The White Tiger: A Novel Read online

  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 effects 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.

  I went to the gateway of the mall in my new white T-shirt. But there, the moment I saw the guard, I turned around—went back to the Honda City. I got into the car and punched the ogre three times. I touched the stickers of the goddess Kali, with her long red tongue, for good luck.

  This time I went to the rear entrance.

  I was sure the guard in front of the door would challenge me and say, No, you’re not allowed in, even with a pair of black shoes and a T-shirt that is mostly white with just one English word on it. I was sure, until the last moment, that I would be caught, and called back, and slapped and humiliated there.

  Even as I was walking inside the mall, I was sure someone would say, Hey! That man is a paid driver! What’s he doing in here? There were guards in gray uniforms on every floor—all of them seemed to be watching me. It was my first taste of the fugitive’s life.

  I was conscious of a perfume in the air, of golden light, of cool, air-conditioned air, of people in T-shirts and jeans who were eyeing me strangely. I saw an elevator going up and down that seemed made of pure golden glass. I saw shops with walls of glass, and huge photos of handsome European men and women hanging on each wall. If only the other drivers could see me now!

  Getting out was as tricky as getting in, but again the guards didn’t say a word to me, and I walked back to the parking lot, got into the car, and changed back into my usual, richly colored shirt, and left the rich man’s plain T-shirt in a bundle near my feet.

  I came running out to where the other drivers were sitting. None of them had noticed me going in or coming out. They were too occupied with something else. One of the drivers—it was the fellow who liked to twirl his key chain all the time—had a cell phone with him. He forced me to take a look at his phone.

  “Do you call your wife with this thing?”

  “You can’t talk to anyone with it, you fool—it’s a one-way phone!”

  “So what’s the point of a phone you can’t talk to your family with?”

  “It’s so that my master can call me and give me instructions on where to pick him up. I just have to keep it here—in my pocket—wherever I go.”

  He took the phone back from me, rubbed it
clean, and put it in his pocket. Until this evening, his status in the drivers’ circle had been low: his master drove only a Maruti–Suzuki Zen, a small car. Today he was being as bossy as he wanted. The drivers were passing his cell phone from hand to hand and gazing at it like monkeys gaze at something shiny they have picked up. There was the smell of ammonia in the air; one of the drivers was pissing not far from us.

  Vitiligo-Lips was watching me from a corner.

  “Country-Mouse,” he said. “You look like a fellow who wants to say something.”

  I shook my head.

  The traffic grew worse by the day. There seemed to be more cars every evening. As the jams grew worse, so did Pinky Madam’s temper. One evening, when we were just crawling down M.G. Road into Gurgaon, she lost it completely. She began screaming.

  “Why can’t we go back, Ashoky? Look at this fucking traffic jam. It’s like this every other day now.”

  “Please don’t begin that again. Please.”

  “Why not? You promised me, Ashoky, we’ll be in Delhi just three months and get some paperwork done and go back. But I’m starting to think you only came here to deal with this income-tax problem. Were you lying to me the whole time?”

  It wasn’t his fault, what happened between them—I will insist on that, even in a court of law. He was a good husband, always coming up with plans to make her happy. On her birthday, for instance, he had me dress up as a maharaja, with a red turban and dark cooling glasses, and serve them their food in this costume. I’m not talking of any ordinary home cooking, either—he got me to serve her some of that stinking stuff that comes in cardboard boxes and drives all the rich absolutely crazy.

  She laughed and laughed and laughed when she saw me in my costume, bowing low to her with the cardboard box. I served them, and then, as Mr. Ashok had instructed, stood near the portrait of Cuddles and Puddles with folded hands and waited.

  “Ashok,” she said. “Now hear this. Balram, what is it we’re eating?”

  I knew it was a trap, but what could I do?—I answered. The two of them burst into giggles.

  “Say it again, Balram.”

  They laughed again.

  “It’s not piJJA. It’s piZZa. Say it properly.”

  “Wait—you’re mispronouncing it too. There’s a T in the middle. Peet. Zah.”

  “Don’t correct my English, Ashok. There’s no T in pizza. Look at the box.”

  I had to hold my breath as I stood there waiting for them to finish. The stuff smelled so awful.

  “He’s cut the pizza so badly. I just don’t understand how he can come from a caste of cooks.”

  “You’ve just dismissed the cook. Please don’t fire this fellow too—he’s an honest one.”

  When they were done, I scraped the food off the plates and washed them. From the kitchen window, I could see the main road of Gurgaon, full of the lights of the shopping malls. A new mall had just opened up at the end of the road, and the cars were streaming into its gates.

  I pulled the window shade down and went back to washing dishes.

  “Pijja.”

  “Pzijja.”

  “Zippja.”

  “Pizja.”

  I wiped the sink with my palm and turned off the lights.

  The two of them had gone into their bedroom. I heard shouting from inside. On tiptoe, I went to the closed door. I put my ear to the wood.

  Shouting rose from both sides—followed by a scream—followed by the sound of man’s flesh slapping woman’s flesh.

  About time you took charge, O Lamb-that-was-born-from-the-loins-of-a-landlord. I locked the door behind me and took the elevator down.

  Half an hour later, just when I was about to fall asleep, another of the servants came and yelled for me. The bell was ringing! I put on my pants, washed my hands again and again at the common tap, and drove the car up to the entrance of the building.

  “Drive us into the city.”

  “Yes, sir. Where in the city?”

  “Any place you want to go, Pinky?”

  No word from her.

  “Take us to Connaught Place, Balram.”

