The White Tiger

The Second Night

For the Desk of:

His Excellency Wen Jiabao

Now probably fast asleep in the

Premier's Office

In China

From the Desk of:

His Midnight Educator

On matters entrepreneurial:

"The White Tiger"

Mr. Premier.

So.

What does my laughter sound like?

What do my armpits smell like?

And when I grin, is it true-as you no doubt imagine by now-that my lips widen into a devil's rictus?

Oh, I could go on and on about myself, sir. I could gloat that I am not just any murderer, but one who killed his own employer (who is a kind of second father), and also contributed to the probable death of all his family members. A virtual mass murderer.

But I don't want to go on and on about myself. You should hear some of these Bangalore entrepreneurs-my start-up has got this contract with American Express, my start-up runs the software in this hospital in London, blah blah. I hate that whole fucking Bangalore attitude, I tell you.

(But if you absolutely must find out more about me, just log on to my Web site: www.whitetiger-technologydrivers.com. That's right! That's the URL of my start-up!)

So I'm sick of talking about myself, sir. Tonight, I want to talk about the other important man in my story.

My ex.

Mr. Ashok's face reappears now in my mind's eye as it used to every day when I was in his service-reflected in my rearview mirror. It was such a handsome face that sometimes I couldn't take my eyes off it. Picture a six-foot-tall fellow, broad-shouldered, with a landlord's powerful, punishing forearms; yet always gentle (almost always-except for that time he punched Pinky Madam in the face) and kind to those around him, even his servants and driver.

Now another face appears, to the side of his, in memory's mirror. Pinky Madam-his wife. Every bit as good-looking as her husband; just as the image of the goddess in the Birla Hindu Temple in New Delhi is as fair as the god to whom she is married. She would sit in the back, and the two of them would talk, and I would drive them wherever they wanted, as faithfully as the servant-god Hanuman carried about his master and mistress, Ram and Sita.

Thinking of Mr. Ashok is making me sentimental. I hope I've got some paper napkins here somewhere.

Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life-possessive, even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his fetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life; only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire before its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.

Now, even though I killed him, you won't find me saying one bad thing about him. I protected his good name when I was his servant, and now that I am (in a sense) his master, I won't stop protecting his good name. I owe him so much. He and Pinky Madam would sit in the back of the car, chatting about life, about India, about America-mixing Hindi and English together-and by eavesdropping on them, I learned a lot about life, India, and America-and a bit of English too. (Perhaps a bit more than I've let on so far-!) Many of my best ideas are, in fact, borrowed from my ex-employer or his brother or someone else whom I was driving about. (I confess, Mr. Premier: I am not an original thinker-but I am an original listener.) True, eventually Mr. Ashok and I had a disagreement or two about an English term-income tax-and things began to sour between us, but that messy stuff comes later on in the story. Right now we're still on best of terms: we've just met, far from Delhi, in the city called Dhanbad.

I came to Dhanbad after my father's death. He had been ill for some time, but there is no hospital in Laxmangarh, although there are three different foundation stones for a hospital, laid by three different politicians before three different elections. When he began spitting blood that morning, Kishan and I took him by boat across the river. We kept washing his mouth with water from the river, but the water was so polluted that it made him spit more blood.

There was a rickshaw-puller on the other side of the river who recognized my father; he took the three of us for free to the government hospital.

There were three black goats sitting on the steps to the large, faded white building; the stench of goat feces wafted out from the open door. The glass in most of the windows was broken; a cat was staring out at us from one cracked window.

A sign on the gate said:

LOHIA UNIVERSAL FREE HOSPITAL

PROUDLY INAUGURATED BY THE GREAT SOCIALIST

A HOLY PROOF THAT HE KEEPS HIS PROMISES

Kishan and I carried our father in, stamping on the goat turds which had spread like a constellation of black stars on the ground. There was no doctor in the hospital. The ward boy, after we bribed him ten rupees, said that a doctor might come in the evening. The doors to the hospital's rooms were wide open; the beds had metal springs sticking out of them, and the cat began snarling at us the moment we stepped into the room.

"It's not safe in the rooms-that cat has tasted blood."

A couple of Muslim men had spread a newspaper on the ground and were sitting on it. One of them had an open wound on his leg. He invited us to sit with him and his friend. Kishan and I lowered Father onto the newspaper sheets. We waited there.

Two little girls came and sat down behind us; both of them had yellow eyes.

"Jaundice. She gave it to me."

"I did not. You gave it to me. And now we'll both die!"

An old man with a cotton patch on one eye came and sat down behind the girls.

The Muslim men kept adding newspapers to the ground, and the line of diseased eyes, raw wounds, and delirious mouths kept growing.

"Why isn't there a doctor here, uncle?" I asked. "This is the only hospital on either side of the river."

"See, it's like this," the older Muslim man said. "There's a government medical superintendent who's meant to check that doctors visit village hospitals like this. Now, each time this post falls vacant, the Great Socialist lets all the big doctors know that he's having an open auction for that post. The going rate for this post is about four hundred thousand rupees these days."

"That much!" I said, my mouth opened wide.

