He put a hand on the door and was about to step out, but some instinct of self-preservation still held him back.
“It’s raining, Balram. Do you think we should call for help?”
He wriggled and moved away from the door.
“Oh, no, sir. Trust me. Come out.”
He was still wriggling—his body was moving as far from me as it could. I’m losing him, I thought, and this forced me to do something I knew I would hate myself for, even years later. I really didn’t want to do this—I really didn’t want him to think, even in the two or three minutes he had left to live, that I was that kind of driver—the one that resorts to blackmailing his master—but he had left me no option:
“It’s been giving problems ever since that night we went to the hotel in Jangpura.”
He looked up from the cell phone at once.
“The one with the big T sign on it. You remember it, don’t you, sir? Ever since that night, sir, nothing has been the same with this car.”
His lips parted, then closed. He’s thinking: Blackmail? Or an innocent reference to the past? Don’t give him time to settle.
“Come out of the car, sir. Trust me.”
Putting the cell phone on the seat, he obeyed me. The blue light of the cell phone filled the inside of the dark car for a second—then went out.
He opened the door farthest from me and got out near the road. I got down on my knees and hid behind the car.
“Come over this side, sir. The bad tire is on this side.”
He came, picking his way through the mud.
“It’s this one, sir—and be careful, there’s a broken bottle lying on the ground.” There was so much garbage by the roadside that it lay there looking perfectly natural.
“Here, let me throw it away. This is the tire, sir. Please take a look.”
He got down on his knees. I rose up over him, holding the bottle held behind my back with a bent arm.
Down below me, his head was just a black ball—and in the blackness, I saw a thin white line of scalp between the neatly parted hair, leading like a painted line on a highway to the spot on the crown of his skull—the spot from which a man’s hair radiates out.
The black ball moved; grimacing to protect his eyes against the drizzle, he looked up at me.
“It seems fine.”
I stood still, like a schoolboy caught out by his teacher. I thought: That landlord’s brain of his has figured it out. He’s going to stand up and hit me in the face.
But what is the use of winning a battle when you don’t even know that there is a war going on?
“Well, you know more about this car than I do, Balram. Let me take another look.”
And he peered again at the tire. The black highway appeared before me once more, with the white paint marks leading to the crown spot.
“There is a problem, sir. You should have got a replacement a long time ago.”
“All right, Balram.” He touched the tire. “But I really think we—”
I rammed the bottle down. The glass ate his bone. I rammed it three times into the crown of his skull, smashing through to his brains. It’s a good, strong bottle, Johnnie Walker Black—well worth its resale value.
The stunned body fell into the mud. A hissing sound came out of its lips, like wind escaping from a tire.
I fell to the ground—my hand was trembling, the bottle slipped out, and I had to pick it up with my left hand. The thing with the hissing lips got up onto its hands and knees; it began crawling around in a circle, as if looking for someone who was meant to protect it.
Why didn’t I gag him and leave him in the bushes, stunned and unconscious, where he wouldn’t be able to do a thing for hours, while I escaped? Good question—and I’ve thought about it many a night, as I sit at my desk, looking at the chandelier.
The first possible reply is that he could always recover, break out of his gag, and call the police. So I had to kill him.
The second possible reply is that his family was going to do such terrible things to my family: I was just getting my revenge in advance.
I like the second reply better.
Putting my foot on the back of the crawling thing, I flattened it to the ground. Down on my knees I went, to be at the right height for what would come next. I turned the body around, so it would face me. I stamped my knee on its chest. I undid the collar button and rubbed my hand over its clavicles to mark out the spot.
When I was a boy in Laxmangarh, and I used to play with my father’s body, the junction of the neck and the chest, the place where all the tendons and veins stick out in high relief, was my favorite spot. When I touched this spot, the pit of my father’s neck, I controlled him—I could make him stop breathing with the pressure of a finger.
The Stork’s son opened his eyes—just as I pierced his neck—and his lifeblood spurted into my eyes.
I was blind. I was a free man.
When I got the blood out of my eyes, it was all over for Mr. Ashok. The blood was draining from the neck quite fast—I believe that is the way the Muslims kill their chickens.
But then tuberculosis is a worse way to go than this, I assure you.
After dragging the body into the bushes, I plunged my hands and face into the rainwater and muck. I picked up the bundle near my feet—the white cotton T-shirt, the one with lots of white space and just one word in English—and changed into it. Reaching for the gilded box of tissues, I wiped my face and hands clean. I pulled out all the stickers of the goddess, and threw them on Mr. Ashok’s body—just in case they’d help his soul go to heaven.
And then, getting into the car, turning the ignition key, putting my foot on the accelerator, I took the Honda City, finest of cars, most faithful of accomplices, on one final trip. Since there was no one else in the car, my left hand reached out to turn Sting off—then stopped and relaxed.
From now on I could play the music as long as I wanted.
In the railway station, thirty-three minutes later, the colored wheels in the fortune machines were coruscating. I stood in front of them, staring at the glowing and the whirling, and wondering, Should I go back to get Dharam?
If I left him there now, the police would certainly arrest him as an accomplice. They would throw him into jail with a bunch of wild men—and you know what happens to little boys when they get put into dens like that, sir.
