After an hour of thrashing through the traffic, we got home at last to Buckingham B Block. But the torture wasn't over.
As he was getting out of the car, the Mongoose tapped his pockets, looked confused for a moment, and said, "I've lost a rupee."
He snapped his fingers at me.
"Get down on your knees. Look for it on the floor of the car."
I got down on my knees. I sniffed in between the mats like a dog, all in search of that one rupee.
"What do you mean, it's not there? Don't think you can steal from us just because you're in the city. I want that rupee."
"We've just paid half a million rupees in a bribe, Mukesh, and now we're screwing this man over for a single rupee. Let's go up and have a scotch."
"That's how you corrupt servants. It starts with one rupee. Don't bring your American ways here."
Where that rupee coin went remains a mystery to me to this day, Mr. Premier. Finally, I took a rupee coin out of my shirt pocket, dropped it on the floor of the car, picked it up, and gave it to the Mongoose.
"Here it is, sir. Forgive me for taking so long to find it!"
There was a childish delight on his dark master's face. He put the rupee coin in his hand and sucked his teeth, as if it were the best thing that had happened to him all day.
I took the elevator up with the brothers, to see if any work was to be done in the apartment.
Pinky Madam was on the sofa watching TV; as soon as we got in, she said, "I've eaten already," turned the TV off, and went into another room. The Mongoose said he didn't want dinner, so Mr. Ashok would have to eat alone at the dinner table. He asked me to heat some of the vegetables in the fridge for him, and I went into the kitchen to do so.
Casting a quick look back as I opened the fridge door, I saw that he was on the verge of tears.
* * *
When you're the driver, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation-and then, just when the masters are coming to the crucial part of their talk-it always happens.
Some moron in a white jeep almost hits you while trying to overtake a car on the wrong side of the road. You swerve to the side, glare at the moron, curse him (silently)-and by the time you're eavesdropping again, the conversation in the backseat has moved on…and you never know how that sentence ended.
I knew something was wrong, but I hadn't realized how bad the situation had become until the morning Mr. Ashok said to me, "Today you'll drop Mukesh Sir at the railway station, Balram."
"Yes, sir." I hesitated. I wanted to ask, Just him?
Did that mean he was going back for good? Did that mean Pinky Madam had finally got rid of him with her door-slamming and tart remarks?
At six o'clock, I waited with the car outside the entranceway. I drove the brothers to the railway station. Pinky Madam did not come along.
I carried the Mongoose's bags to the right carriage of the train, then went to a stall and bought a dosa, wrapped in paper, for him. That was what he always liked to eat on the train. But I unwrapped the dosa and removed the potatoes, flinging them onto the rail tracks, because potatoes made him fart, and he didn't like that. A servant gets to know his master's intestinal tract from end to end-from lips to anus.
The Mongoose told me, "Wait. I have instructions for you."
I squatted in a corner of the railway carriage.
"Balram, you're not in the Darkness any longer."
"Yes, sir."
"There is a law in Delhi."
"Yes, sir."
"You know those bronze statues of Gandhi and Nehru that are everywhere? The police have put cameras inside their eyes to watch for the cars. They see everything you do, understand that?"
"Yes, sir."
Then he frowned, as if wondering what else to say. He said, "The air conditioner should be turned off when you are on your own."
"Yes, sir."
"Music should not be played when you are on your own."
"Yes, sir."
"At the end of each day you must give us a reading of the meter to make sure you haven't been driving the car on your own."
"Yes, sir."
The Mongoose turned to Mr. Ashok and touched him on the forearm. "Take some interest in this, Ashok Brother, you'll have to check up on the driver when I'm gone."
But Mr. Ashok was playing with his cell phone. He put it down and said, "The driver's honest. He's from Laxmangarh. I saw his family when I went there." Then he went back to his cell phone.
"Don't talk like that. Don't make a joke of what I'm saying," the Mongoose said.
But he was paying no attention to his brother-he kept punching the buttons on his cell phone: "One minute, one minute, I'm talking to a friend in New York."
Drivers like to say that some men are first-gear types. Mr. Ashok was a classic first-gear man. He liked to start things, but nothing held his attention for long.
Looking at him, I made two discoveries, almost simultaneously. Each filled me with a sense of wonder. Firstly, you could "talk" on a cell phone-to someone in New York -just by punching on its buttons. The wonders of modern science never cease to amaze me!
Secondly, I realized that this tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, foreign-educated man, who would be my only master in a few minutes, when the long whistle blew and this train headed off toward Dhanbad, was weak, helpless, absentminded, and completely unprotected by the usual instincts that run in the blood of a landlord.
If you were back in Laxmangarh, we would have called you the Lamb.
"Why are you grinning like a donkey?" the Mongoose snapped at me, and I almost fell over apologizing to him.
That evening, at eight o'clock, Mr. Ashok sent a message to me through another servant: "Be ready in half an hour, Balram. Pinky Madam and I will be going out."
