The White Tiger: A Novel Page 5

  There was money in the air in Dhanbad. I saw buildings with sides made entirely of glass, and men with gold in their teeth. And all this glass and gold—all of it came from the coal pits. Outside the town, there was coal, more coal than you would find anywhere else in the Darkness, maybe more coal than anywhere else in the world. Miners came to eat at my tea shop—I always gave them the best service, because they had the best tales to tell.

  They said that the coal mines went on and on for miles and miles outside the town. In some places there were fires burning under the earth and sending smoke into the air—fires that had been burning continuously for a hundred years!

  And it was at the tea shop in this city built by coal, while wiping a table and lingering to overhear a conversation, that my life changed.

  “You know, sometimes I think I did the wrong thing in life, becoming a miner.”

  “Then? What else can people like you and me become? Politicians?”

  “Everyone’s getting a car these days—and you know how much they pay their drivers? One thousand seven hundred rupees a month!”

  I dropped my rag. I ran to Kishan, who was cleaning out the insides of an oven.

  After my father’s death, it was Kishan who took care of me. I don’t attempt to hide his role in making me who I am today. But he had no entrepreneurial spunk at all. He would have been happy to let me sink in the mud.

  “Nothing doing,” Kishan said. “Granny said stick to the tea shop—and we’ll stick to the tea shop.”

  I went to all the taxi stands; down on my knees I begged random strangers; but no one would agree to teach me car-driving for free.

  It was going to cost me three hundred rupees to learn how to drive a car.

  Three hundred rupees!

  Today, in Bangalore, I can’t get enough people for my business. People come and people go. Good men never stay. I’m even thinking of advertising in the newspaper.

  BANGALORE-BASED BUSINESSMAN SEEKS

  SMART MEN FOR HIS BUSINESS

  APPLY AT ONCE!

  ATTRACTIVE REMUNERATION PACKAGES ON OFFER

  LESSONS IN LIFE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP INCLUDED FOR FREE!

  Go to any pub or bar in Bangalore with your ears open and it’s the same thing you hear: can’t get enough call-center workers, can’t get enough software engineers, can’t get enough sales managers. There are twenty, twenty-five pages of job advertisements in the newspaper every week.

  Things are different in the Darkness. There, every morning, tens of thousands of young men sit in the tea shops, reading the newspaper, or lie on a charpoy humming a tune, or sit in their rooms talking to a photo of a film actress. They have no job to do today. They know they won’t get any job today. They’ve given up the fight.

  They’re the smart ones.

  The stupid ones have gathered in a field in the center of the town. Every now and then a truck comes by, and all the men in the field rush to it with their hands outstretched, shouting, “Take me! Take me!”

  Everyone pushed me; I pushed back, but the truck scooped up only six or seven men and left the rest of us behind. They were off on some construction or digging job—the lucky bastards. Another half hour of waiting. Another truck came. Another scramble, another fight. After the fifth or sixth fight of the day, I finally found myself at the head of the crowd, face-to-face with the truck driver. He was a Sikh, a man with a big blue turban. In one hand he held a wooden stick, and he swung the stick to drive back the crowd.

  “Everyone!” he shouted. “Take off your shirts! I’ve got to see a man’s nipples before I give him a job!”

  He looked at my chest; he squeezed the nipples—slapped my butt—glared into my eyes—and then poked the stick against my thigh: “Too thin! Fuck off!”

  “Give me a chance, sir—my body is small but there’s a lot of fight in it—I’ll dig for you, I’ll haul cement for you, I’ll—”

  He swung his stick; it hit me on the left ear. I fell down, and others rushed to take my place.

  I sat on the ground, rubbed my ear, and watched the truck leave in a big cloud of dust.

  The shadow of an eagle passed over my body. I burst into tears.

  “White Tiger! There you are!”