  Neither husband nor wife talked as I drove. I still had the maharaja outfit on. Mr. Ashok looked at Pinky Madam nervously half a dozen times.

  “You’re right, Pinky,” he said in a husky voice. “I didn’t mean to challenge you on what you said. But I told you, there’s only one thing wrong with this place—we have this fucked-up system called parliamentary democracy. Otherwise, we’d be just like China—”

  “Ashok. I have a headache. Please.”

  “We’ll have some fun tonight. There’s a good T.G.I. Friday’s here. You’ll like it.”

  When we got to Connaught Place, he made me stop in front of a big red neon light.

  “Wait for us here, Balram. We’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  They had been gone for an hour and I was still inside the car, watching the lights of Connaught Place.

  I punched the fluffy black ogre a dozen times. I looked at the magnetic stickers of goddess Kali with her skulls and her long red tongue—I stuck my tongue out at the old witch. I yawned.

  It was well past midnight and very cold.

  I would have loved to play some music to pass the time, but of course the Mongoose had forbidden that.

  I opened the door of the car: there was an acrid smell in the air. The other drivers had made a fire for themselves, which they kept going by shoving bits of plastic into it.

  The rich of Delhi, to survive the winter, keep electrical heaters, or gas heaters, or even burn logs of wood in their fireplaces. When the homeless, or servants like night watchmen and drivers who are forced to spend time outside in winter, want to keep warm, they burn whatever they find on the ground. One of the best things to put in the fire is cellophane, the kind used to wrap fruits, vegetables, and business books in: inside the flame, it changes its nature and melts into a clear fuel. The only problem is that while burning, it gives off a white smoke that makes your stomach churn.

  Vitiligo-Lips was feeding bags of cellophane into the fire; with his free hand he waved to me.

  “Country-Mouse, don’t sit there by yourself! That leads to bad thoughts!”

  The warmth was so tempting.

  But no. My mouth would tickle if I went near them, and I would ask for paan.

  “Look at the snob! He’s even dressed like a maharaja today!”

  “Come join us, maharaja of Buckingham!”

  Away from the warmth, away from temptation I walked, down the pathways of Connaught Place, until the smell of churned mud filled the air.

  There is construction work in any direction you look in Delhi. Glass skeletons being raised for malls or office blocks; rows of gigantic T-shaped concrete supports, like a line of anvils, where the new bridges or overpasses are coming up; huge craters being dug for new mansions for the rich. And here too, in the heart of Connaught Place, even in the middle of the night, under the glare of immense spotlights, construction went on. A giant pit had been excavated. Machines were rumbling from inside it.

  I had heard of this work: they were putting a railway under the ground of Delhi. The pit they had made for this work was as large as any of the coal mines I’d seen in Dhanbad. Another man was watching the pit with me—a well-dressed man in a shirt and tie and pants with nice pleats. Normally his kind would never talk to me, but maybe my maharaja tunic confused him.

  “This city is going to be like Dubai in five years, isn’t it?”

  “Five?” I said contemptuously. “In two years!”

  “Look at that yellow crane. It’s a monster.”

  It was a monster, sitting at the top of the pit with huge metal jaws alternately gorging and disgorging immense quantities of mud. Like creatures that had to obey it, men with troughs of mud on their heads walked in circles around the machine; they did not look much bigger than mice. Even in the winter night the sweat had made their shirts stick to their glistening black bodies.

  It w
as freezing cold when I returned to the car. All the other drivers had left. Still no sign of my masters. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I had had for dinner.

  A nice hot curry with juicy chunks of dark meat. Big puddles of red oil in the gravy.

  Nice.

  They woke me up by banging on my window. I scrambled out and opened the doors for them. Both were loud and happy, and reeked of some English liquor: whatever it was, I hadn’t yet tried it at the shop.

  I tell you, they were going at it like animals as I drove them out of Connaught Place. He was pushing his hand up and down her thigh, and she was giggling. I watched one second too long. He caught me in the mirror.

  I felt like a child that had been watching his parents through a slit in their bedroom door. My heart began to sweat—I half expected him to catch me by the collar, and fling me to the ground, and stamp me with his boots, the way his father used to do to fishermen in Laxmangarh.

  But this man, as I’ve told you, was different—he was capable of becoming someone better than his father. My eyes had touched his conscience; he nudged Pinky Madam and said, “We’re not alone, you know.”

  She became grumpy at once, and turned her face to the side. Five minutes passed in silence. Reeking of English liquor, she leaned toward me.

  “Give me the steering wheel.”

  “No, Pinky, don’t, you’re drunk, let him—”

  “What a fucking joke! Everyone in India drinks and drives. But you won’t let me do it?”

  “Oh, I hate this.” He slumped on his seat. “Balram, remember never to marry.”

  “Is he stopping at the traffic signal? Balram, why are you stopping? Just drive!”

  “It is a traffic signal, Pinky. Let him stop. Balram, obey the traffic rules. I command you.”

  “I command you to drive, Balram! Drive!”

  Completely confused by this time, I compromised—I took the car five feet in front of the white line, and then came to a stop.

  “Did you see what he did?” Mr. Ashok said. “That was pretty clever.”

  “Yes, Ashok. He’s a fucking genius.”

  The timer next to the red light said that there were still thirty seconds to go before the light changed to green. I was watching the timer when the giant Buddha materialized on my right. A beggar child had come up to the Honda City holding up a beautiful plaster-of-paris statue of the Buddha. Every night in Delhi, beggars are always selling something by the roadside, books or statues or strawberries in boxes—but for some reason, perhaps because my nerves were in such a bad state, I gazed at this Buddha longer than I should have.