The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

  It's when your driver starts to read about Gandhi and the Buddha that it's time to wet your pants, Mr. Jiabao.

  After showing it to me, Vitiligo-Lips closed the magazine and threw it into the circle where the other drivers were sitting; they made a grab for it, like a bunch of dogs rushing after a bone. He yawned and looked at me.

  "What does your boss do for a living, Country-Mouse?"

  "I don't know."

  "Being loyal or being stupid, Country-Mouse? Where is he from?"

  "Dhanbad."

  "He's into coal, then. Probably here to bribe ministers. It's a rotten business, coal." He yawned again. "I used to drive a man who sold coal. Bad, bad business. But my current boss is into steel, and he makes the coal men look like saints. Where does he live?"

  I told him the name of our apartment block.

  "My master lives there too! We're neighbors!"

  He sidled right up to me; without moving away-that would have been rude-I tilted my body as far as I could from his lips.

  "Country-Mouse-does your boss"-he looked around, and dropped his voice to a whisper-"need anything?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Does your boss like foreign wine? I have a friend who works at a foreign embassy as a driver. He's got contacts there. You know the foreign-wine foreign-embassy scam?"

  I shook my head.

  "The scam is this, Country-Mouse. Foreign wine is very expensive in Delhi, because it's taxed. But the embassies get it in for free. They're supposed to drink their wine, but they sell it on the black market. I can get him other stuff too. Does he want golf balls? I've got people in the U.S. Consulate who will sell me that. Does he want women? I can get that too. If he's into boys, no problem."

  "My master doesn't do these things. He's a good man."

  The diseased lips opened up into a smile. "Aren't they all?"

  He began whistling some Hindi film song. One of the drivers had begun reading out a story from the magazine; all the others had gone silent. I looked at the mall for a while.

  I turned to the driver with the horrible pink lips and said, "I've got a question to ask you."

  "All right. Ask. You know I'll do anything for you, Country-Mouse."

  "This building-the one they call a mall-the one with the posters of women hanging on it-it's for shopping, right?"

  "Right."

  "And that"-I pointed to a shiny glass building to our left-"is that also a mall? I don't see any posters of women hanging on it."

  "That's not a mall, Country-Mouse. That's an office building. They make calls from there to America."

  "What kind of calls?"

  "I don't know. My master's daughter works in one of those buildings too. I drop her off at eight o'clock and she comes back at two in the morning. I know she makes pots and pots of money in that building, because she spends it all day in the malls." He leaned in close-the pink lips were just centimeters from mine. "Between the two of us, I think it's rather odd-girls going into buildings late at night and coming out with so much cash in the morning."

  He winked at me. "What else, Country-Mouse? You're a curious fellow."

  I pointed to one of the girls coming out of the mall.

  "What about her, Country-Mouse? You like her?"

  I blushed. "Tell me," I said, "don't the women in cities-like her-have hair in their armpits and on their legs like women in our villages?"

  * * *

  After half an hour, Mukesh Sir and Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam came out of the mall with shopping bags; I ran ahead to take their bags from them, and put them in the back of the car, and then closed the back and jumped into the driver's seat of the Honda City and drove them to their new home, which was up on the thirteenth floor of a gigantic apartment building. The name of the apartment building was Buckingham Towers B Block. It was next to another huge apartment building, built by the same housing company, which was Buckingham Towers A Block. Next to that was Windsor Manor A Block. And there were apartment blocks like this, all shiny and new, and with nice big English names, as far as the eye could see. Buckingham Towers B Block was one of the best-it had a nice big lobby, and an elevator in the lobby that all of us took up to the thirteenth floor.

  Personally, I didn't like the apartment much-the whole place was the size of the kitchen in Dhanbad. There were nice, soft, white sofas inside, and on the wall above the sofas, a giant framed photo of Cuddles and Puddles. The Stork had not allowed them to come with us to the city.