  Kishan and Cousin Dilip lifted me up from the ground, big smiles on their faces. Great news! Granny had agreed to let them invest in my driving classes. “There’s only one thing,” Kishan said. “Granny says you’re a greedy pig. She wants you to swear by all the gods in heaven that you won’t forget her once you get rich.”

  “I swear.”

  “Pinch your neck and swear—you’ll send every rupee you make every month back to Granny.”

  We went into the house where the taxi drivers lived. An old man in a brown uniform, which was like an ancient army outfit, was smoking a hookah that was warmed up by a bowl of live coals. Kishan explained the situation to him.

  The old driver asked, “What caste are you?”

  “Halwai.”

  “Sweet-makers,” the old driver said, shaking his head. “That’s what you people do. You make sweets. How can you learn to drive?” He pointed his hookah at the live coals. “That’s like getting coals to make ice for you. Mastering a car”—he moved the stick of an invisible gearbox—“it’s like taming a wild stallion—only a boy from the warrior castes can manage that. You need to have aggression in your blood. Muslims, Rajputs, Sikhs—they’re fighters, they can become drivers. You think sweet-makers can last long in fourth gear?”

  Coal was taught to make ice, starting the next morning at six. Three hundred rupees, plus a bonus, will do that. We practiced in a taxi. Each time I made a mistake with the gears, he slapped me on the skull. “Why don’t you stick to sweets and tea?”

  For every hour I spent in the car, he made me spend two or three under it—I was made a free repair mechanic for all the taxis in the stand; late every evening, I emerged from under a taxi like a hog from sewage, my face black with grease, my hands shiny with engine oil. I dipped into a Ganga of black—and came out a driver.

  “Listen,” the old driver said when I was handing him over the hundred rupees he had been promised as bonus. “It’s not enough to drive. You’ve got to become a driver. You’ve got to get the right attitude, understand? Anyone tries to overtake you on the road, do this”—he clenched his fist and shook it—“and call him a sister-fucker a few times. The road is a jungle, get it? A good driver must roar to get ahead on it.”

  He patted me on the back.

  “You’re better than I thought—you are a surprise package, little fellow. I’ve got a reward for you.”

  He walked; I followed. It was evening. We went through dim streets and markets. We walked for half an hour, while everything around us grew dark—and then it was as if we had stepped out into fireworks.

  The street was full of colored doors and colored windows, and in each door and each window, a woman was looking out at me with a big smile. Ribbons of red paper and silver foil glittered between the rooftops of the street; tea was being boiled in stalls by the sides of the road. Four men rushed at us at once. The old driver explained that they should keep away, since it was my first time. “Let him enjoy the sights first. That’s the best part of this game, isn’t it—the looking!”

  “Sure, sure,” the men said, and stepped back. “That’s what we want him to do—enjoy!”

  I walked with the old driver, my mouth open, gaping at all the gorgeous women jeering and taunting me from behind their grilled windows—all of them begging me to dip my beak into them!

  The old driver explained the nature of the wares on offer. Up in one building, sitting on a windowsill in such a way that we could see the full spread of their gleaming dark legs, were the “Americans”: girls in short skirts and high platform shoes, carrying pink handbags with names in English written on them in sequins. They were slim and athletic—for men who like the Western kind. In this corner, sitting in the threshold of an open house, the “traditionals”—fat, chunky typ
es in saris, for those who like value for their money. There were eunuchs in one window—teenagers in the next window. The face of a small boy appeared from between a woman’s legs and then vanished.

  A blinding flash of light: a blue door opened, and four light-skinned Nepali women, in gorgeous red petticoats, looked out.

  “Them!” I shouted. “Them! Them! Them!”

  “Good,” the old driver said. “I like that too—I always go for the foreign ones.”

  We went in, and he picked a woman from the four, and I picked another woman, and we went into two rooms, and the woman I picked closed the door behind me.

  My first time!

  Half an hour later, when the old driver and I staggered back, drunk and happy, to his house, I put coals in his hookah. I brought him the hookah and watched as he took a deep, contented suck on the pipe. Smoke came out of his nostrils.

