“I am my own master.”
He didn’t get it for a minute. Then his jaw dropped—he rushed forward—he hugged me. “Country-Mouse!” He hugged me again. “My man!”
He was from the Darkness too—and you feel proud when you see one of your own kind showing some ambition in life.
He drove me in the Qualis—his master’s Qualis—to the hotel, explaining on the way that he ran an informal “taxi” service when the boss wasn’t around.
This hotel was in South Extension, Part Two—one of the best shopping areas in Delhi. Vitiligo-Lips locked his Qualis, smiled reassuringly, and walked with me up to the reception desk. A man in a white shirt and black bow tie was running his finger down the entries in a long ledger; leaving his finger on the book, he looked at me as Vitiligo-Lips explained things into his ear.
The manager shook his head. “A golden-haired woman—for him?”
He put his hands on the counter and leaned over so he could see me from the toes up.
“For him?”
Vitiligo-Lips smiled. “Look here, the rich of Delhi have had all the golden-haired women they want; who knows what they’ll want next? Green-haired women from the moon? Now it’s going to be the working class that lines up for the white women. This fellow is the future of your business, I tell you—treat him well.”
The manager seemed uncertain for a moment; then he slammed the ledger shut and showed me an open palm. “Give me five hundred rupees extra.” He grinned. “Working-class surcharge.”
“I don’t have it!”
“Give me five hundred or forget it.”
I took out the last three hundred rupees I had. He took the cash, straightened his tie, and then went up the stairs. Vitiligo-Lips patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good luck, Country-Mouse—do it for all of us!”
I ran up the stairs.
Room 114A. The manager was standing at the door, with his ear to it. He whispered, “Anastasia?”
He knocked, then put his ear to the door again and said, “Anastasia, are you in?”
He pushed the door open. A chandelier, a window, a green bed—and a girl with golden hair sitting on the bed.
I sighed, because this one looked nothing like Kim Basinger. Not half as pretty. That was when it hit me—in a way it never had before—how the rich always get the best things in life, and all that we get is their leftovers.
The manager brought both his palms up to my face; he opened and closed them, and then did it again.
Twenty minutes.
Then he made a knocking motion with his fist—followed by a kicking motion with his shiny black boot.
“Get it?”
That’s what would happen to me after twenty minutes.
“Yes.”
He slammed the door. The woman with the golden hair still wasn’t looking at me.
I had only summoned up the courage to sit down by her side when there was banging on the door outside.
“When you hear that—it’s over! Get it?” The manager’s voice.
“All right!”
I moved closer to the woman on the bed. She neither resisted nor encouraged. I touched a curl of her hair and pulled it gently to get her to turn her face toward me. She looked tired, and worn out, and there were bruises around her eyes, as if someone had scratched her.
She gave me a big smile—I knew it well: it was the smile a servant gives a master.
“What’s your name?” she asked in Hindi.
This one too! They must have a Hindi language school for girls in this country, Ukraine, I swear!
“Munna.”
She smiled. “That’s not a real name. It just means ‘boy.’”
“That’s right. But it’s my name,” I said. “My family gave me no other name.”
She began laughing—a high-pitched, silvery laugh that made her whole golden head of hair bob up and down. My heart beat like a horse’s. Her perfume went straight to my brain.
“You know, when I was young, I was given a name in my language that just meant ‘girl.’ My family did the same thing to me!”
“Wow,” I said, curling my legs up on the bed.
We talked. She told me she hated the mosquitoes in this hotel and the manager, and I nodded. We talked for a while like this, and then she said, “You’re not a bad-looking fellow—and you’re quite sweet,” and then ran her finger through my hair.
At this point, I jumped out of the bed. I said, “Why are you here, sister? If you want to leave this hotel, why don’t you? Don’t worry about the manager. I’m here to protect you! I am your own brother, Balram Halwai!”
Sure, I said that—in the Hindi film they’ll make of my life.
“Seven thousand sweet rupees for twenty minutes! Time to get started!”
That was what I actually said.
I climbed on top of her—and held her arms behind her head with one hand. Time to dip my beak in her. I let the other hand run through her golden curls.
And then I shrieked. I could not have shrieked louder if you had shown me a lizard.
“What happened, Munna?” she asked.
I jumped off the bed, and slapped her.
My, these foreigners can yell when they want to.
Immediately—as if the manager had been there all the time, his ear to the door, grinning—the door burst open, and he came in.
“This,” I shouted at him, pulling the girl by her hair, “is not real gold.”
The roots were black! It was all a dye job!
He shrugged. “What do you expect, for seven thousand? The real thing costs forty, fifty.”
I leapt at him, caught his chin in my hand, and rammed it against the door. “I want my money back!”
The woman let out a scream from behind me. I turned around—that was the mistake I made. I should’ve finished off that manager right there and then.
Ten minutes later, with a scratched and bruised face, I came tumbling out the front door. It slammed behind me.
Vitiligo-Lips hadn’t waited. I had to take a bus back home; I was rubbing my head the whole time. Seven thousand rupees—I wanted to cry! Do you know how many water buffaloes you could have bought for that much money?—I could feel Granny’s fingers wringing my ears.
Back in Buckingham Towers at last—after a one-hour traffic jam on the road—I washed the wound on my head in the common sink, and then spat a dozen times. To hell with everything—I scratched my groin. I needed that. I slouched toward my room, kicked opened the door, and froze.
Someone was inside the mosquito net. I saw a silhouette in the lotus position.
“Don’t worry, Balram. I know what you were doing.”
A man’s voice. Well, at least it wasn’t Granny—that was my first thought.
Mr. Ashok lifted up a corner of the net and looked at me, a sly grin on his face.
“I know exactly what you were doing.”
“Sir?”
“I was calling your name and you weren’t responding. So I came down to see. But I know exactly what you were doing…that other driver, the man with pink lips, he told me.”
My heart pounded. I looked down at the ground.
“He said you were at the temple, offering prayers for my health.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, with sweat pouring down my face in relief. “That’s right, sir.”
“Come inside the net,” he said softly. I went in and sat next to him inside the mosquito net. He was looking at the roaches walking above us.
“You live in such a hole, Balram. I never knew. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, sir. I’m used to it.”
“I’ll give you some money, Balram. You go into some better housing tomorrow, okay?”
He caught my hand and turned it over. “Balram, what are all these red marks on your palm? Have you been pinching yourself?”
“No, sir…it’s a skin disease. I’ve got it here too, behind my ear—see—all those pink spots?”
He came close, filling my nostr
ils with his perfume. Bending my ear with a finger, gently, he looked.
“My. I never noticed. I sit behind you every day and I never—”
“A lot of people have this disease, sir. A lot of poor people.”
“Really. I haven’t noticed. Can you get it treated?”
“No, sir. The diseases of the poor can never get treated. My father had TB and it killed him.”
“It’s the twenty-first century, Balram. Anything can be treated. You go to the hospital and get it treated. Send me the bill, I’ll pay it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Sir…do you want me to take you somewhere in the City?”
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 apartment. 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?
The White Tiger: A Novel Page 18