  I couldn't stand to look at those creatures, even in a photograph, and kept my eyes to the carpet the whole time I was in the room-which had the additional benefit of giving me the look of a pucca servant.

  "Leave the bags anywhere you want, Balram."

  "No. Put them down next to the table. Put them down exactly there," the Mongoose said.

  After putting the bags down, I went into the kitchen to see if any cleaning needed to be done-there was a servant just to take care of the apartment, but he was a sloppy fellow, and as I said, they didn't really have a "driver," just a servant who drove the car sometimes. I knew without being told I also had to take care of the apartment. Any cleaning there was to be done, I would do, and then come back and wait near the door with folded hands until Mukesh Sir said, "You can go now. And be ready at eight a.m. No hanky-panky just because you're in the city, understand?"

  Then I went down the elevator, got out of the building, and went down the stairs to the servants' quarters in the basement.

  I don't know how buildings are designed in your country, but in India every apartment block, every house, every hotel is built with a servants' quarters-sometimes at the back, and sometimes (as in the case of Buckingham Towers B Block) underground-a warren of interconnected rooms where all the drivers, cooks, sweepers, maids, and chefs of the apartment block can rest, sleep, and wait. When our masters wanted us, an electric bell began to ring throughout the quarters-we would rush to a board and find a red light flashing next to the number of the apartment whose servant was needed upstairs.

  I walked down two flights of stairs and pushed open the door to the servants' quarters.

  The moment I got there, the other servants screamed-they yelled-they howled with laughter.

  The vitiligo-lipped driver was sitting with them, howling the hardest. He had told them the question I had asked him. They could not get over their amusement; each one of them had to come up to me, and force his fingers through my hair, and call me a "village idiot," and slap me on the back too.

  Servants need to abuse other servants. It's been bred into us, the way Alsatian dogs are bred to attack strangers. We attack anyone who's familiar.

  There and then I resolved never again to tell anyone in Delhi anything I was thinking. Especially not another servant.

  They kept teasing all evening long, and even at night, when we all went to the dormitory to sleep. Something about my face, my nose, my teeth, I don't know, it got on their nerves. They even teased me about my uniform. See, in cities the drivers do not wear uniforms. They said I looked like a monkey in that uniform. So I changed into a dirty shirt and trousers like the rest of them, but the teasing, it just went on all night long.

  There was a man who swept the dormitory, and in the morning I asked him, "Isn't there someplace a man can be alone here?"

  "There's one empty room on the other side of the quarters, but no one wants it," he told me. "Who wants to live alone?"

  It was horrible, this room. The floor had not been finished, and there was a cheap whitish plaster on the walls in which you could see the marks of the hand that had applied the plaster. There was a flimsy little bed, barely big enough even for me, and a mosquito net on top of it.

  It would do.

  The second night, I did not sleep in the dormitory-I went to the room. I swept the floor, tied the mosquito net to four nails on the wall, and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, I understood why the mosquito net had been left there. Noises woke me up. The wall was covered with cockroaches,
which had come to feed on the minerals or the limestone in the plaster; their chewing made a continuous noise, and their antennae trembled from every spot on the wall. Some of the cockroaches landed on top of the net; from inside, I could see their dark bodies against its white weave. I folded in the fiber of the net and crushed one of them. The other roaches took no notice of this; they kept landing on the net-and getting crushed. Maybe everyone who lives in the city gets to be slow and stupid like this, I thought, and smiled, and went to sleep.

  "Had a good night among the roaches?" they teased when I came to the common toilet.

  Any thought I had of rejoining the dormitory ended there. The room was full of roaches, but it was mine, and no one teased me. One disadvantage was that the electric bell did not penetrate this room-but that was a kind of advantage too, I discovered in time.

