the shaving brush that I use every morning, and the cologne from his skin—a lovely, rich, fruity cologne—rushed into my nostrils for a heady instant, while the smell of my servant’s sweat rubbed off onto his face), and then he became driver and I became passenger.

  He started the car.

  The Mongoose, who had been reading a newspaper the whole time, now saw what had happened.

  “Don’t do this, Ashok.”

  He was an old-school master, the Mongoose. He knew right from wrong.

  “You’re right—this feels weird,” Mr. Ashok said.

  The car came to a stop. Our bodies crossed each other again, our scents were exchanged once more, and I was again the driver and servant, and Mr. Ashok was again the passenger and master.

  We reached Delhi late at night.

  It is not yet three, I could go on a little while longer. But I want to stop, because from here on I have to tell you a new kind of story.

  Remember, Mr. Premier, the first time, perhaps as a boy, when you opened the hood of a car and looked into its entrails? Remember the colored wires twisting from one part of the engine to the other, the black box full of yellow caps, enigmatic tubes hissing out steam and oil and grease everywhere—remember how mysterious and magical everything seemed? When I peer into the portion of my story that unfolds in New Delhi, I feel the same way. If you ask me to explain how one event connects to another, or how one motive strengthens or weakens the next, or how I went from thinking this about my master to thinking that—I will tell you that I myself don’t understand these things. I cannot be certain that the story, as I will tell it, is the right story to tell. I cannot be certain that I know exactly why Mr. Ashok died.

  It will be good for me to stop here.

  When we meet again, at midnight, remind me to turn the chandelier up a bit. The story gets much darker from here.

  The Fourth Night

  I should talk a little more about this chandelier.

  Why not? I’ve got no family anymore. All I’ve got is chandeliers.

  I have a chandelier here, above my head in my office, and then I have two in my apartment in Raj Mahal Villas Phase Two. One in the drawing room, and a small one in the toilet too. It must be the only toilet in Bangalore with a chandelier!

  I saw all these chandeliers one day, tied to the branch of a big banyan tree near Lalbagh Gardens; a boy from a village was selling them, and I bought all of them on the spot. I paid some fellow with a bullock cart to bring them home and we went riding through Bangalore, me and this fellow and four chandeliers, on a limousine powered by bulls!

  It makes me happy to see a chandelier. Why not, I’m a free man, let me buy all the chandeliers I want. For one thing, they keep the lizards away from this room. It’s the truth, sir. Lizards don’t like the light, so as soon as they see a chandelier, they stay away.

  I don’t understand why other people don’t buy chandeliers all the time, and put them up everywhere. Free people don’t know the value of freedom, that’s the problem.

  Sometimes, in my apartment, I turn on both chandeliers, and then I lie down amid all that light, and I just start laughing. A man in hiding, and yet he’s surrounded by chandeliers!

  There—I’m revealing the secret to a successful escape. The police searched for me in darkness: but I hid myself in light.

  In Bangalore!

  Now, among the many uses of a chandelier, this most unsung and unloved object, is that, when you forget something, all you have to do is stare at the glass pieces shining in the ceiling long enough, and within five minutes you’ll remember exactly what it is you were trying to remember.

  See, I’d forgotten where we left off the story last night, so I had to go on about chandeliers for a while, keeping you busy, but now I remember where we were.

  Delhi—we had got to Delhi last night when I stopped the narrative.

  The capital of our glorious nation. The seat of Parliament, of the president, of all ministers and prime ministers. The pride of our civic planning. The showcase of the republic.

  That’s what they call it.

  Let a driver tell you the truth. And the truth is that Delhi is a crazy city.

  See, the rich people live in big housing colonies like Defence Colony or Greater Kailash or Vasant Kunj, and inside their colonies the houses have numbers and letters, but this numbering and lettering system follows no known system of logic. For instance, in the English alphabet, A is next to B, which everyone knows, even people like me who don’t know English. But in a colony, one house is called A 231, and then the next is F 378. So one time Pinky Madam wanted me to take her to Greater Kailash E 231, I tracked down the houses to E 200, and just when I thought we were almost there, E Block vanished completely. The next house was S something.

  Pinky Madam began yelling. “I told you not to bring this hick from the village!”