And the two of them did come down, about two and three-quarters of an hour later.
The moment the Mongoose left, I swear, the skirts became even shorter.
When she sat in the back, I could see half her boobs hanging out of her clothes each time I had to look in the rearview mirror.
This put me in a very bad situation, sir. For one thing, my beak was aroused, which is natural in a healthy young man like me. On the other hand, as you know, master and mistress are like father and mother to you, so how can you get excited by the mistress?
I simply avoided looking at the rearview mirror. If there was a crash, it wouldn't be my fault.
Mr. Premier, maybe when you have been driving, in the thick traffic, you have stopped your car and lowered your window; and then you have felt the hot, panting breath of the exhaust pipe of a truck next to you. Now be aware, Mr. Premier, that there is a hot panting diesel engine just in front of your own nose.
Me.
Each time she came in with that low black dress, my beak got big. I hated her for wearing that dress; but I hated my beak even more for what it was doing.
* * *
At the end of the month, I went up to the apartment. He was sitting there, alone, on the couch beneath the framed photo of the two Pomeranians.
"Sir?"
"Hm. What's up, Balram?"
"It's been a month."
"So?"
"Sir…my wages."
"Ah, yes. Three thousand, right?" He whipped out his wallet-it was fat with notes-and flicked out three notes onto the table. I picked them up and bowed. Something of what his brother had been saying must have got to him, because he said, "You're sending some of it home, aren't you?"
"All of it, sir. Just what I need to eat and drink here-the rest goes home."
"Good, Balram. Good. Family is a good thing."
At ten o'clock that night I walked down to the market just around the corner from Buckingham Towers B Block. It was the last shop in the market; on a billboard above it, huge black letters in Hindi said:
"ACTION" ENGLISH LIQUOR SHOP
INDIAN-MADE FOREIGN LIQUOR SOLD HERE
It was the usual civil war that you find in a li
quor shop in the evenings: men pushing and straining at the counter with their hands outstretched and yelling at the top of their voices. The boys behind the counter couldn't hear a word of what was being said in that din, and kept getting orders mixed up, and that led to more yelling and fighting. I pushed through the crowd-got to the counter, banged my fist, and yelled, "Whiskey! The cheapest kind! Immediate service-or someone will get hurt, I swear!"
It took me fifteen minutes to get a bottle. I stuffed it down my trousers, for there was nowhere else to hide it, and went back to Buckingham.
* * *
"Balram. You took your time."
"Forgive me, madam."
"You look ill, Balram. Are you all right?"
"Yes, madam. I have a headache. I didn't sleep well last night."
"Now make some tea. I hope you can cook better than you can drive?"
"Yes, madam."
"I hear you're a Halwai, your family are cooks. Do you know some special traditional type of ginger tea?"
"Yes, madam."
"Then make it."
I had no idea what Pinky Madam wanted, but at least her boobs were covered-that was a relief.
I got the teakettle ready and began making tea. I had just got the water boiling when the kitchen filled up with perfume. She was watching from the threshold.
My head was still spinning from last night's whiskey. I had been chewing aniseed all morning so no one would notice the stench of booze on my breath, but I was still worried, so I turned away from her as I washed a chunk of ginger under the tap.
"What are you doing?" she shouted.
"Washing ginger, madam."
"That's with your right hand. What's your left hand doing?"
"Madam?"
I looked down.
"Stop scratching your groin with your left hand!"
"Don't be angry, madam. I'll stop."
But it was no use. She would not stop shouting:
"You're so filthy! Look at you, look at your teeth, look at your clothes! There's red paan all over your teeth, and there are red spots on your shirt. It's disgusting! Get out-clean up the mess you've made in the kitchen and get out."
I put the piece of ginger back in the fridge, turned off the boiling water, and went downstairs.
I got in front of the common mirror and opened my mouth. The teeth were red, blackened, rotting from paan. I washed my mouth out, but the lips were still red.
She was right. The paan-which I'd chewed for years, like my father and like Kishan and everyone else I knew-was discoloring my teeth and corroding my gums.
The next evening, Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam came down to the entranceway fighting, got into the car fighting, and kept fighting as I drove the Honda City from Buckingham Towers B Block onto the main road.
"Going to the mall, sir?" I asked, the moment they were quiet.
Pinky Madam let out a short, high laugh.
I expected such things from her, but not from him-yet he joined in too.
"It's not maal, it's a mall," he said. "Say it again."
I kept saying "maal," and they kept asking me to repeat it, and then giggled hysterically each time I did so. By the end they were holding hands again. So some good came out of my humiliation-I was glad for that, at least.
They got out of the car, slammed the door, and went into the mall; a guard saluted as they came close, then the glass doors opened by themselves and swallowed the two of them in.
I did not get out of the car: it helped me concentrate my mind better if I was here. I closed my eyes.
Moool.
No, that wasn't it.
Mowll.
Malla.
"Country-Mouse! Get out of the car and come here!"
