The White Tiger

by Aravind Adiga

  And God save everyone else.

  * * *

  Now I should explain about that long interruption in my narrative two nights ago.

  It will also allow me to illustrate the differences between Bangalore and Laxmangarh. Understand, Mr. Jiabao, it is not as if you come to Bangalore and find that everyone is moral and upright here. This city has its share of thugs and politicians. It's just that here, if a man wants to be good, he can be good. In Laxmangarh, he doesn't even have this choice. That is the difference between this India and that India: the choice.

  See, that night, I was sitting here, telling you my life's story, when my landline began to ring. Still chatting to you, I picked up the receiver and heard Mohammad Asif's voice.

  "Sir, there's been some trouble."

  That's when I stopped talking to you.

  "What kind of trouble?" I asked. I knew Mohammad Asif had been on duty that night, so I braced myself for the worst.

  There was a silence, and then he said, "I was taking the girls home when we hit a boy on a bicycle. He's dead, sir."

  "Call the police at once," I said.

  "But sir-I am at fault. I hit him, sir."

  "That's exactly why you will call the police."

  The police were there when I got to the scene with an empty van. The Qualis was parked by the side of the road; the girls were all still inside.

  There was a body, a boy, lying on the ground, bloodied. The bike was on the ground, smashed and twisted.

  Mohammad Asif was standing off to the side, shaking his head. Someone was yelling at him-yelling with the passion that you only see on the face of the relative of a dead man.

  The policeman on the scene had stalled everyone. He nodded when he saw me. We knew each other well by now.

  "That's the dead boy's brother, sir," he whispered to me. "He's in a total rage. I haven't been able to get him out of here."

  I shook Mohammad Asif out of his trance. "Take my car and get these women home, first of all."

  "Let my boy go," I told the policeman loudly. "He's got to get the people in there home. Whatever you want to deal with, you deal with me."

  "How can you let him go?" the brother of the dead boy yelled at the policeman.

  "Look here, son," I said, "I am the owner of this vehicle. Your fight is with me, not with this driver. He was following my orders, to drive as fast as he could. The blood is on my hands, not his. These girls need to go home. Come with me to the police station-I offer myself as your ransom. Let them go."

  The policeman played along with me. "It's a good idea, son. We need to register the case at the station."

  While I kept the brother engaged by pleading to his reason and human decency, Mohammad Asif and all the girls got into my van and slipped away. That was the first objective-to get the girls home. I have signed a contract with their company, and I honor all that I sign.

  I went to the police station with the dead boy's brother. The policemen on night duty brought me coffee. They did not bring the boy coffee. He glared at me as I took the cup; he looked ready to tear me to pieces. I sipped.

  "The assistant commissioner will be here in five minutes," one of the policemen said.

  "Is he the one who's going to register the case?" the brother asked. "Because no one has done it so far."

  I sipped some more.

  The assistant commissioner who sat in the station was a man whom I had lubricated often. He had fixed a rival for me once. He was the worst kind of man, who had nothing in his mind but taking money from everyone who came to his office. Scum.

  But he was my scum.

  My heart lifted at the sight of him. He had come all the way to the station at night to help me out. There is honesty among thieves, as they say. He understood the situation immediately. Ignoring me, he went up to the brother and said, "What is it you want?"

  "I want to file an F.I.R.," the brother said. "I want this crime recorded."

  "What crime?"

  "The death of my brother. By this man's"-pointing a finger at me-"vehicle."

  The assistant commissioner looked at his watch. "My God, it's late. It's almost five o'clock. Why don't you go home now? We'll forget you were here. We'll let you go home."

  "What about this man? Will you lock him up first?"

  The assistant commissioner put his fingers together. He sighed. "See, at the time of the accident, your brother's bicycle had no working lights. That is illegal, you know. There are other things that will come out. I promise you, things will come out."

  The boy stared. He shook his head, as if he hadn't heard correctly. "My brother is dead. This man is a killer. I don't understand what's going on here."