  “What is it now? I’ve taught you to be a driver and a man—what more do you want?”

  “Sir…can’t you ask the taxi men if they need someone? I’ll work for free at first. I need a job.”

  The old driver laughed. “I haven’t had work in forty years, you nitwit. How the fuck can I help you? Now get lost.”

  So, next morning, I was walking from house to house, knocking on gates and on front doors of the rich, asking if anyone wanted a driver—a good driver—an experienced driver—for their car.

  Everyone said no. You didn’t get a job that way. You had to know someone in the family to get a job. Not by knocking on the gate and asking.

  There’s no reward for entrepreneurship in most of India, Your Excellency. It’s a sad fact.

  Every evening I came home tired and close to tears, but Kishan said, “Keep trying. Someone will say yes in the end.”

  So I went looking, from house to house, house to house, house to house. Finally, after two weeks of asking and being told to get lost, I got to a house with ten-foot-high walls, and a cage of iron grilles around each window.

  A sly, slant-eyed Nepali with a white mustache peered at me through the bars of the gate.

  “What do you want?”

  I didn’t like the way he asked that one bit; I put a big smile on my face.

  “Any need of a driver, sir? I’ve got four years’ experience. My master recently died, so I—”

  “Fuck off. We have a driver already,” the Nepali said. He twirled a big bunch of keys and grinned.

  My heart sank, and I was about to turn away—when I saw a figure on the terrace, a fellow in long loose white clothes, walking around and around, lost deep in thought. I swear by God, sir—I swear by all thirty-six million and four of them—the moment I saw his face, I knew: This is the master for me.

  Some dark fate had tied his lifeline to mine, because at that very moment he looked down.

  I knew he was coming down to save me. I just had to divert this Nepali fucker as long as possible.

  “I’m a good driver, sir. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t steal.”

  “Fuck off, don’t you understand?”

  “I don’t disrespect God, I don’t disrespect my family.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Get lost, at once—”

  “I don’t gossip about my masters, I don’t steal, I don’t blaspheme.”

  Just then, the door of the house opened. But it was not the man on the terrace—it was an older man, with a big white mustache that was thick, and curved, and pointy at the tips.

  “What is going on, Ram Bahadur?” he asked the Nepali.

  “He’s begging, sir. Begging for money.”

  I banged on the gate. “I am from your village, sir. I am from Laxmangarh! The village near the Black Fort! Your village!”

  The old man was the Stork!

  He stared at me for the longest time, and then he told the Nepali guard, “Let the boy in.”

  Swoosh!—As soon as the gate was open, I dived straight at the Stork’s feet. No Olympic runner could have gone in as fast as I did through those gates; the Nepali had no chance at all of blocking me.

  You should have seen me that day—what a performance of wails and kisses and tears! You’d think I’d been born into a caste of performing actors! And all the time, while clutching the Stork’s feet, I was staring at his huge, dirty, uncut toenails, and thinking, What is he doing in Dhanbad? Why isn’t he back home, screwing poor fishermen of their money and humping their daughters?

  “Get up, boy,” he said—big, uncut toenails scratched my cheeks. Mr. Ashok—the man on the terrace, of course—was by his side now.

  “You’re really from Laxmangarh?”

  “Yes, sir. I used to work in the tea shop—the one with the big photo of Gandhi in it. I used to break coals there. You came once to have tea.”

  “Ah…the old village.” He closed his eyes. “Do people there still remember me? It’s been three years since I was there.”

  “Of course, sir—people say, ‘Our father is gone, Thakur Ramdev is gone, the best of the landlords is gone, who will protect us now?’”

  The Stork enjoyed hearing that. He turned to Mr. Ashok. “Let’s see how good he is. Call Mukesh too. Let’s go for a spin.”

  Only later did I understand how lucky I’d been. Mr. Ashok had come back from America just the previous day; a car had been bought for him. A driver was needed for the car. And on that day I had turned up.