"Why not? There's good money in public service! Now, imagine that I'm a doctor. I beg and borrow the money and give it to the Great Socialist, while touching his feet. He gives me the job. I take an oath to God and the Constitution of India and then I put my boots up on my desk in the state capital." He raised his feet onto an imaginary table. "Next, I call all the junior government doctors, whom I'm supposed to supervise, into my office. I take out my big government ledger. I shout out, 'Dr. Ram Pandey.'"

He pointed a finger at me; I assumed my role in the play.

I saluted him: "Yes, sir!"

He held out his palm to me.

"Now, you-Dr. Ram Pandey-will kindly put one-third of your salary in my palm. Good boy. In return, I do this." He made a tick on the imaginary ledger. "You can keep the rest of your government salary and go work in some private hospital for the rest of the week. Forget the village. Because according to this ledger you've been there. You've treated my wounded leg. You've healed that girl's jaundice."

"Ah," the patients said. Even the ward boys, who had gathered around us to listen, nodded their heads in appreciation. Stories of rottenness and corruption are always the best stories, aren't they?

When Kishan put some food into Father's mouth, he spat it out with blood. His lean black body began to convulse, spewing blood this way and that. The girls with the yellow eyes began to wail. The other patients moved away from my father.

"He's got tuberculosis, hasn't he?" the older Muslim man asked, as he swatted the flies away from the wound in his leg.

"We don't know, sir. He's been coughing for a while, but we didn't know what it was."

"Oh, it's TB. I've seen it before in rickshaw-pullers. They get weak from their work. Well, maybe the doctor will turn up in the evening."

He did not. Around six o'clock that day, as the government ledger no doubt accurately reported, my father was permanently cured of his tuberculosis. The ward boys made us clean up after Father before we could remove the body. A goat came in and sniffed as we were mopping the blood off the floor. The ward boys petted her and fed her a plump carrot as we mopped our father's infected blood off the floor.

Kishan's marriage took place a month after the cremation.

It was one of the good marriages. We had the boy, and we screwed the girl's family hard. I remember exactly what we got in dowry from the girl's side, and thinking about it even now makes my mouth fill up with water: five thousand rupees cash, all crisp new unsoiled notes fresh from the bank, plus a Hero bicycle, plus a thick gold necklace for Kishan.

After the wedding, Kusum Granny took the five thousand rupees and the Hero cycle and the thick gold necklace; Kishan got two weeks to dip his beak into his wife, and then he was packed off to Dhanbad. My cousin Dilip and I came along with him. We three found work in a tea shop in Dhanbad-the owner had heard good things about Kishan's work at the tea shop in Laxmangarh.

Luckily for us, he hadn't heard anything about me.

Go to a tea shop anywhere along the Ganga, sir, and look at the men working in that tea shop-men, I say, but better to call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, crushed humans in crushed uniforms, sluggish, unshaven, in their thirties or forties or fifties but still "boys." But that is your fate if you do your job well-with honesty, dedication, and sincerity, the way Gandhi would have done it, no doubt.

I did my job with near total dishonesty, lack of dedication, and insincerity-and so the tea shop was a profoundly enriching experience.

Instead of wiping out spots from tables and crushing coals for the oven, I used my time at the tea shop in Laxmangarh to spy on every customer at every table, and overhear everything they said. I decided that this was how I would keep my education going forward-that's the one good thing I'll say for myself. I've always been a big believer in education-especially my own.

The owner of the shop sat up at the front, below the big photo of Gandhi, stirring a slow-boiling broth of sugar syrup. He knew what I was up to! Whenever he saw me loafing around a table or pretending to be doing a spot of wiping just so I could hear more of a conversation, he would shout, "You thug!" then jump down from his seat, chase me around the tea shop with the ladle he had been using to stir the sugar, and whack me on the head with it. The burning syrup singed me wherever the ladle touched, and left a series of spots on my ears which people sometimes mistake for vitiligo or another skin disease; a network of pink by which you can still identify me, although the police, predictably, missed it.

Eventually I got sent home. No one else in Laxmangarh would hire me after that, even as a field hand. So it was mostly for my sake that Kishan and Dilip had come to Dhanbad-to give me a chance to start my career as a human spider afresh.

In his journey from village to city, from Laxmangarh to Delhi, the entrepreneur's path crosses any number of provincial towns that have the pollution and noise and traffic of a big city-without any hint of the true city's sense of history, planning, and grandeur. Half-baked cities, built for half-baked men.

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 types 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."

Mr. Ashok seemed to find this amusing. "Only in India," he said. "Your driver can also make sweets for you. Only in India. Start from tomorrow."

"Not so fast," Mukesh Sir said. "First we have to ask about his family. How many are they, where they live, everything. And one more thing: how much do you want?"

Another test.

"Absolutely nothing, sir. You're like a father and mother to me, and how can I ask for money from my parents?"

"Eight hundred rupees a month," he said.

"No, sir, please-it's too much. Give me half of that, it's enough. More than enough."

"If we keep you beyond two months, it'll go to one thousand five hundred."

Looking suitably devastated, I accepted the money from him.

