The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

  He opened his lips and then closed them without making any noise. He did this a couple of times, and then he said, "My way of living is all wrong, Balram. I know it, but I don't have the courage to change it. I just don't have…the balls."

  "Don't think so much about it, sir. And sir, let's go upstairs, I beg you. This is not a place for a man of quality like yourself."

  "I let people exploit me, Balram. I've never done what I've wanted, my whole life. I…"

  His head sagged; his whole body looked tired and worn.

  "You should eat something, sir," I said. "You look tired."

  He smiled-a big, trusting baby's smile.

  "You're always thinking of me, Balram. Yes, I want to eat. But I don't want to go to another hotel, Balram. I'm sick of hotels. Take me to the kind of place you go to eat, Balram."

  "Sir?"

  "I'm sick of the food I eat, Balram. I'm sick of the life I lead. We rich people, we've lost our way, Balram. I want to be a simple man like you, Balram."

  "Yes, sir."

  We walked outside, and I led him across the road and into a tea shop.

  "Order for us, Balram. Order the commoners' food."

  I ordered okra, cauliflower, radish, spinach, and daal. Enough to feed a whole family, or one rich man.

  He ate and burped and ate some more.

  "This food is fantastic. And just twenty-five rupees! You people eat so well!"

  When he was done, I ordered him a lassi, and when he took the first sip, he smiled. "I like eating your kind of food!"

  I smiled and thought, I like eating your kind of food too.

  * * *

  "The divorce papers will come through soon. That's what the lawyer said."

  "All right."

  "Should we start looking already?"

  "For another lawyer?"

  "No. For another girl."

  "It's too early, Mukesh. It's been just three months since she left."

  I had driven Mr. Ashok to the train station. The Mongoose had come to town again, from Dhanbad. Now I was driving both of them back to the apartment.

  "All right. Take your time. But you must remarry. If you stay a divorced man, people won't respect you. They won't respect us. It's the way our society works. Listen to me. Last time you didn't listen, when you married a girl from outside our caste, our religion-you even refused to take dowry from her parents. This time, we'll pick the girl."

  I heard nothing; I could tell that Mr. Ashok was clenching his teeth.

  "I can see you're getting worked up," the Mongoose said. "We'll talk about it later. For now, take this." He handed his brother a red bag that he had brought with him from Dhanbad.

  Mr. Ashok clicked open the bag and peered inside-and at once the Mongoose slammed the bag shut.

  "Are you crazy? Don't open that here in the car. It's for Mukeshan. The fat man. The assistant. You know him, don't you?"

  "Yes, I know him." Mr. Ashok shrugged. "Didn't we already pay those bastards off?"

  "The minister wants more. It's election time. Every time there's elections, we hand out cash. Usually to both sides, but this time the government is going to win for sure. The opposition is in a total mess. So we just have to pay off the government, which is good for us. I'll come with you the first time, but it's a lot of money, and you may have to go a second and third time too. And then there are a couple of bureaucrats we have to grease. Get it?"

  "It seems like this is all I get to do in Delhi. Take money out of banks and bribe people. Is this what I came back to India for?"

  "Don't be sarcastic. And remember, ask for the bag back each time. It's a good bag, Italian-made. No need to give them any additional gifts. Understand? Oh, hell. Not another fucking traffic jam."

  "Balram, play Sting again. It's the best music for a traffic jam."

  "This driver knows who Sting is?"

  "Sure, he knows it's my favorite CD. Show us the Sting CD, Balram. See-see-he knows Sting!"

  I put the CD into the player.

  Ten minutes passed, and the cars had not moved an inch. I replaced Sting with Enya; I replaced Enya with Eminem. Vendors came to the car with baskets of oranges, or strawberries in plastic cases, or newspapers, or novels in English. The beggars were on the attack too. One beggar was carrying another on his shoulders and going from car to car; the fellow on his shoulders had no legs below his knees. They went together from car to car, the fellow without the legs moaning and groaning and the other fellow tapping or scratching on the windows of the car.