On the other hand, if I went back now all the way to Gurgaon, someone might discover the body…and then all this (I tightened my grip on the bag) would have been a waste.
I squatted on the floor of the station, pressed down by indecision. There was a squealing noise to my left. A plastic bucket was tumbling about, as if it were alive: then a grinning black face popped out of the bucket. A little creature, a baby boy. A homeless man and woman, covered in filth, sat on either side of the bucket, gazing blankly into the distance. Between his fatigued parents, this little thing was having the time of his life, playing with the water and splashing it on passersby. “Don’t do it, little boy,” I said. He splashed more water, squealing with pleasure each time he hit me. I raised my hand. He ducked into his bucket and kept thrashing from the inside.
I reached into my pockets, searched for a rupee coin, checked to make sure it wasn’t a two-rupee coin, and rolled it toward the bucket.
Then I sighed, and got up, and cursed myself, and walked out of the station.
Your lucky day, Dharam.
The Seventh Night
Can you hear that, Mr. Jiabao? I’ll turn it up for you.
The health minister today announced a plan to eliminate malaria in Bangalore by the end of the year. He has instructed all city officials to work without holiday until malaria is a thing of the past. Forty-five million rupees will be allocated to malaria eradication.
In other news, the chief minister of the state today announced a plan to eliminate malnutrition in Bangalore in six months. He declared that there would be not one hungry child in the city by the end of the year. All officia
ls are to work single-mindedly toward this goal, he declared. Five hundred million rupees will be allocated for malnutrition eradication.
In other news, the finance minister declared that this year’s budget will include special incentives to turn our villages into high-technology paradises…
This is the kind of news they feed us on All India Radio, night after night: and tomorrow at dawn it’ll be in the papers too. People just swallow this crap. Night after night, morning after morning. Amazing, isn’t it?
But enough of the radio. It’s turned off. Now let me look up to my chandelier for inspiration.
Wen!
Old friend!
Tonight we bring this glorious tale to a conclusion. As I was doing my yoga this morning—that’s right, I wake up at eleven in the morning every day and go straight into an hour of yoga—I began reflecting on the progress of my story, and realized that I’m almost done. All that remains to be told is how I changed from a hunted criminal into a solid pillar of Bangalorean society.
Incidentally, sir, while we’re on the topic of yoga—may I just say that an hour of deep breathing, yoga, and meditation in the morning constitutes the perfect start to the entrepreneur’s day. How I would handle the stresses of this fucking business without yoga, I have no idea. Make yoga a must in all Chinese schools—that’s my suggestion.
But back to the story, now.
First, I want to explain one thing about a fugitive’s life. Being a man on the run isn’t all about fear—a fugitive is entitled to his share of fun too.
That evening as I was sweeping up the pieces of the Johnnie Walker bottle in the parking lot, I worked out a plan for how I would get to Bangalore. It wouldn’t be on a direct train—no. Someone might see me, and then the police would know where I had gone. Instead, I would transfer myself from train to train, zigzagging my way down to Bangalore.
Although my schedule was shot to pieces when I went to get Dharam—he was sleeping in the net, and I woke him up and said we were going on a holiday to the South, and dragged him out—and it was hard to keep my red bag in one hand and Dharam in the other hand (for the train station is a dangerous place for a little boy, you know—lots of shady characters around), still I began to move in this zigzag way south from Delhi.
On the third day of traveling like this, red bag in hand, I was at Hyderabad, waiting in line at the station tea shop to buy a cup of tea before my train left. (Dharam was guarding the seat in the compartment.) There was a gecko just above the tea shop, and I was looking at it with concern, hoping it would move before it was my turn to get tea.
The gecko turned to the left—it ran over a large piece of paper posted on the wall—it stood still for a moment, like that, then darted to the side.
That large piece of paper on the wall was a police poster—my police poster. It had already arrived here. I looked at it with a smile of pride.
A smile that lasted just a second. For some bizarre reason—you’ll see how sloppily things get done in India—my poster had been stapled to another poster, of two guys from Kashmir—two terrorists wanted for bombing something or the other.
You’d almost think, looking at the posters, that I was a terrorist too. How annoying.
I realized that I was being watched. A fellow with his hands behind his back was looking at the poster, and at me, most intently. I began to tremble. I edged away from the poster, but I was too late. The moment he saw me leaving, he ran up to me, caught my wrist, and stared at my face.
Then he said, “What’s it say? That poster you’re reading?”
“Read it for yourself.”
“Can’t.”
Now I understood why he had come running. It was the desperation of an illiterate man to get the attention of the literate man. From his accent I knew he was from the Darkness too.
“It’s the wanted-men list for this week,” I said. “Those two are terrorists. From Kashmir.”
“What did they do?”
“They blew up a school. They killed eight children.”
“And this fellow? The one with the mustache?” He tapped my photo with a knuckle of his right hand.
“He’s the guy who caught them.”
“How did he do that?”
To create the illusion I was reading the printing on the wall, I squinted at the two posters, and moved my lips.
“This fellow was a driver. Says here he was in his car, and these two terrorist guys came up to him.”