Mukesh Sir was not yet convinced about me. He looked me up and down and said, "He's young. Don't we want someone older?"

The Stork shook his head. "Catch 'em young, and you can keep 'em for life. A driver in his forties, you get, what, twenty years of service, then his eyes fail. This fellow will last thirty, thirty-five years. His teeth are solid, he's got his hair, he's in good shape."

He sucked on his betel juice, which was filling up his mouth, turned, and spat out a jet of red liquid to the side.

Then he told me to come back in two days.

He must have phoned his man in Laxmangarh. And then that man must have gone and spoken to Kusum, and asked the neighbors about us, and phoned back: "He's got a good family. They've never made any trouble. Father died some years ago of TB. He was a rickshaw-puller. Brother is in Dhanbad too, a worker in the tea shops. No history of supporting Naxals or other terrorists. And they don't move about: we know exactly where they are."

That last piece of information was very important. They had to know where my family was, at all times.

I have not told you yet, have I, about what the Buffalo did to his domestic servant. The one who was supposed to guard his infant son, who got kidnapped by the Naxals and then tortured and killed. The servant was one of our caste, sir. A Halwai. I had seen him once or twice when I was a boy.

The servant said he had nothing to do with the kidnapping; the Buffalo did not believe him and got four of his hired gunmen to torture the servant. Then they shot him through the head.

Fair enough. I would do the same to someone who let my son get kidnapped.

But then, because the Buffalo was sure that the man had deliberately let the child be kidnapped, for money, he also went after the servant's family. One brother was set upon while working in the fields; beaten to death there. That brother's wife was finished off by three men working together. A sister, still unmarried, was also finished off. Then the house where the family had lived was surrounded by the four henchmen and set on fire.

Now, who would want this to happen to his family, sir? Which inhuman wretch of a monster would consign his own granny and brother and aunt and nephews and nieces to death?

The Stork and his sons could count on my loyalty.

When I came back, the Nepali guard opened the gate without a word. I was inside the compound now.

As far as masters go, Mr. Ashok, Mukesh Sir, and the Stork were better than nine in ten. There was always enough food in the house for the servants. On Sundays you even got a special dish, rice mixed with small red chunks of boneless chicken. I had never had a regular chicken dish in my life until then; it made you feel like a king, eating chicken Sunday after Sunday and then licking your fingers. I had a covered room to sleep in. True, I had to share it with the other driver, a grim-looking fellow named Ram Persad, and he had the nice big bed, while I had to sleep on the floor-still a covered room's a covered room, and much nicer than sleeping on the road, as Kishan and I had been doing all the time we were in Dhanbad. Above all, I got the thing that we who grow up in the Darkness value most of all. A uniform. A khaki uniform!

The next day I went to the bank-the one that had a wall made all of glass. I saw myself reflected in the glass panes-all in khaki. I walked back and forth in front of that bank a dozen times, just gaping at myself.

If only they had given me a silver whistle, I would have been in paradise!

Kishan came once a month to see me. Kusum had decided that I could keep ninety rupees a month for myself: the rest would go straight to Kishan-who would send it straight to her, in the village. I gave him the money every month through the black bars of the rear gate, and we would talk for a few minutes before the Nepali shouted, "That's enough-the boy has work to do now!"

The work of a number two driver was simple. If the number one driver, Ram Persad, was busy driving the masters around town in the Honda City, and someone in the house wanted to go to the market, or to a coal mine, or to the train station, I got into the Maruti Suzuki and drove them there. Otherwise I had to stay around the house and make myself useful.

Now, I say they took me on as their "driver." I don't exactly know how you organize your servants in China. But in India -or, at least, in the Darkness-the rich don't have drivers, cooks, barbers, and tailors. They simply have servants.

What I mean is that anytime I was not driving the car, I had to sweep the floor of the courtyard, make tea, clean cobwebs with a long broom, or chase a cow out of the compound. There was one thing I was not allowed to do, and this was to touch the Honda City: Ram Persad alone had the right to drive it and clean it. In the evenings I'd watch him wash the sleek exterior of the car with a soft cloth. And I'd burn with envy.

I could see, even from outside, that this was a beautiful, modern car, with all the necessary comforts: a speaker system, A/C, nice glossy leather seats, and a big stainless-steel spittoon in the back. It must be like paradise to drive such a nice car. All I had was a battered old Maruti Suzuki.

One evening, as I was watching, Mr. Ashok came and poked his nose around the car. I was discovering that he was a very inquisitive man.

"What's that for? That shiny thing in the back."

"Spittoon, sir."

"What?"

Ram Persad explained. This spittoon was for the Stork, who liked to chew paan. If he spat the paan out the window the paan might streak the sides of the car, so he spat near his feet, into the spittoon, which the driver washed and cleaned at the end of every ride.

"Disgusting," Mr. Ashok said.

He was asking about something else when Mukesh Sir's son Roshan came running up to us with a plastic bat and ball in his hand.

Ram Persad snapped his fingers for me.

(Playing cricket with any brat in the household who wanted to play-and letting him win, handsomely-was one of the prescribed duties of driver number two.)