  Without thinking much about it, I cracked open the egg.

  Rolling down the glass, I held out a rupee-the fellow with the deformed legs took it and saluted me; I rolled the window up and resealed the egg.

  The talking in the backseat stopped at once.

  "Who the hell told you to do that?"

  "Sorry, sir," I said.

  "Why the hell did you give that beggar a rupee? What cheek! Turn the music off."

  They really gave it to me that evening. Though their talk was normally in a mix of Hindi and English, the two brothers began speaking in chaste Hindi-entirely for my benefit.

  "Don't we give money each time we go to the temple?" the elder thug said. "We donate every year to the cancer institute. I buy that card that the schoolchildren come around selling."

  "The other day I was speaking to our accountant and he was saying, 'Sir, you have no money in your bank. It's all gone.' Do you know how high the taxes are in this country?" the younger thug said. "If we gave any money, what would we have to eat?"

  That was when it struck me that there really was no difference between the two of them. They were both their father's seed.

  For the rest of the drive home, the Mongoose pointedly kept his eyes on the rearview mirror. He looked as if he had smelled something funny.

  When we reached Buckingham B, he said, "Come upstairs, Balram."

  "Yes, sir."

  We stood side by side in the elevator. When he opened the door of the apartment, he pointed to the floor. "Make yourself comfortable."

  I squatted below the photo of Cuddles and Puddles and put my hands between my knees. He sat down on a chair, and rested his face in his palm, and just stared at me.

  His brow was furrowed. I could see a thought forming in his mind.

  He got up from his chair, walked over to where I was crouched, and got down on one knee. He sniffed the air.

  "Your breath smells of aniseed."

  "Yes, sir."

  "People chew that to hide the alcohol on their breath. Have you been drinking?"

  "No, sir. My caste, we're teetotalers."

  He kept sniffing, coming closer all the time.

  I took in a big breath; held it in the pit of my belly; then I forced it out, in a belch, right to his face.

  "That's disgusting, Balram," he said with a look of horror. He stood up and took two steps back.

  "Sorry, sir."

  "Get out!"

  I came out sweating.

  The next day, I drove him and Mr. Ashok to some minister's or bureaucrat's house in New Delhi; they went out with the red bag. Afterwards, I took them to a hotel, where they had lunch-I gave the hotel staff instructions: no potatoes in the food-then drove the Mongoose to the railway station.

  I put up with his usual threats and warnings-no A/C, no music, no wasting fuel, blah blah blah. I stood on the platform and watched as he ate his snack. When the train left, I danced around the platform and clapped my hands. Two homeless urchins were watching me, and they laughed-they clapped their hands too. One of them began singing a song from the latest Hindi film, and we danced together on the platform.

  Next morning, I was in the apartment, and Mr. Ashok was fiddling with the red bag and getting ready to leave, when the phone began to ring.

  I said, "I'll take the bag down, sir. I'll wait in the car."

  He hesitated, then held the bag out in my direction. "I'll join you in a minute."

  I closed the door of the apa
rtment. I walked to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited. It was a heavy bag, and I had to shift it about in my palm.

  The elevator had reached the fourth floor.

  I turned and looked at the view from the balcony of the thirteenth floor-the lights were shining from Gurgaon's malls, even in broad daylight. A new mall had opened in the past week. Another one was under construction. The city was growing.

  The elevator was coming up fast. It was about to reach the eleventh floor.

  I turned and ran.

  Kicking the door of the fire escape open, hurrying down two flights of dark stairs, I clicked the red bag open.

  All at once, the entire stairwell filled up with dazzling light-the kind that only money can give out.

  Twenty-five minutes later, when Mr. Ashok came down, punching the buttons on his cell phone, he found the red bag waiting for him on his seat. I held up a shining silver disk as he closed the door.

  "Shall I play Sting for you, sir?"

  As we drove, I tried hard not to look at the red bag-it was torture for me, just like when Pinky Madam used to sit in short skirts.