A little group of drivers crouched in a circle outside the parking lot in the mall. One of them began shouting at me, waving a copy of a magazine in his hand.
It was the driver with the diseased lips. I put a big smile on my face and went up to him.
"Any more questions about city life, Country-Mouse?" he asked. Cannonades of laughter all around him.
He put a hand on me and whispered, "Have you thought about what I said, sweetie pie? Does your master need anything? Ganja? Girls? Boys? Golf balls-good-quality American golf balls, duty-free?"
"Don't offer him all these things now," another driver said. This one was crouching on his knees, swinging a key chain with the keys to his master's car like a boy with a toy. "He's raw from the village, still pure. Let city life corrupt him first." He snatched the magazine-Murder Weekly, of course-and began reading out loud. The gossip stopped. All the drivers drew closer.
"It was a rainy night. Vishal lay in bed, his breath smelling of alcohol, his eyes glancing out the window. The woman next door had come home, and was about to remove her-"
The man with the vitiligo lips shouted, "Look there! It's happening today too-"
The driver with the magazine, annoyed at this disturbance, kept reading-but the others were standing up now, looking in the direction of the mall.
What was happening, Mr. Premier, was one of those incidents that were so common in the early days of the shopping mall, and which were often reported in the daily newspapers under the title "Is There No Space for the Poor in the Malls of New India?"
The glass doors had opened, but the man who wanted to go into them could not do so. The guard at the door had stopped him. He pointed his stick at the man's feet and shook his head-the man had sandals on his feet. All of us drivers too had sandals on our feet. But everyone who was allowed into the mall had shoes on their feet.
Instead of backing off and going away-as nine in ten in his place would have done-the man in the sandals exploded, "Am I not a human being too?"
He yelled it so hard that the spit burst from his mouth like a fountain and his knees were trembling. One of the drivers let out a whistle. A man who had been sweeping the outer compound of the mall put down his broom and watched.
For a moment the man at the door looked ready to hit the guard-but then he turned around and walked away.
"That fellow has balls," one of the drivers said. "If all of us were like that, we'd rule India, and they would be polishing our boots."
Then the drivers got back into their circle. The reading of the story resumed.
I watched the keys circling in the key chain. I watched the smoke rising from the cigarettes. I watched the paan hit the earth in red diagonals.
The worst part of being a driver is that you have hours to yourself while waiting for your employer. You can spend this time chitchatting and scratching your groin. You can read murder and rape magazines. You can develop the chauffeur's habit-it's a kind of yoga, really-of putting a finger in your nose and letting your mind go blank for hours (they should call it the "bored driver's asana"). You can sneak a bottle of Indian liquor into the car-boredom makes drunks of so many honest drivers.
But if the driver sees his free time as an opportunity, if he uses it to think, then the worst part of his job becomes the best.
That evening, while driving back to the apartment, I looked into the rearview mirror. Mr. Ashok was wearing a T-shirt.
It was like no T-shirt I would ever choose to buy at a store. The larger part of it was empty and white and there was a small design in the center. I would have bought something very colorful, with lots of words and designs on it. Better value for the money.
Then one night, after Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam had gone up, I went out to the local market. Under the glare of naked yellow lightbulbs, men squatted on the road, selling basketfuls of glassy bangles, steel bracelets, toys, head scarves, pens, and key chains. I found the fellow selling T-shirts.
"No," I kept saying to each shirt he showed me-until I found one that was all white, with a small word in English in the center. Then I went looking for the man selling black shoes.
I bought my first toothpaste that night. I got it from the man who usually sold me paan; he had a side business in toothpastes that canceled out the effec
ts of paan.
SHAKTI WHITENER
WITH CHARCOAL AND CLOVES TO CLEAN YOUR TEETH
ONLY ONE RUPEE FIFTY PAISE!
As I brushed my teeth with my finger, I noticed what my left hand was doing: it had crawled up to my groin without my noticing-the way a lizard goes stealthily up a wall-and was about to scratch.
I waited. The moment it moved, I seized it with the right hand.
I pinched the thick skin between the thumb and the index finger, where it hurts the most, and held it like that for a whole minute. When I let go, a red welt had formed on the skin of the palm.
There.
That's your punishment for groin-scratching from now on.
In my mouth, the toothpaste had thickened into a milky foam; it began dripping down the sides of my lips. I spat it out.
Brush. Brush. Spit.
Brush. Brush. Spit.
Why had my father never told me not to scratch my groin? Why had my father never taught me to brush my teeth in milky foam? Why had he raised me to live like an animal? Why do all the poor live amid such filth, such ugliness?
Brush. Brush. Spit.
Brush. Brush. Spit.
If only a man could spit his past out so easily.
* * *
Next morning, as I drove Pinky Madam to the mall, I felt a small parcel of cotton pressing against my shoe-clad feet. She left, slamming the door; I waited for ten minutes. And then, inside the car, I changed.
The White Tiger Page 11