Mr. Ashok joined the game. He stood as the wicket-keeper while I bowled full tosses to the brat.

"I'm Azharuddin, captain of India!" the boy shouted every time he hit a six or a four.

"Call yourself Gavaskar. Azharuddin is a Muslim."

It was the Stork. He had come into the courtyard to watch.

Mr. Ashok said, "Father, what a silly thing to say! Hindu or Muslim, what difference does it make?"

"Oh, you young people and your modern ideas!" the Stork said. He put his hands on me. "I have to steal the driver, Roshan-I'm sorry, you'll have him back in an hour, okay?"

The Stork had a special use for driver number two. He had bad legs, with blue veins in them, and had been told by a doctor to sit in the courtyard in the evening with his feet in warm water and have them massaged by a servant.

I had to heat water on the stove, carry it into the courtyard, and then lift the old man's feet up one after the other and immerse them in the hot water and then massage them both gently; as I did this, he would close his eyes and moan.

After half an hour, he would say, "The water's gone cold," and then I had to lift his feet out, one at a time, from the bucket, and carry the bucket in to the toilet. The water in it was dark-dead hair and bits of skin floated on it. I had to fill the bucket with fresh hot water, and bring it back.

As I was massaging, the two sons pulled up chairs and sat down by their father to talk. Ram Persad would bring out a bottle full of a golden liquid, and pour it into three glasses, and drop ice cubes in their glasses, and hand one glass to each of them. The sons would wait for the father to take the first sip and say, "Ah…whiskey. How would we survive this country without it," and then the talking would start. The more they talked, the faster I massaged. They talked about politics, coal, and about your country- China. Somehow these things-politics, coal, China-were linked to the family fortunes of the Stork; and dimly I understood that my own fate, since I was part of this family now, was linked into these three things as well. The chatter of coal and China got mixed up with the aroma of whiskey from the glasses, the stench of sweat rising up from the Stork's feet dipped in the warm water, the flakiness of his skin, and the light jabs of the sandaled feet of Mr. Ashok or the Mongoose when they bumped into my back in the process of moving about. I absorbed everything-that's the amazing thing about entrepreneurs. We are like sponges-we absorb and grow.

A sharp blow landed on my head.

I looked up and saw the Stork, with his palm still raised over my skull, glaring at me.

"Know what that was for?"

"Yes, sir," I said-with a big smile on my face.

"Good."

A minute later he hit me on the head again.

"Tell him what it was for, Father. I don't think he knows. Fellow, you're pressing too hard. You're too excited. Father is getting annoyed. Slow down."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have to hit the servants, Father?"

"This is not America, son. Don't ask questions like that."

"Why can't I ask questions?"

"They expect it from us, Ashok. Remember that-they respect us for it."

Now, Pinky Madam never joined in these conversations. Except to play badminton with Ram Persad, which she did wearing dark glasses, she never left her room. I wondered what was going on with her-was she having a fight with her husband? Was he not sticking it to her well in bed?

When the Stork said, "The water's gone cold," for the second time, and took his feet out of the bucket, my work was done.

I splashed the cold water down the sink.

I washed my hands for ten minutes, and dried them, and washed them again, but it made no difference. No matter how much you wash your hands after you have massaged a man's foot, the smell of his old, flaky skin will stay on your skin for an entire day.

There was only one activity that servant number one and servant number two had to do together. At least once a week, around six o'clock, Ram Persad and I left the house and went down the main road, until we got to a store with a sign that said:

"JACKPOT" ENGLISH LIQUOR SHOP

INDIAN-MADE FOREIGN LIQUOR SOLD HERE

I should explain to you, Mr. Jiabao, that in this country we have two kinds of men: "Indian" liquor men and "English" liquor men. "Indian" liquor was for village boys like me-toddy, arrack, country hooch. "English" liquor, naturally, is for the rich. Rum, whiskey, beer, gin-anything the English left behind. (Is there a "Chinese" liquor, Mr. Premier? I'd love to take a sip.)

One of the most important duties of driver number one was to come to Jackpot once a week and buy a bottle of the most expensive whiskey for the Stork and his sons. It was part of servant protocol, though don't ask me why, that the junior driver accompany him on this outing. I guess I was supposed to make sure he did not run away with the bottle.

Colored bottles of various sizes were stacked up on Jackpot's shelves, and two teenagers behind the counter struggled to take orders from the men shouting at them. On the white wall to the side of the shop, there were hundreds of names of liquor brands, written in a dripping red paint and subdivided into five categories, BEER, RUM, WHISKEY, GIN, and VODKA.

PRICE LIST "JACKPOT" ENGLISH LIQUOR SHOP

OUR WHISKEY

WHISKEY FIRST CLASS

WHISKEY SECOND CLASS

WHISKEY THIRD CLASS

(EVEN CHEAPER WHISKEY IS AVAILABLE: ASK AT THE COUNTER.)

OUR VODKA

VODKA FIRST CLASS…

It was a small store, and at least fifty men were crammed into the ten feet of space in front of the counter, each yelling at the top of his voice, while waving rupee notes of the higher denominations:

"Kinfisher Strong one liter!"