  At a red light, I looked at the rearview mirror. I saw my thick mustache and my jaw. I touched the mirror. The angle of the image changed. Now I saw long beautiful eyebrows curving on either side of powerful, furrowed brow muscles; black eyes were shining below those tensed muscles. The eyes of a cat watching its prey.

  Go on, just look at the red bag, Balram-that's not stealing, is it?

  I shook my head.

  And even if you were to steal it, Balram, it wouldn't be stealing.

  How so? I looked at the creature in the mirror.

  See-Mr. Ashok is giving money to all these politicians in Delhi so that they will excuse him from the tax he has to pay. And who owns that tax, in the end? Who but the ordinary people of this country-you!

  "What is it, Balram? Did you say something?"

  I tapped the mirror. My mustache rose into view again, and the eyes disappeared, and it was only my own face staring at me now.

  "This fellow in front of me is driving rashly, sir. I was just grumbling."

  "Keep your cool, Balram. You're a good driver, don't let the bad ones get to you."

  The city knew my secret. One morning, the President's House was covered in smog and blotted out from the road; it seemed as though there were no government in Delhi that day. And the dense pollution that was hiding the prime minister and all his ministers and bureaucrats said to me:

  They won't see a thing you do. I'll make sure of that.

  I drove past the red wall of Parliament House. A guard with a gun was watching me from a lookout post on the red wall-he put his gun down the moment he saw me.

  Why would I stop you? I'd do the same, if I could.

  At night a woman walked with a cellophane bag; my headlights shone into the bag and turned the cellophane transparent. I saw four large dark fruits inside the bag-and each dark fruit said, You've already done it. In your heart you've already taken it. Then the headlights passed; the cellophane turned opaque; the four dark fruits vanished.

  Even the road-the smooth, polished road of Delhi that is the finest in all of India -knew my secret.

  One day at a traffic signal, the driver of the car next to me lowered the window and spat out: he had been chewing paan, and a vivid red puddle of expectorate splashed on the hot midday road and festered there like a living thing, spreading and sizzling. A second later, he spat again-and now there was a second puddle on the road. I stared at the two puddles of red, spreading spit-and then:

  I turned my face away from the red puddles. I looked at the red bag sitting in the center of my rearview mirror, like the exposed heart of the Honda City.

  That day I dropped Mr. Ashok off at the Imperial Hotel, and he said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes, Balram."

  Instead of parking the car, I drove to the train station, which is in Pahar Ganj, not far from the hotel.

  People were lying on the floor of the station. Dogs were sniffing at the garbage. The air was moldy. So this is what it will be like, I thought.

  The destinations of all the trains were up on a blackboard.

  Benaras

  Jammu

  Amritsar

  Mumbai

  Ranchi

  What would be my destination, if I were to come here with a red bag in my hand?

  As if in answer, shining wheels and bright lights began flashing in the darkness.

  Now, if you visit any train station in India, you will see, as you stand waiting for your train, a row of bizarre-looking machines with red lightbulbs, kaleidoscopic wheels, and whirling yellow circles. These are your-fortune-and-weight-for-one-rupee machines that stand on every rail platform in the country.

  They work like this. You put your bags down to the side. You stand on them. Then you insert a one-rupee coin into the slot.

  The machine comes to life; levers start to move inside, things go clankety-clank, and the lights flash like crazy. Then there is a loud noise, and a small stiff chit of cardboard colored either green or yellow will pop out of the machine. The lights and noise calm down. On this chit will be written your fortune, and your weight in kilograms.

  Two kinds of people use these machines: the children of the rich, or the fully grown adults of the poorer class, who remain all their lives children.

  I stood gazing at the machines, like a man without a mind. Six glowing machines were shining at me: lightbulbs of green and yellow and kaleidoscopes of gold and black that were turning around and around.

  I got up on one of the machines. I sacrificed a rupee-it gobbled the coin, made noise, gave off more lights, and released a chit.

  LUNNA SCALES CO.

