The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

  But on the other hand.

  See, I was like that ass now. And all I would do, if I had children, was teach them to be asses like me, and carry rubble around for the rich.

  I put my hands on the steering wheel, and my fingers tightened into a strangling grip.

  The way I had rushed to press Mr. Ashok's feet, the moment I saw them, even though he hadn't asked me to! Why did I feel that I had to go close to his feet, touch them and press them and make them feel good-why? Because the desire to be a servant had been bred into me: hammered into my skull, nail after nail, and poured into my blood, the way sewage and industrial poison are poured into Mother Ganga.

  I had a vision of a pale stiff foot pushing through a fire.

  "No," I said.

  I pulled my feet up onto the seat, got into the lotus position, and said, " Om," over and over again. How long I sat that evening in the car with my eyes closed and legs crossed like the Buddha I don't know, but the giggling and scratching noise made me open my eyes. All the other drivers had gathered around me-one of them was scratching the glass with his fingernails. Someone had seen me in the lotus position inside the locked car. They were gaping at me as if I were something in a zoo.

  I scrambled out of the lotus position at once. I put a big grin on my face-I got out of the car to a volley of thumps and blows and shrieks of laughter, all of which I meekly accepted, while murmuring, "Just trying it out, yoga-they show it on TV all the time, don't they?"

  The Rooster Coop was doing its work. Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters, or entrepreneurs.

  Yes, that's the sad truth, Mr. Premier.

  The coop is guarded from the inside.

  Mr. Premier, you must excuse me-the phone is ringing. I'll be back in a minute.

  * * *

  Alas: I'll have to stop this story for a while. It's only 1:32 in the morning, but we'll have to break off here. Something has come up, sir-an emergency. I'll be back, trust me.

  The Sixth Morning

  Pardon me, Your Excellency, for the long intermission. It's now 6:20, so I've been gone five hours. Unfortunately, there was an incident that threatened to jeopardize the reputation of an outsourcing company I work with.

  A fairly serious incident, sir. A man has lost his life in this incident. (No: Don't misunderstand. I had nothing to do with his death! But I'll explain later.)

  Now, excuse me a minute while I turn the fan on-I'm still sweating, sir-and let me sit down on the floor, and watch the fan chop up the light of the chandelier.

  The rest of today's narrative will deal mainly with the sorrowful tale of how I was corrupted from a sweet, innocent village fool into a citified fellow full of debauchery, depravity, and wickedness.

  All these changes happened in me because they happened first in Mr. Ashok. He returned from America an innocent man, but life in Delhi corrupted him-and once the master of the Honda City becomes corrupted, how can the driver stay innocent?

  Now, I thought I knew Mr. Ashok, sir. But that's presumption on the part of any servant.

  The moment his brother left, he changed. He began wearing a black shirt with the top button open, and changed his perfume.

  "To the mall, sir?"

  "Yes."

  "Which mall, sir? The one where Madam used to go?"

  But Mr. Ashok would not take the bait. He was punching the buttons of his cell phone and he just grunted, "Sahara Mall, Balram."

  "That's the one Madam liked going to, sir."

  "Don't keep talking about Madam in every other sentence."

  I sat outside the mall and wondered what he was doing there. There was a flashing red light on the top floor, and I guessed that it was a disco. Lines of young men and women were standing outside the mall, waiting to go up to that red light. I trembled with fear to see what these city girls were wearing.

  Mr. Ashok didn't stay long in there, and he came out alone. I breathed out in relief.

  "Back to Buckingham, sir?"

  "Not yet. Take me to the Sheraton Hotel."

  As I drove into the city, I noticed that something was different about the way Delhi looked that night.

  Had I never before seen how many painted women stood at the sides of the roads? Had I never seen how many men had stopped their cars, in the middle of the traffic, to negotiate a price with these women?

  I closed my eyes; I shook my head. What's happening to you tonight?

  At this point, something took place that cleared my confusion-but also proved very embarrassing to me and to Mr. Ashok. I had stopped the car at a traffic signal; a girl began crossing the road in a tight T-shirt, her chest bobbing up and down like three kilograms of brinjals in a bag. I glanced at the rearview mirror-and there was Mr. Ashok, his eyes also bobbing up and down.

  I thought, Aha! Caught you, you rascal!

  And his eyes shone, for he had seen my eyes, and he was thinking the exact same thing: Aha! Caught you, you rascal!

  We had caught each other out.

  (This little rectangular mirror inside the car, Mr. Jiabao-has no one ever noticed before how embarrassing it is? How, every now and then, when master and driver find each other's eyes in this mirror, it swings open like a door into a changing room, and the two of them have suddenly caught each other naked?)

  I was blushing. Mercifully, the light turned green, and I drove on.

  I swore not to look in the rearview mirror again that night. Now I understood why the city looked so different-why my beak was getting stiff as I was driving.

  Because he was horny. And inside that sealed car, master and driver had somehow become one body that night.