  "Look here-go home. Have a bath. Pray to God. Sleep. Come back in the morning. We'll file the F.I.R. then, all right?"

  The brother understood at last why I had brought him to the station-he understood at last that the trap had shut on him. Maybe he had only seen policemen in Hindi movies until now.

  Poor boy.

  "This is an outrage! I'll call the papers! I'll call the lawyers! I'll call the police!"

  The assistant commissioner, who was not a man given to humor, allowed himself a little smile. "Sure. Call the police."

  The brother stormed out, shouting more threats.

  "The number plates will be changed tomorrow," the assistant commissioner said. "We'll say it was a hit-and-run. Another car will be substituted. We keep battered cars for this purpose here. You're very lucky that your Qualis hit a man on a bicycle."

  I nodded.

  A man on a bicycle getting killed-the police don't even have to register the case. A man on a motorbike getting killed-they would have to register that. A man in a car getting killed-they would have thrown me in jail.

  "What if he goes to the papers?"

  The assistant commissioner slapped his belly. "I've got every pressman in this town in here."

  I did not hand him an envelope at once. There is a time and a place for these things. Now was the time to smile, and say thanks, and sip the hot coffee he had offered me; now was the time to chat with him about his sons-they're both studying in America, he wants them to come back and start an Internet company in Bangalore-and nod and smile and show him my clean, shining, fluoridated teeth. We sipped cup after cup of steaming coffee under a calendar that had the face of the goddess Lakshmi on it-she was showering gold coins from a pot into the river of prosperity. Above her was a framed portrait of the god of gods, a grinning Mahatma Gandhi.

  A week from now I'll go to see him again with an envelope, and then he won't be so nice. He'll count the money in front of me and say, This is all? Do you know how much it costs to keep two sons studying in a foreign college? You should see the American Express bills they send me every month! And he'll ask for another envelope. Then another, then another, and so on. There is no end to things in India, Mr. Jiabao, as Mr. Ashok so correctly used to say. You'll have to keep paying and paying the fuckers. But I complain about the police the way the rich complain; not the way the poor complain.

  The difference is everything.

  The next day, sir, I called Mohammad Asif to the office. He was burning with shame over what he had done-I didn't need to reproach him.

  And it was not his fault. Not mine either. Our outsourcing companies are so cheap that they force their taxi operators to promise them an impossible number of runs every night. To meet such schedules, we have to drive recklessly; we have to keep hitting and hurting people on the roads. It's a problem every taxi operator in this city faces. Don't blame me.

  "Don't worry about it, Asif," I said. The boy looked so devastated.

  I've come to respect Muslims, sir. They're not the brightest lot, except for those four poet fellows, but they make good drivers, and they're honest people, by and large, although a few of them seem to get this urge to blow trains up every year. I wasn't going to fire Asif over this.

  But I did ask him to find out the address of the boy, the one we had killed.
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  He stared at me.

  "Why go, sir? We don't have to fear anything from the parents. Please don't do this."

  I made him find the address and I made him give it to me.

  I took cash out of my locker in crisp new one-hundred-rupee notes; I put them in a brown envelope. I got into a car and drove myself to the place.

  The mother was the one who opened the door. She asked me what I wanted, and I said, "I am the owner of the taxi company."

  I didn't have to tell her which one.

  She brought me a cup of coffee in a cup set in a metal tumbler. They have exquisite manners, these South Indians.

  I poured the coffee into the tumbler, and sipped the correct way.

  There was a photo of a young man, with a large jasmine garland around it, up on the wall.

  I said nothing until I finished the coffee. Then I put the brown envelope on the table.

  An old man had come into the room now, and he stood staring at me.

  "First of all, I want to express my deep sorrow at the death of your son. Having lost relatives myself-so many of them-I know the pain that you have suffered. He should not have died."