  NEW DELHI 110 055

  YOUR WEIGHT

  59

  "Respect for the law is the first command of the gods."

  I let the fortune-telling chit fall on the floor and I laughed.

  Even here, in the weight machine of a train station, they try to hoodwink us. Here, on the threshold of a man's freedom, just before he boards a train to a new life, these flashing fortune machines are the final alarm bell of the Rooster Coop.

  The sirens of the coop were ringing-its wheels turning-its red lights flashing! A rooster was escaping from the coop! A hand was thrust out-I was picked up by the neck and shoved back into the coop.

  I picked the chit up and reread it.

  My heart began to sweat. I sat down on the floor.

  Think, Balram. Think of what the Buffalo did to his servant's family.

  Above me I heard wings thrashing. Pigeons were sitting on the roof beams all around the station; two of them had flown from a beam and began wheeling directly over my head, as if in slow motion-pulled into their breasts, I saw two sets of red claws.

  Not far from me I saw a woman lying on the floor, with nice full breasts inside a tight blouse. She was snoring. I could see a one-rupee note stuffed into her cleavage, its lettering and color visible through the weave of her bright green blouse. She had no luggage. That was all she had in the world. One rupee. And yet look at her-snoring blissfully, without a care in the world.

  Why couldn't things be so simple for me?

  A low growling noise made me turn. A black dog was turning in circles behind me. A pink patch of skin-an open wound-glistened on its left butt; and the dog had twisted on itself in an attempt to gnaw at the wound. The wound was just out of reach of its teeth, but the dog was going crazy from pain-trying to attack the wound with its slavering mouth, it kept moving in mad, precise, pointless circles.

  I looked at the sleeping woman-at her heaving breasts. Behind me the growling went on and on.

  That Sunday, I took Mr. Ashok's permission, saying I wanted to go to a temple, and went into the city. I took a bus down to Qutub, and from there a jeep-taxi down to G.B. Road.

  This, Mr. Premier, is the famous "red-light district" (as they say in English) of Delhi.

  An hour here would clear all the evi
l thoughts out of my head. When you retain semen in your lower body, it leads to evil movements in the fluids of your upper body. In the Darkness we know this to be a fact.

  It was just five o'clock and still light, but the women were waiting for me, as they wait for all men, at all times of the day.

  Now, I've been to these streets before-as I've confessed to you-but this time was different. I heard them above me-the women-jeering and taunting from the grilled windows of the brothels-but this time I couldn't bear to look up at them.

  A paan-maker sat on a wooden stall outside the gaudy blue door of a brothel, using a knife to spread spices on moist leaves that he had picked out of a bowl of water, which is the first step in the preparation of paan; in the small square space below his stall sat another man, boiling milk in a vessel over the hissing blue flame of a gas stove.

  "What's the matter with you? Look at the women."

  The pimp, a small man with a big nose covered in red warts, had caught me by the wrist.

  "You look like you can afford a foreign girl. Take a Nepali girl. Aren't they beauties? Look up at them, son!"

  He took my chin-maybe he thought I was a shy virgin, out on my first expedition here-and forced me to look up.

  The Nepalis up there, behind the barred window, were really good-looking: very light-skinned and with those Chinese eyes that just drive us Indian men mad. I shook the pimp's hand off my face.

  "Take any one! Take all! Aren't you man enough, son?"

  Normally this would have been enough for me to burst into the brothel, hollering for blood.

  But sometimes what is most animal in a man may be the best thing in him. From my waist down, nothing stirred. They're like parrots in a cage. It'll be one animal fucking another animal.

  "Chew paan-it will help if you're having trouble getting it up!" the seller of paan shouted from his stand. He held up a fresh, wet paan leaf, and shook it so the droplets splashed on my face.

  "Drink hot milk-it helps too!" shouted the small, shrunken man below him who was boiling the milk.

  I watched the milk. It seethed, and spilled down the sides of the stainless steel vessel; the small, shrunken man smiled-he provoked the boiling milk with a spoon-it became frothier and frothier, hissing with outrage.