"Old Monk half bottle!"

"Thunderbolt! Thunderbolt!"

They were not going to be drinking this liquor; I could tell from their torn and dirty shirts that they were only servants, like Ram Persad and me, come to buy English liquor for their masters. If we came after eight o'clock on a weekend night to Jackpot, it was like a civil war in front of the counter; I had to keep the men at bay, while Ram Persad shoved his way to the counter and yelled:

"Black Dog! Full bottle!"

Black Dog was the first name in the first-class category of whiskey. It was the only thing that the Stork and his sons drank.

Ram Persad would get the liquor; and then I would swat at the other servants and fight for some space for us to get out, while he cradled the bottle in his arms. It was the only time we were ever like a team.

On our way back to the house, Ram Persad would always stop by the side of the road and slide the Black Dog out of its cardboard box. He said this was to check that Jackpot hadn't cheated us. I knew he was lying. He just wanted to hold the bottle. He wanted to hold the full, virgin bottle of first-class whiskey in his hand. He wanted to imagine that he was buying it for himself. Then he would slide the bottle back into the cardboard box and return to the house, me behind him, my eyes still dazzled by the sight of so much English liquor.

At night, while Ram Persad snored from his bed, I lay on the floor with my head resting on my palms.

I was staring at the ceiling.

And thinking how the Stork's two sons were as different from each other as night and day.

Mukesh Sir was small, and dark, and ugly, and very shrewd. We would have called him "the Mongoose" back at home. He had been married for some years, to a homely wife who was turning fat on schedule, after having two children, both boys. This fellow, this Mongoose, did not have his father's body-but he had his father's mind. If he ever saw me waste even one moment, he would shout, "Driver, don't loiter there! Clean the car."

"Cleaned it already, sir."

"Then take a broom and sweep the courtyard."

Mr. Ashok had his father's body; he was tall, and broad, and handsome, like a landlord's son should be. In the evenings, I saw him play badminton with his wife in the compound of the house. She wore pants; I gaped. Who had ever seen a woman dressed in trousers before-except in the movies? I assumed at first she was an American, one of those magical things he had brought home from New York, like his accent and the fruit-flavored perfume he put on his face after shaving.

Two days later, Ram Persad and the slanty-eyed Nepali were gossiping. I took a broom, began sweeping the courtyard, and edged closer and closer to them.

"She's a Christian, did you know?"

"No way."

"Yes!"

"And he married her?"

"They married in America. When we Indians go there, we lose all respect for caste," the Nepali said.

"The old man was dead set against the marriage. Her people were not happy either."

"So-how did it happen?"

The Nepali glared at me. "Hey, are you eavesdropping on us?"

"No, sir."

One morning there was a knocking on the door of the drivers' quarters, and when I went out, Pinky Madam was standing with two rackets in her hand.

A net had been tied between two poles in one corner of the courtyard; she got on one side of the net and I got on the other side. She hit the shuttle-it rose up, and then fell near my foot.

"Hey! Move! Hit it back!"

"Sorry, madam. I'm so sorry."

I'd never played this game before. I hit the shuttle back to her, and it went straight into the net.

"Oh, you're useless. Where is that other driver?"

Ram Persad dashed up to the net at once. He had been watching the game all the time from the side. He knew exactly how to play badminton.

I watched him hit the shuttle cleanly over the net and match her shot for shot, and my belly burned.

Is there any hatred on earth like the hatred of the number two servant for the number one?

Though we slept in the same room, just a few feet apart, we never said a word to each other-never a Hello, or How's your mother doing, nothing. I could feel heat radiate out from him all night-I knew he was cursing me and putting spells on me in his sleep. See, he began every day by bowing in front of at least twenty pictures of various gods he kept in his side of the room, and saying, " Om, om, om." As he did this, he looked at me through the corner of his eye, as if to say, Don't you pray? What are you, a Naxal?

One evening I went to the market and bought two dozen of the cheapest idols of Hanuman and Ram I could find and brought them back and packed them into the room. So both of us now had the same number of gods in the room; and we drowned out each other's prayers in the morning while bowing before our respective deities.

The Nepali was hand in hand with Ram Persad. One day he burst into my room and put a big plastic bucket down on the floor with a thud.

"Do you like dogs, village boy?" he asked with a big smile.

There were two white Pomeranians in the house-Cuddles and Puddles. The rich expect their dogs to be treated like humans, you see-they expect their dogs to be pampered, and walked, and petted, and even washed! And guess who had to do the washing? I got down on my knees and began scrubbing the dogs, and then lathering them, and foaming them, and then washing them down, and taking a blow dryer and drying their skin. Then I took them around the compound on a chain while the king of Nepal sat in a corner and shouted, "Don't pull the chain so hard! They're worth more than you are!"

By the time I was done with Puddles and Cuddles, I walked back, sniffing my hands-the only thing that can take the smell of dog skin off a servant's hands is the smell of his master's skin.

Mr. Ashok was standing outside my room.

I ran up to him and bowed low. He went into the room; I followed, still crouched over. He bent low to make his way through the doorway-the doorway was built for undernourished servants, not for a tall, well-fed master like him. He looked at the ceiling dubiously.