  In the morning, after waiting my turn at the common toilet, and then my turn at the common sink, and then my turn at the common bathroom, I went up one flight of stairs, pushed open the door to the parking lot, and walked to the spot where the Honda City was parked. The car had to be wiped with a soft, wet cloth, inside and outside; a stick of incense had to be placed at the small statue of the goddess Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, which sat above the instrument board-this had the double advantage of getting rid of the mosquitoes that had sneaked in at night, and scenting the insides with an aroma of religion. I wiped the seats-nice, plush leather seats; I wiped the instruments; I lifted the leather mats on the floor and slapped the dust out of them. There were three magnetic stickers with images of the mother-goddess Kali on the dashboard-I had put them there, throwing out Ram Persad's magnetic stickers; I wiped them all. There was also a small fluffy ogre with a red tongue sticking out of its mouth hung by a chain from the rearview mirror. It was supposed to be a lucky charm, and the Stork liked to see it bob up and down as we drove. I punched the ogre in the mouth-then I wiped it clean. Next came the business of checking the box of paper tissues in the back of the car-it was elaborately carved and gilded, like something that a royal family had owned, though it was actually made of cardboard. I made sure there were fresh tissues in the box. Pinky Madam used dozens of tissues each time we went out-she said the pollution in Delhi was so bad. She had left her crushed and crumpled used tissues near the box, and I had to pick them up and throw them out.

  The electric buzzer sounded through the parking lot. A voice over the lobby microphone said, "Driver Balram. Please report to the main entrance of Buckingham B Block with the car."

  And so it was that I would get into the Honda City, drive up a ramp, and come out to see my first sunlight of the day.

  The brothers were dressed in posh suits-they were standing at the door to the building, chatting and chirruping; when they got in, the Mongoose said, "The Congress Party headquarters, Balram. We went there the other day-I hope you remember it and don't get lost again."

  I'm not going to let you down today, sir.

  Rush hour in Delhi. Cars, scooters, motorbikes, autorickshaws, black taxis, jostling for space on the road. The pollution is so bad that the men on the motorbikes and scooters have a handkerchief wrapped around their faces-each time you stop at a red light, you see a row of men with black glasses and masks on their faces, as if the whole city were out on a bank heist that morning.

  There was a good reason for the face masks; they say the air is so bad in Delhi that it takes ten years out of a man's life. Of course, those in the cars don't have to breathe the outside air-it is just nice, cool, clean, air-conditioned air for us. With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open-a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road-and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.

  I was taking my particular dark egg right into the heart of the city. To my left I saw the domes of the President's House-the place where all the important business of the country is done. When the air pollution is really bad, the building is completely blotted out from the road; but today it shone beautifully.

  In ten minutes, I was at the headquarters of the Congress Party. Now, this is an easy place to find, because there are always two or three giant cardboard billboards with the face of Sonia Gandhi outside.

  I stopped the car, ran out, and opened the door for Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose; as he got out, Mr. Ashok said "We'll be back in half an hour."

  This confused me; they never told me in Dhanbad when they'd be back. Of course it meant nothing. They could take two hours to come back, or three. But it was a kind of courtesy that they apparently now had to give me because we were in Delhi.

  A group of farmers came to the headquarters, and weren't allowed inside, and shouted something or other, and left. A TV van came to the headquarters and honked; they were let in at once.

  I yawned. I punched the little black ogre in its red mouth, and it bobbed back and forth. I turned my head around, from side to side.

  I looked at the big poster of Sonia Gandhi. She was holding a hand up in the poster, as if waving to me-I waved back.

  I yawned, closed my eyes, and slithered down my seat. With one eye open, I looked at the magnetic sticker of the goddess Kali-who is a very fierce black-skinned goddess, holding a scimitar, and a garland of skulls. I made a note to myself to change that sticker. She looked too much like Granny.

  Two hours later, the brothers returned to the car.

  "We're going to the President's House, Balram. Up the hill. You know the place?"

  "Yes, sir, I've seen it."