  "Second, the fault is mine. Not the driver's. The police have let me off. That is the way of this jungle we live in. But I accept my responsibility. I ask for your forgiveness."

  I pointed to the brown envelope lying on the table.

  "There are twenty-five thousand rupees in here. I don't give it to you because I have to, but because I want to. Do you understand?"

  The old woman would not take the money.

  But the old man, the father, was eyeing the envelope. "At least you were man enough to come," he said.

  "I want to help your other son," I said. "He is a brave boy. He stood up to the police the other night. He can come and be a driver with me if you want. I will take care of him if you want."

  The woman clenched her face and shook her head. Tears poured out of her eyes. It was understandable. She might have had the hopes for that boy that my mother had for me. But the father was amenable; men are more reasonable in such matters.

  I thanked him for the coffee, bowed respectfully before the bereaved mother, and left.

  Mohammad Asif was waiting for me at the office when I got back. He shook his head and said, "Why? Why did you waste so much money?"

  That's when I thought, Maybe I've made a mistake. Maybe Asif will tell the other drivers I was frightened of the old woman, and they will think they can cheat me. It makes me nervous. I don't like showing weakness in front of my employees. I know what that leads to.

  But I had to do something different; don't you see? I can't live the way the Wild Boar and the Buffalo and the Raven lived, and probably still live, back in Laxmangarh.

  I am in the Light now.

  * * *

  Now, what happens in your typical Murder Weekly story-or Hindi film, for that matter? A poor man kills a rich man. Good. Then he takes the money. Good. But then he gets dreams in which the dead man pursues him with bloody fingers, saying, Mur-der-er, mur-der-er.

  Doesn't happen like that in real life. Trust me. It's one of the reasons I've stopped going to Hindi films.

  There was just that one night when Granny came chasing me on a water buffalo, but it never happened again.

  The real nightmare you get is the other kind. You toss about in the bed dreaming that you haven't done it-that you lost your nerve and let Mr. Ashok get away-that you're still in Delhi, still the servant of another man, and then you wake up.

  The sweating stops. The heartbeat slows.

  You did it! You killed him!

  About three months after I came to Bangalore, I went to a temple and performed last rites there for all of them: Kusum, Kishan, and all my aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces. I even said a prayer for the water buffalo. Who knows who has lived and who has not? And then I said to Kishan, and to Kusum, and to all of them: "Now leave me in peace."

  And they have, sir, by and large.

  One day I read a story in a newspaper: "Family of 17 Murdered in North Indian Village." My heart began to thump-seventeen? That can't be right-that's not mine. It was just one of those two-inch horror stories that appear every morning in the papers-they didn't give a name to the village. They just said it was somewhere in the Darkness-near Gaya. I read it again and again-seventeen! There aren't seventeen at home…I breathed out…But what if someone's had children…?

  I crumpled that paper and threw it away. I stopped reading the newspaper for a few months after that. Just to be safe.

  Look, here's what would have happened to them. Either the Stork had them killed, or had some of them killed, and the others beaten. Now, even if by some miracle he-or the police-didn't do that, the neighbors would have shunned them. See, a bad boy in one family casts the village's reputation into the dust. So the villagers would have forced them out-and they'd have to go to Delhi, or Calcutta, or Mumbai, to live under some concrete bridge, begging for their food, and without a hope for the future. That's not much better than being dead.

  What's that you say, Mr. Jiabao? Do I hear you call me a cold-blooded monster?

  There is a story I think I heard at a train station, sir, or maybe I read it on the torn page that had been used to wrap an ear of roasted corn I bought at the market-I can't remember. It was a story of the Buddha. One day a cunning Brahmin, trying to trick the Buddha, asked him, "Master, do you consider yourself a man or a god?"

  The Buddha smiled and said, "Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping."

  I'll give you the same answer to your question, Mr. Jiabao. You ask, "Are you a man or a demon?"

  Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are still sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

  I shouldn't think of them at all. My family.

  Dharam certainly doesn't.