"How awful," he said.

Until then I had never noticed how the paint on the ceiling was peeling off in large flakes, and how there were spiderwebs in every corner. I had been so happy in this room until now.

"Why is there such a smell? Open the windows."

He sat down on Ram Persad's bed and poked it with his fingertips. It felt hard. I immediately stopped being jealous of Ram Persad.

(And so I saw the room with his eyes; smelled it with his nose; poked it with his fingers-I had already begun to digest my master!)

He looked in my direction, but avoided my gaze, as if he were guilty about something.

"You and Ram Persad will both get a better room to sleep in. And separate beds. And some privacy."

"Please don't do that, sir. This place is like a palace for us."

That made him feel better. He looked at me.

"You're from Laxmangarh, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"I was born in Laxmangarh. But I haven't seen it since. Were you born there too?"

"Yes, sir. Born and raised there."

"What's it like?"

Before I could answer, he said, "It must be so nice."

"Like paradise, sir."

He looked me up and down, from head to toe, the way I had been looking at him ever since I had come to the house.

His eyes seemed full of wonder: how could two such contrasting specimens of humanity be produced by the same soil, sunlight, and water?

"Well, I want to go there today," he said, getting up from the bed. "I want to see my birthplace. You'll drive me."

"Yes, sir!"

Going home! And in my uniform, driving the Stork's car, chatting up his son and daughter-in-law!

I was ready to fall at his feet and kiss them!

The Stork had wanted to come along with us, and that would really make it a grand entry for me into the village-but at the last minute he decided to stay back. In the end, it was just Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam whom I was taking in the Honda City, out into the countryside, toward Laxmangarh.

It was the first time I was driving the two of them-Ram Persad had had the privilege until now. I still wasn't used to the Honda City, which is a moody car with a mind of its own, as I've said. I just prayed to the gods-all of them-not to let me make a mistake.

They said nothing for half an hour. Sometimes you can feel as a driver when there is tension in the car; it raises the temperature inside. The woman inside the car was very angry.

"Why are we going to this place in the middle of nowhere, Ashoky?" Her voice, breaking the silence at last.

"It's my ancestral village, Pinky. Wouldn't you like to see it? I was born there-but Father sent me away as a boy. There was some trouble with the Communist guerrillas then. I thought we could-"

"Have you decided on a return date?" she asked suddenly. "I mean to New York."

"No. Not yet. We'll get one soon."

He was silent for a minute; my ears were really wide open now. If they went back to America -would they no longer need a second driver in the home?

She said nothing; but I swear, I could hear teeth gritting.

Mr. Ashok had no clue, though-he began humming a film song, until she said, "What a fucking joke."

"What was that?"

"You lied about returning to America, didn't you, Ashok-you're never going back, are you?"

"There's a driver in the car, Pinky-I'll explain everything later."

"Oh, what does he matter! He's only the driver. And you're just changing the topic again!"

A lovely fragrance filled the car-and I knew that she must have moved about and adjusted her clothes.

"Why do we even need a driver? Why can't you drive, like you used to?"

"Pinky, that was New York -you can't drive in India, just look at this traffic. No one follows any rules-people run across the road like crazy-look-look at that-"

A tractor was coming down the road at full speed, belching out a nice thick plume of black diesel from its exhaust pipe.

"It's on the wrong side of the road! The driver of that tractor hasn't even noticed!"

I hadn't noticed either. Well, I suppose you are meant to drive on the left side of the road, but until then I had never known anyone to get agitated over this rule.

"And just look at the diesel it's spewing out. If I drive here, Pinky, I'll go completely mad."

We drove along a river, and then the tar road came to an end and I took them along a bumpy track, and then through a small marketplace with three more or less identical shops, selling more or less identical items of kerosene, incense, and rice. Everyone stared at us. Some children began running alongside the car. Mr. Ashok waved at them, and tried to get Pinky Madam to do the same.

The children disappeared; we had crossed a line they could not follow us beyond. We were in the landlords' quarter.

The caretaker was waiting at the gate of the Stork's mansion; he opened the door of the car even before I had brought it to a full stop, and touched Mr. Ashok's feet.

"Little prince, you're here at last! You're here at last!"

The Wild Boar came to have lunch with Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam-he was their uncle, after all. As soon as I saw him enter the mansion for lunch, I went to the kitchen and told the caretaker, "I love Mr. Ashok so much you must let me serve him lunch!" The cook agreed-and I got to take my first good look at the Wild Boar in years. He was older than I remembered, and more bent over, but his teeth were exactly the same: sharp and blackened and with two distinctive hooked ones curving up by the side. They ate in the dining room-a magnificent place, with high ceilings, heavy, old-fashioned furniture all around, and a huge chandelier.

"It's a lovely old mansion," Mr. Ashok said. "Everything's gorgeous in here."

"Except the chandelier-it's a bit tacky," she said.

"Your father loves chandeliers," the Wild Boar said. "He wanted to put one up in the bathroom here, did you know that? I'm serious!"