  And then another thing. Every road in Delhi has a name, like Aurangazeb Road, or Humayun Road, or Archbishop Makarios Road. And no one, masters or servants, knows the name of the road. You ask someone, “Where’s Nikolai Copernicus Marg?”

  And he could be a man who lived on Nikolai Copernicus Marg his whole life, and he’ll open his mouth and say, “Hahn?”

  Or he’ll say, “Straight ahead, then turn left,” even though he has no idea.

  And all the roads look the same, all of them go around and around grassy circles in which men are sleeping or eating or playing cards, and then four roads shoot off from that grassy circle, and then you go down one road, and you hit another grassy circle where men are sleeping or playing cards, and then four more roads go off from it. So you just keep getting lost, and lost, and lost in Delhi.

  Thousands of people live on the sides of the road in Delhi. They have come from the Darkness too—you can tell by their thin bodies, filthy faces, by the animal-like way they live under the huge bridges and overpasses, making fires and washing and taking lice out of their hair while the cars roar past them. These homeless people are a particular problem for drivers. They never wait for a red light—simply dashing across the road on impulse. And each time I braked to avoid slamming the car into one of them, the shouting would start from the passenger’s seat.

  But I ask you, who built Delhi in this crazy way? Which geniuses were responsible for making F Block come after A Block and House Number 69 come after House Number 12? Who was so busy partying and drinking English liquor and taking their Pomeranian dogs for walks and shampoos that they gave the roads names that no one could remember?

  “Are you lost again, driver?”

  “Don’t go after him again.”

  “Why do you always defend him, Ashok?”

  “Don’t we have more serious things to discuss? Why are we always talking about this driver?”

  “All right, let’s discuss the other things, then. First let’s discuss your wife, and her temper tantrums.”

  “Do you really think that’s more important than the tax thing? I keep asking you what are we doing about it, and you keep changing the topic. I think it’s insane, how much they’re asking us to pay.”

  “I told you. It’s a political thing. They’re harassing us because Father is trying to distance himself from the Great Socialist.”

  “I don’t know why he ever got involved with that rogue.”

  “He got into politics because he had to, Ashok—you don’t have a choice in the Darkness. And don’t panic, we can deal with this income tax charge. This is India, not America. There’s always a way out here. I told you, we have someone he
re who works for us—Ramanathan. He’s a good fixer.”

  “Ramanathan is a sleazy, oily cretin. We need a new tax lawyer, Mukesh! We need to go to the newspapers and tell them we’re being raped by these politicians!”

  “Listen”—the Mongoose raised his voice—“you just got back from America. Even this man driving our car knows more about India than you do right now. We need a fixer. He’ll get us the interview with a minister that we need. That’s how Delhi works.”

  The Mongoose leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder. “Lost again? Do you think you could find your way home this time without getting lost a dozen times?”

  He sighed and fell back on his seat. “We shouldn’t have brought him here, he’s hopeless. Ram Bahadur got it all wrong about this fellow. Ashok.”

  “Hm?”

  “Look up from your phone a minute. Have you told Pinky that you’re staying back for good?”

  “Hm. Yes.”

  “What does the Queen say?”

  “Don’t call her that. She’s your sister-in-law, Mukesh. She’ll be happy in Gurgaon, it’s the most American part of the city.”

  Now, Mr. Ashok’s thinking was smart. Ten years ago, they say, there was nothing in Gurgaon, just water buffaloes and fat Punjabi farmers. Today it’s the modernest suburb of Delhi. American Express, Microsoft, all the big American companies have offices there. The main road is full of shopping malls—each mall has a cinema inside! So if Pinky Madam missed America, this was the best place to bring her.

  “This moron,” the Mongoose said, “see what he’s done. He’s got lost again.”

  He stretched his hand and smacked my skull with it. “Take a left from the fountain, you idiot! Don’t you know how to get to the house from here?”

  I began apologizing, but a voice from behind me said, “It’s all right, Balram. Just get us home.”

  “See—you’re defending him again.”

  “Just put yourself in his place, Mukesh. Can you imagine how confusing Delhi must be to him? It must be like getting to New York for the first time was for me.”

  The Mongoose switched to English—and I didn’t catch what he said—but Mr. Ashok replied in Hindi, “Pinky thinks the same too. That’s the only thing you and she agree on, but I won’t have it, Mukesh. We don’t know who’s who in Delhi. This fellow, we can trust him. He’s from home.”