  He's figured out what's happened by now. I told him at first we were going on a holiday, and I think he bought it for a month or two. He doesn't say a word, but sometimes I see him watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  He knows.

  At night we eat together, sitting across the table, watching each other and not saying much. After he's done eating, I give him a glass of milk. Two nights ago, after he finished his milk, I asked him, "Don't you ever think of your mother?"

  Not a word.

  "Your father?"

  He smiled at me and then he said, "Give me another glass of milk, won't you, Uncle?"

  I got up. He added, "And a bowl of ice cream too."

  "Ice cream is for Sundays, Dharam," I said.

  "No. It's for today."

  And he smiled at me.

  Oh, he's got it all figured out, I tell you. Little blackmailing thug. He's going to keep quiet as long as I keep feeding him. If I go to jail, he loses his ice cream and glasses of milk, doesn't he? That must be his thinking. The new generation, I tell you, is growing up with no morals at all.

  He goes to a good school here in Bangalore -an English school. Now he pronounces English like a rich man's son. He can say "pizza" the way Mr. Ashok said it. (And doesn't he love eating pizza-that nasty stuff?) I watch with pride as he does his long division on clean white paper at the dinner table. All these things I never learned.

  One day, I know, Dharam, this boy who is drinking my milk and eating my ice cream in big bowls, will ask me, Couldn't you have spared my mother? Couldn't you have written to her telling her to escape in time?

  And then I'll have to come up with an answer-or kill him, I suppose. But that question is still a few years away. Till then we'll have dinner together, every evening, Dharam, last of my family, and me.

  That leaves only one person to talk about.

  My ex.

  I thought there was no need to offer a prayer to the gods for him, because his family would be offering very expensive prayers all along the Ganga for his soul. What can a poor man's prayers mean to the 36,000,004 gods in comparison wi
th those of the rich?

  But I do think about him a lot-and, believe it or not, I do miss him. He didn't deserve his fate.

  I should have cut the Mongoose's neck.

  * * *

  Now, Your Excellency, a great leap forward in Sino-Indian relations has been taken in the past seven nights. Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai, as they say. I have told you all you need to know about entrepreneurship-how it is fostered, how it overcomes hardships, how it remains steadfast to its true goals, and how it is rewarded with the gold medal of success.

  Sir: although my story is done, and my secrets are now your secrets, if you allow me, I would leave you with one final word.

  (That's an old trick I learned from the Great Socialist-just when his audience is yawning, he says "one final word"-and then he goes on for two more hours. Ha!)

  When I drive down Hosur Main Road, when I turn into Electronics City Phase 1 and see the companies go past, I can't tell you how exciting it is to me. General Electric, Dell, Siemens-they're all here in Bangalore. And so many more are on their way. There is construction everywhere. Piles of mud everywhere. Piles of stones. Piles of bricks. The entire city is masked in smoke, smog, powder, cement dust. It is under a veil. When the veil is lifted, what will Bangalore be like?

  Maybe it will be a disaster: slums, sewage, shopping malls, traffic jams, policemen. But you never know. It may turn out to be a decent city, where humans can live like humans and animals can live like animals. A new Bangalore for a new India. And then I can say that, in my own way, I helped to make New Bangalore.

  Why not? Am I not a part of all that is changing this country? Haven't I succeeded in the struggle that every poor man here should be making-the struggle not to take the lashes your father took, not to end up in a mound of indistinguishable bodies that will rot in the black mud of Mother Ganga? True, there was the matter of murder-which is a wrong thing to do, no question about it. It has darkened my soul. All the skin-whitening creams sold in the markets of India won't clean my hands again.

  But isn't it likely that everyone who counts in this world, including our prime minister (including you, Mr. Jiabao), has killed someone or other on their way to the top? Kill enough people and they will put up bronze statues to you near Parliament House in Delhi -but that is glory, and not what I am after. All I wanted was the chance to be a man-and for that, one murder was enough.