When the caretaker brought out the dishes and put them on the table, Mr. Ashok looked at them and said, "Don't you have anything vegetarian? I don't eat meat."

"I've never heard of a landlord who was vegetarian," the Wild Boar said. "It's not natural. You need meat to toughen you up." He opened his lips and showed his curved teeth.

"I don't believe in killing animals needlessly. I knew vegetarians in America, and I think they're right."

"What crazy ideas do you boys pick up?" the old man said. "You're a landlord. It's the Brahmins who are vegetarian, not us."

After lunch I washed the dishes; I helped the caretaker make tea. My master was taken care of; now it was time to see my family. I went out the mansion by the back door.

Well, they had beaten me to it. My family had all come to the mansion, and they were around the Honda City, staring at it with pride, though too frightened to touch it.

Kishan raised his hand. I hadn't seen him since he left Dhanbad and came back home to work in the fields-that was three months ago. I bent down and touched his feet, and held on to them for seconds longer than needed, because I knew the moment I let go he would bugger me badly-I hadn't sent any money home for the past two months.

"Oh, so now he remembers his family at last!" he said, shaking me off his feet. "Has he thought about us at all?"

"Forgive me, brother."

"You've not sent any money for months. You forgot our arrangement."

"Forgive me, forgive me."

But they weren't really angry. For the first time I can remember, I got more attention than the water buffalo. Most lavish in her fussing, naturally, was sly old Kusum, who kept grinning at me and rubbing her forearms.

"Oh, how I used to stuff your mouth with sweets as a child," she said, trying to squeeze my cheeks. She was too frightened of my uniform to try and touch me anywhere else.

They almost carried me on their backs to the old house, I tell you. The neighbors were waiting there to see my uniform.

I was shown the children that had been born in the family since I had left, and forced to kiss them on the forehead. My aunt Laila had had two children when I was gone. Cousin Pappu's wife, Leela, had had a child. The family was larger. The needs were more. I was chastised by all for not sending money each month.

Kusum beat her head with her fist; she wailed into the neighbors' house. "My grandson has a job, and he still forces me to work. This is the fate of an old woman in this world."

"Marry him off!" the neighbors yelled. "That's the only way to tame the wild ones like him!"

"Yes," Kusum said. "Yes, that's a good idea." She grinned, and rubbed her forearms. "A very good idea."

Kishan had a lot of news for me-and since this was the Darkness, all of it was bad news. The Great Socialist was as corrupt as ever. The fighting between the Naxal terrorists and the landlords was getting bloodier. Small people like us were getting caught in between. There were private armies on both sides, going around to shoot and torture people suspected of sympathizing with the other.

"Life has become hell here," he said. "But we're so happy you're out of this mess-you've got a uniform, and a good master."

Kishan had changed. He was thinner, and darker-his neck tendons were sticking out in high relief above the deep clavicles. He had become, all of a sudden, my father.

I saw Kusum grinning and rubbing her forearms and talking of my marriage. She served me lunch herself. As she ladled the curry onto my plate-she had made chicken, just for me-she said, "We'll fix up the wedding for later this year, okay? We've already found someone for you-a nice plump duck. The moment she has her menstrual cycle, she can come here."

There was red, curried bone and flesh in front of me-and it seemed to me that they had served me flesh from Kishan's own body on that plate.

"Granny," I said, looking at the large piece of red, curried meat, "give me some more time. I'm not ready to be married."

Her jaw dropped. "What do you mean, not yet? You'll do what we want." She smiled. "Now eat it, dear. I made chicken just for you."

I said, "No."

"Eat it."

She pushed the plate closer to me.

Everyone in the household stopped to look at our tussle.

Granny squinted. "What are you, a Brahmin? Eat, eat."

"No!" I pushed the plate so hard it went flying to a corner and hit the wall and spilled the red curry on the floor. "I said, I'm not marrying!"

She was too stunned even to yell. Kishan got up and tried to stop me as I left, but I pushed him to the side-he fell down hard-and I just walked out of the house.

The children ran along with me outside, little dirty brats born to one aunt or the other whose names I did not want to know, whose hair I did not want to touch. Gradually they got the message and went back.

I left behind the temple, the market, the hogs, and the sewage. Then I was alone at the pond-the Black Fort on the hill up in front of me.

Near the water's edge I sat down, gnashing my teeth.

I couldn't stop thinking of Kishan's body. They were eating him alive in there! They would do the same thing to him that they did to Father-scoop him out from the inside and leave him weak and helpless, until he got tuberculosis and died on the floor of a government hospital, waiting for some doctor to see him, spitting blood on this wall and that!

There was a splashing noise. The water buffalo in the pond lifted its water-lily-covered head-it peeked at me. A crane stood watching me on one leg.

I walked until the water came up to my neck, and then swam-past lotuses and water lilies, past the water buffalo, past tadpoles and fish and giant boulders fallen from the fort.

Up on the broken ramparts, the monkeys gathered to look at me: I had started climbing up the hill.