  Now, there were two cars in the garage. One was your standard Maruti Suzuki—that little white car you see all over India—and the other was the Honda City. Now, the Maruti is a small, simple fellow, a perfect servant to the driver; the moment you turn the ignition key, he does exactly what the driver wants him to. The Honda City is a larger car, a more sophisticated creature, with a mind of his own; he has power steering, and an advanced engine, and he does what he wants to. Given that I was so nervous then, if the Stork had told me to take the driving test in the Honda City, that would have been the end of me, sir. But luck was on my side.

  They made me drive the Maruti Suzuki.

  The Stork and Mr. Ashok got into the back; a small dark man—Mukesh Sir, the Stork’s other son—got into the front seat and gave me orders. The Nepali guard watched with a darkened face as I took the car out of the gates—and into the city of Dhanbad.

  They made me drive them around for half an hour, and then told me to head back.

  “Not bad,” the old man said as he got out of the car. “Fellow is cautious and good. What’s your last name again?”

  “Halwai.”

  “Halwai…” He turned to the small dark man. “What caste is that, top or bottom?”

  And I knew that my future depended on the answer to this question.

  I should explain a thing or two about caste. Even Indians get confused about this word, especially educated Indians in the cities. They’ll make a mess of explaining it to you. But it’s simple, really.

  Let’s start with me.

  See: Halwai, my name, means “sweet-maker.”

  That’s my caste—my destiny. Everyone in the Darkness who hears that name knows all about me at once. That’s why Kishan and I kept getting jobs at sweetshops wherever we went. The owner thought, Ah, they’re Halwais, making sweets and tea is in their blood.

  But if we were Halwais, then why was my father not making sweets but pulling a rickshaw? Why did I grow up breaking coals and wiping tables, instead of eating gulab jamuns and sweet pastries when and where I chose to? Why was I lean and dark and cunning, and not fat and creamy-skinned and smiling, like a boy raised on sweets would be?

  See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well kept, orderly zoo. Everyone in his place, everyone happy. Goldsmiths here. Cowherds here. Landlords there. The man called a Halwai made sweets. The man called a cowherd tended cows. The untouchable cleaned feces. Landlords were kind to their serfs. Women covered their heads with a veil and turned their eyes to the ground when talking to strange men.

  And then
, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August, 1947—the day the British left—the cages had been let open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law. Those that were the most ferocious, the hungriest, had eaten everyone else up, and grown big bellies. That was all that counted now, the size of your belly. It didn’t matter whether you were a woman, or a Muslim, or an untouchable: anyone with a belly could rise up. My father’s father must have been a real Halwai, a sweet-maker, but when he inherited the shop, a member of some other caste must have stolen it from him with the help of the police. My father had not had the belly to fight back. That’s why he had fallen all the way to the mud, to the level of a rickshaw-puller. That’s why I was cheated of my destiny to be fat, and creamy-skinned, and smiling.

  To sum up—in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies.

  And only two destinies: eat—or get eaten up.

  Now, the dark man—Mukesh Sir, brother of Mr. Ashok—did not know the answer—I told you that people in the cities know nothing much about the caste system, so the Stork turned to me and asked me directly.

  “Are you from a top caste or bottom caste, boy?”

  I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, so I flipped both answers—I could probably have made a good case either way—and then said, “Bottom, sir.”

  Turning to Mukesh Sir, the old man said, “All our employees are top caste. It won’t hurt to have one or two bottom castes working for us.”

  Mukesh Sir looked at me with narrowed eyes. He didn’t know the village ways, but he had all the cunning of the landlords.

  “Do you drink?”

  “No, sir. In my caste, we never drink.”

  “Halwai…” Mr. Ashok said with a grin. “Are you a sweet-maker? Can you cook for us while you’re not driving?”

  “Certainly, sir. I cook very well. Very tasty sweets. Gulab jamuns, laddoos, anything you desire,” I said. “I worked at a tea shop for many years.”