  It was with great relief that I drove the Honda into the gate of the Maurya Sheraton Hotel, and brought that excruciating trip to an end.

  Now, Delhi is full of grand hotels. In ring roads and sewage plants you might have an edge in Beijing, but in pomp and splendor, we're second to none in Delhi. We've got the Sheraton, the Imperial, the Taj Palace, Taj Mansingh, the Oberoi, the InterContinental, and many more. Now, the five-star hotels of Bangalore I know inside out, having spent thousands of rupees eating kebabs of chicken, mutton, and beef in their restaurants, and picking up sluts of all nationalities in their bars, but the five-stars of Delhi are things of mystery to me. I've been to them all, but I've never stepped past the front door of one. We're not allowed to do that; there's usually a fat guard at the glass door up at the front, a man with a waxed mustache and beard, who wears a ridiculous red circus turban and thinks he's someone important because the American tourists want to have their photo taken with him. If he so much as sees a driver near the hotel, he'll glare-he'll shake a finger like a schoolteacher.

  That's the driver's fate. Every other servant thinks he can boss over us.

  There are strict rules at the five-stars about where the drivers keep their cars while their masters are inside. Sometimes they put you in a parking spot downstairs. Sometimes in the back. Sometimes up at the front, near the trees. And you sit there and wait, for an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, yawning and doing nothing, until the guard at the door, the fellow with the turban, mumbles into a microphone, saying, "Driver So-and-So, you may come to the glass door with the car. Your master is waiting for you."

  The drivers were waiting near the parking lot of the hotel, in their usual key-chain-swirling, paan-chewing, gossipmongering, ammonia-releasing circle. Crouching and jabbering like monkeys.

  The driver with the diseased lips was sitting apart from them, engrossed in his magazine. On this week's cover, there was a photo of a woman lying on a bed, her clothes undone; her lover stood next to her, raising a knife over her head.

  MURDER WEEKLY

  RUPEES 4.50

  EXCLUSIVE TRUE STORY:

  "HE WANTED HIS MASTER'S WIFE."

  LOVE-RAPE-REVENGE!

  "Been thinking about what I said, Country-Mouse?" he asked me, as he flipped through a story.

  "About getting your master something
he'd like? Hashish, or girls, or golf balls? Genuine golf balls from the U.S. Consulate?"

  "He's not that kind."

  The pink lips twisted into a smile. "Want to know a secret? My master likes film actresses. He takes them to a hotel in Jangpura, with a big, glowing T sign on it, and hammers them there."

  He named three famous Mumbai actresses his master had "hammered."

  "And yet he looks like a goody-goody. Only I know-and I tell you, all the masters are the same. One day you'll believe me. Now come read a story with me."

  We read like that, in total silence. After the third murder story, I went to the side, to a clump of trees, to take an ammonia break. He walked along with me.

  Our piss hit the bark of the tree just inches apart.

  "I've got a question for you."

  "About city girls again?"

  "No. About what happens to old drivers."

  "Huh?"

  "I mean what will happen to me a few years from now? Do I make enough money to buy a house and then set up a business of my own?"

  "Well," he said, "a driver is good till he's fifty or fifty-five. Then the eyes go bad and they kick you out, right? That's thirty years from now, Country-Mouse. If you save from today, you'll make enough to buy a small home in some slum. If you've been a bit smarter and made a little extra on the side, then you'll have enough to put your son in a good school. He can learn English, he can go to university. That's the best-case scenario. A house in a slum, a kid in college."

  "Best-case?"

  "Well, on the other hand, you can get typhoid from bad water. Boss sacks you for no reason. You get into an accident-plenty of worst-case scenarios."

  I was still pissing, but he put a hand on me. "There's something I've got to ask you, Country-Mouse. Are you all right?"

  I looked at him sideways. "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

  "I'm sorry to tell you this, but some of the drivers are talking about it openly. You sit by yourself in your master's car the whole time, you talk to yourself…You know what you need? A woman. Have you seen the slum behind the malls? They're not bad-looking-nice and plump. Some of us go there once a week. You can come too."

  "DRIVER BALRAM, WHERE ARE YOU?"

  It was the call from the microphone at the gate of the hotel. Mr. Turban was at the microphone-speaking in the most pompous, stern voice possible: "DRIVER BALRAM REPORT AT ONCE TO THE DOOR. NO DELAY. YOUR MASTER WANTS YOU."

  I zipped up and ran, wiping my wet fingers on the back of my pants.

  Mr. Ashok was walking out of the hotel with his hands around a girl when I brought the car up to the gate.

  She was a slant-eyed one, with yellow skin. A foreigner. A Nepali. Not even of his caste or background. She sniffed about the seats-the seats that I had polished-and jumped on them.

  Mr. Ashok put his hands on the girl's bare shoulders. I took my eyes away from the mirror.

  I have never approved of debauchery inside cars, Mr. Jiabao.

  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 w
hat 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.