  Now, I'd already seen most of the famous sights of Delhi -the House of Parliament, the Jantar Mantar, the Qutub-but I'd not yet been to this place-the most important one of all. I drove toward Raisina Hill, and then all the way up the hill, stopping each time a guard put his hand out and checked inside the car, and then stopping right in front of one of the big domed buildings around the President's House.

  "Wait in the car, Balram. We'll be back in thirty minutes."

  For the first half an hour, I was too frightened to get out of the car. I opened the door-I stepped out-I took a look around. Somewhere inside these domes and towers that were all around me, the big men of this country-the prime minister, the president, top ministers and bureaucrats-were discussing things, and writing them out, and stamping papers. Someone was saying-"There, five hundred million rupees for that dam!"-and someone was saying-"Fine, attack Pakistan, then!"

  I wanted to run around shouting: "Balram is here too! Balram is here too!"

  I got back into the car to make sure I didn't do anything stupid and get arrested for it.

  It was getting dark when the two brothers came out of the building; a fat man walked out with them, and talked to them for a while, outside the car, and then shook their hands and waved goodbye to us.

  Mr. Ashok was dark and sullen when he got in. The Mongoose asked me to drive them back home-"without making any mistakes again, understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  They sat in silence, which confused me. If I had just gone into the President's House, I'd roll down the windows and shout it aloud to everyone on the road!

  "Look at that."

  "What?"

  "That statue."

  I looked out the window to see a large bronze statue of a group of men-this is a well-known statue, which you will no doubt see in Delhi: at the head is Mahatma Gandhi, with his walking stick, and behind him follow the people of India, being led from darkness to light.

  The Mongoose squinted at the statue.

  "What about it? I've seen it before."

  "We're driving past Gandhi, after just having given a bribe to a minister. It's a fucking joke, isn't it."

  "You sound like your wife now," the Mongoose said. "I don't like swearing-it's not part of our traditions here."

  But Mr. Ashok was too red in the face to keep quiet.

  "It is a fucking joke-our political system-and I'
ll keep saying it as long as I like."

  "Things are complicated in India, Ashok. It's not like in America. Please reserve your judgment."

  * * *

  There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble-we'd move a foot-hope would rise-then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we'd be stuck again. Everyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck-the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution.

  A man driving a buffalo cart had stopped in front of us; a pile of empty car engine oil cans fifteen feet high had been tied by rope to his cart. His poor water buffalo! To carry all that load-while sucking in this air!

  The autorickshaw driver next to me began to cough violently-he turned to the side and spat, three times in a row. Some of the spit flecked the side of the Honda City. I glared-I raised my fist. He cringed, and namasted me in apology.

  "It's like we're in a concert of spitting!" Mr. Ashok said, looking at the autorickshaw driver.

  Well, if you were out there breathing that acid air, you'd be spitting like him too, I thought.

  The cars moved again-we gained three feet-then the red lights flashed and everything stopped again.

  "In Beijing apparently they've got a dozen ring roads. Here we have one. No wonder we keep getting jams. Nothing is planned. How will we ever catch up with the Chinese?"

  (By the way, Mr. Jiabao-a dozen ring roads? Wow.)

  Dim streetlights were glowing down onto the pavement on either side of the traffic; and in that orange-hued half-light, I could see multitudes of small, thin, grimy people squatting, waiting for a bus to take them somewhere, or with nowhere to go and about to unfurl a mattress and sleep right there. These poor bastards had come from the darkness to Delhi to find some light-but they were still in the darkness. Hundreds of them, there seemed to be, on either side of the traffic, and their life was entirely unaffected by the jam. Were they even aware that there was a jam? We were like two separate cities-inside and outside the dark egg. I knew I was in the right city. But my father, if he were alive, would be sitting on that pavement, cooking some rice gruel for dinner, and getting ready to lie down and sleep under a streetlamp, and I couldn't stop thinking of that and recognizing his features in some beggar out there. So I was in some way out of the car too, even while I was driving it.