“Then?”
“Says he pretended he didn’t know they were terrorists, and took them for a ride around Delhi in his car. Then he stopped the car in a dark spot, and smashed a bottle and cut their necks with it.” I slashed two necks with my thumb.
“What kind of bottle?”
“An English liquor bottle. They tend to be pretty solid.”
“I know,” he said. “I used to go to the English liquor shop for my master every Friday. He liked Smir-fone.”
“Smir-noff,” I said, but he wasn’t listening. He was peering again at the photo in the poster.
Suddenly he put his hand on my shoulder.
“You know who this fellow in the poster looks like?”
“Who?” I asked.
He grinned.
“Me.”
I looked at his face, and I looked at the photo.
“It’s true,” I said, slapping him on the back.
I told you: it could be the face of half the men in India.
And then, because I felt sorry for that poor illiterate, thinking he had just endured what my father must have endured at so many railway stations—being mocked and hoodwinked by strangers—I bought him a cup of tea before going back to the train.
Sir:
I am not a politician or a parliamentarian. Not one of those extraordinary men who can kill and move on, as if nothing had happened. It took me four weeks in Bangalore to calm my nerves.
For those four weeks I did the same thing again and again. I left the hotel—a small, seedy place near the train station that I had taken after leaving a deposit of five hundred rupees—every morning at eight and walked around with a bag full of cash in my hands for four hours (I dared not leave it in the hotel room) before returning for lunch.
Dharam and I ate together. What he did to keep himself amused in the mornings I don’t know, but he was in good spirits. This was the first holiday he had had in his whole life. His smiles cheered me up.
Lunch was four rupees a plate. The food is good value in the south. It is strange food, though, vegetables cut up and served in watery curries. Then I went up to my room and slept. At four o’clock I came down and ordered a pack of Parle Milk biscuits and a tea, because I did not know yet how to drink the coffee.
I was eager to try coffee. You see, poor people in the north of this country drink tea, and poor people in the south drink coffee. Who decided that things should be like this, I don’t know, but it’s like this. So this was the first time I was smelling coffee on a daily basis. I was dying to try it out. But before you could drink it, you had to know how to drink it. There was an etiquette, a routine, associated with it that fascinated me. It was served in a cup set into a tumbler, and then it had to be poured in certain quantities and sipped at a certain speed from the tumbler. How the pouring was to be done, how the sipping was to be done, I did not know. For a while I only watched.
It took me a week to realize that everyone was doing it differently. One man poured all the coffee into his tumbler at once; another never used the tumbler at all.
They’re all strangers here, I said to myself. They’re all drinking coffee for the first time.
That was another of the attractions of Bangalore. The city was full of outsiders. No one would notice one more.
I spent four weeks in that hotel near the railway station, doing nothing. I admit there were doubts in my mind. Should I have gone to Mumbai instead? But the police would have thought of that at once—everyone goes to Mumbai in the films after they kill someone, don’t th
ey?
Calcutta! I should have gone there.
One morning Dharam said: “Uncle, you look so depressed. Let’s go for a walk.” We walked through a park where drunken men lay on benches amid wild overgrown weeds. We came out onto a broad road; on the other side of the road stood a huge stone building with a golden lion on top of it.
“What is this building, Uncle?”
“I don’t know, Dharam. It must be where the ministers live in Bangalore.”
On the gable of the building I saw a slogan:
GOVERNMENT WORK IS GOD’S WORK
“You’re smiling, Uncle.”
“You’re right, Dharam. I am smiling. I think we’ll have a good time in Bangalore,” I said and I winked at him.
I moved out of the hotel and took a flat on rent. Now I had to make a living in Bangalore—I had to find out how I could fit into this city.
I tried to hear Bangalore’s voice, just as I had heard Delhi’s.
I went down M.G. Road and sat down at the Café Coffee Day, the one with the outdoor tables. I had a pen and a piece of paper with me, and I wrote down everything I overheard.
I completed that computer program in two and a half minutes.
An American today offered me four-hundred thousand dollars for my start-up and I told him, “That’s not enough!”
Is Hewlett-Packard a better company than IBM?
Everything in the city, it seemed, came down to one thing.
Outsourcing. Which meant doing things in India for Americans over the phone. Everything flowed from it—real estate, wealth, power, sex. So I would have to join this outsourcing thing, one way or the other.
The next day I took an autorickshaw up to Electronics City. I found a banyan tree by the side of a road, and I sat down under it. I sat and watched the buildings until it was evening and I saw all the SUVs racing in; and then I watched until two in the morning, when the SUVs began racing out of the buildings.
And I thought, That’s it. That’s how I fit in.
Let me explain, Your Excellency. See, men and women in Bangalore live like the animals in a forest do. Sleep in the day and then work all night, until two, three, four, five o’clock, depending, because their masters are on the other side of the world, in America. Big question: how will the boys and girls—girls especially—get from home to the workplace in the late evening and then get back home at three in the morning? There is no night bus system in Bangalore, no train system like in Mumbai. The girls would not be safe on buses or trains anyway. The men of this city, frankly speaking, are animals.
The White Tiger: A Novel Page 22