You are familiar already with my love of poetry-and especially of the works of the four Muslim poets acknowledged to be the greatest of all time. Now, Iqbal, who is one of the four, has written this remarkable poem in which he imagines that he is the Devil, standing up for his rights at a moment when God tries to bully him. The Devil, according to the Muslims, was once God's sidekick, until he fought with Him and went freelance, and ever since, there has been a war of brains between God and the Devil. This is what Iqbal writes about. The exact words of the poem I can't remember, but it goes something like this.

God says: I am powerful. I am huge. Become my servant again.

Devil says: Ha!

When I remember Iqbal's Devil, as I do often, lying here under my chandelier, I think of a little black figure in a wet khaki uniform who is climbing up the entranceway to a black fort.

There he stands now, one foot on the ramparts of the Black Fort, surrounded by a group of amazed monkeys.

Up in the blue skies, God spreads His palm over the plains below, showing this little man Laxmangarh, and its little tributary of the Ganga, and all that lies beyond: a million such villages, a billion such people. And God asks this little man:

Isn't it all wonderful? Isn't it all grand? Aren't you grateful to be my servant?

And then I see this small black man in the wet khaki uniform start to shake, as if he has gone mad with anger, before delivering to the Almighty a gesture of thanks for having created the world this particular way, instead of all the other ways it could have been created.

I see the little man in the khaki uniform spitting at God again and again, as I watch the black blades of the midget fan slice the light from the chandelier again and again.

Half an hour later, when I came down the hill, I went straight to the Stork's mansion. Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam were waiting for me by the Honda City.

"Where the hell have you been, driver?" she yelled. "We've been waiting."

"Sorry, madam," I said, grinning to her. "I'm very sorry."

"Have a heart, Pinky. He was seeing his family. You know how close they are to their families in the Darkness."

Kusum, Luttu Auntie, and all the other women were gathered by the side of the road as we drove out. They gaped at me-stunned that I wasn't coming to apologize: I saw Kusum clench her gnarled fist at me.

I put my foot down on the accelerator and drove right past all of them.

We went through the market square-I took a look at the tea shop: the human spiders were at work at the tables, the rickshaws were arranged in a line at the back, and the cyclist with the poster for the daily pornographic film on the other side of the river had just begun his rounds.

I drove through the greenery, through the bushes and the trees and the water buffaloes lazing in muddy ponds; past the creepers and the bushes; past the paddy fields; past the coconut palms; past the bananas; past the neems and the banyans; past the wild grass with the faces of the water buffaloes peeping through. A small, half-naked boy was riding a buffalo by the side of the road; when he saw us, he pumped his fists and shouted in joy-and I wanted to shout back at him: Yes, I feel that way too! I'm never going back there!

"Can you talk now, Ashoky? Can you answer my question?"

"All right. Look, when I came back, I really thought it was going to be for two months, Pinky. But…things have changed so much in India. There are so many more things I could do here than in New York now."

"Ashoky, that's bullshit."

"No, it's not. Really, it's not. The way things are changing in India now, this place is going to be like America in ten years. Plus, I like it better here. We've got people to take care of us here-our drivers, our watchmen, our masseurs. Where in New York will you find someone to bring you tea and sweet biscuits while you're still lying in bed, the way Ram Bahadur does for us? You know, he's been in my family for thirty years-we call him a servant, but he's part of the family. Dad found this Nepali wandering about Dhanbad one day with a gun in his hand and said-"

He stopped talking all at once.

"Did you see that, Pinky?"

"What?"

"Did you see what the driver did?"

My heart skipped a beat. I had no idea what I had just done. Mr. Ashok leaned forward and said, "Driver, you just touched your finger to your eye, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Didn't you see, Pinky-we just drove past a temple"-Mr. Ashok pointed to the tall, conical structure with the black intertwining snakes painted down the sides that we had left behind-"so the driver…"

He touched me on the shoulder.

"What is your name?"

"Balram."

"So Balram here touched his eye as a mark of respect. The villagers are so religious in the Darkness."

That seemed to have impressed the two of them, so I put my finger to my eye a moment later, again.

"What's that for, driver? I don't see any temples around."

"Er…we drove past a sacred tree, sir. I was offering my respects."

"Did you hear that? They worship nature. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

The two of them kept an eye open for every tree or temple we passed by, and turned to me for a reaction of piety-which I gave them, of course, and with growing elaborateness: first just touching my eye, then my neck, then my clavicle, and even my nipples.

They were convinced I was the most religious servant on earth. (Take that, Ram Persad!)

Our way back into Dhanbad was blocked. There was a truck parked on the road. It was full of men with red headbands shouting slogans.

"Rise against the rich! Support the Great Socialist. Keep the landlords out!"

Soon another set of trucks drove by: the men in them wore green headbands and shouted at the men in the other truck. A fight was about to break out.

"What's going on?" Pinky Madam asked in an alarmed tone of voice.

"Relax," he said. "It's election time, that's all."

Now, to explain to you what was going on with all this shouting from the trucks, I will have to tell you all about democracy-something that you Chinese, I am aware, are not very familiar with. But that will have to wait for tomorrow, Your Excellency.

It's 2:44 a.m.

The hour of degenerates, drug addicts-and Bangalore-based entrepreneurs.