The White Tiger

The Fourth Night

I should talk a little more about this chandelier.

Why not? I've got no family anymore. All I've got is chandeliers.

I have a chandelier here, above my head in my office, and then I have two in my apartment in Raj Mahal Villas Phase Two. One in the drawing room, and a small one in the toilet too. It must be the only toilet in Bangalore with a chandelier!

I saw all these chandeliers one day, tied to the branch of a big banyan tree near Lalbagh Gardens; a boy from a village was selling them, and I bought all of them on the spot. I paid some fellow with a bullock cart to bring them home and we went riding through Bangalore, me and this fellow and four chandeliers, on a limousine powered by bulls!

It makes me happy to see a chandelier. Why not, I'm a free man, let me buy all the chandeliers I want. For one thing, they keep the lizards away from this room. It's the truth, sir. Lizards don't like the light, so as soon as they see a chandelier, they stay away.

I don't understand why other people don't buy chandeliers all the time, and put them up everywhere. Free people don't know the value of freedom, that's the problem.

Sometimes, in my apartment, I turn on both chandeliers, and then I lie down amid all that light, and I just start laughing. A man in hiding, and yet he's surrounded by chandeliers!

There-I'm revealing the secret to a successful escape. The police searched for me in darkness: but I hid myself in light.

In Bangalore!

Now, among the many uses of a chandelier, this most unsung and unloved object, is that, when you forget something, all you have to do is stare at the glass pieces shining in the ceiling long enough, and within five minutes you'll remember exactly what it is you were trying to remember.

See, I'd forgotten where we left off the story last night, so I had to go on about chandeliers for a while, keeping you busy, but now I remember where we were.

Delhi -we had got to Delhi last night when I stopped the narrative.

The capital of our glorious nation. The seat of Parliament, of the president, of all ministers and prime ministers. The pride of our civic planning. The showcase of the republic.

That's what they call it.

Let a driver tell you the truth. And the truth is that Delhi is a crazy city.

See, the rich people live in big housing colonies like Defence Colony or Greater Kailash or Vasant Kunj, and inside their colonies the houses have numbers and letters, but this numbering and lettering system follows no known system of logic. For instance, in the English alphabet, A is next to B, which everyone knows, even people like me who don't know English. But in a colony, one house is called A 231, and then the next is F 378. So one time Pinky Madam wanted me to take her to Greater Kailash E 231, I tracked down the houses to E 200, and just when I thought we were almost there, E Block vanished completely. The next house was S something.

Pinky Madam began yelling. "I told you not to bring this hick from the village!"

And then another thing. Every road in Delhi has a name, like Aurangazeb Road, or Humayun Road, or Archbishop Makarios Road. And no one, masters or servants, knows the name of the road. You ask someone, "Where's Nikolai Copernicus Marg?"

And he could be a man who lived on Nikolai Copernicus Marg his whole life, and he'll open his mouth and say, "Hahn?"

Or he'll say, "Straight ahead, then turn left," even though he has no idea.

And all the roads look the same, all of them go around and around grassy circles in which men are sleeping or eating or playing cards, and then four roads shoot off from that grassy circle, and then you go down one road, and you hit another grassy circle where men are sleeping or playing cards, and then four more roads go off from it. So you just keep getting lost, and lost, and lost in Delhi.

Thousands of people live on the sides of the road in Delhi. They have come from the Darkness too-you can tell by their thin bodies, filthy faces, by the animal-like way they live under the huge bridges and overpasses, making fires and washing and taking lice out of their hair while the cars roar past them. These homeless people are a particular problem for drivers. They never wait for a red light-simply dashing across the road on impulse. And each time I braked to avoid slamming the car into one of them, the shouting would start from the passenger's seat.

But I ask you, who built Delhi in this crazy way? Which geniuses were responsible for making F Block come after A Block and House Number 69 come after House Number 12? Who was so busy partying and drinking English liquor and taking their Pomeranian dogs for walks and shampoos that they gave the roads names that no one could remember?

"Are you lost again, driver?"

"Don't go after him again."

"Why do you always defend him, Ashok?"

"Don't we have more serious things to discuss? Why are we always talking about this driver?"

"All right, let's discuss the other things, then. First let's discuss your wife, and her temper tantrums."

"Do you really think that's more important than the tax thing? I keep asking you what are we doing about it, and you keep changing the topic. I think it's insane, how much they're asking us to pay."

"I told you. It's a political thing. They're harassing us because Father is trying to distance himself from the Great Socialist."

"I don't know why he ever got involved with that rogue."

"He got into politics because he had to, Ashok-you don't have a choice in the Darkness. And don't panic, we can deal with this income tax charge. This is India, not America. There's always a way out here. I told you, we have someone here who works for us-Ramanathan. He's a good fixer."

"Ramanathan is a sleazy, oily cretin. We need a new tax lawyer, Mukesh! We need to go to the newspapers and tell them we're being raped by these politicians!"

"Listen"-the Mongoose raised his voice-"you just got back from America. Even this man driving our car knows more about India than you do right now. We need a fixer. He'll get us the interview with a minister that we need. That's how Delhi works."

The Mongoose leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder. "Lost again? Do you think you could find your way home this time without getting lost a dozen times?"

He sighed and fell back on his seat. "We shouldn't have brought him here, he's hopeless. Ram Bahadur got it all wrong about this fellow. Ashok."

"Hm?"

"Look up from your phone a minute. Have you told Pinky that you're staying back for good?"

"Hm. Yes."

"What does the Queen say?"

"Don't call her that. She's your sister-in-law, Mukesh. She'll be happy in Gurgaon, it's the most American part of the city."

Now, Mr. Ashok's thinking was smart. Ten years ago, they say, there was nothing in Gurgaon, just water buffaloes and fat Punjabi farmers. Today it's the modernest suburb of Delhi. American Express, Microsoft, all the big American companies have offices there. The main road is full of shopping malls-each mall has a cinema inside! So if Pinky Madam missed America, this was the best place to bring her.

"This moron," the Mongoose said, "see what he's done. He's got lost again."

He stretched his hand and smacked my skull with it. "Take a left from the fountain, you idiot! Don't you know how to get to the house from here?"

I began apologizing, but a voice from behind me said, "It's all right, Balram. Just get us home."

"See-you're defending him again."

"Just put yourself in his place, Mukesh. Can you imagine how confusing Delhi must be to him? It must be like getting to New York for the first time was for me."

The Mongoose switched to English-and I didn't catch what he said-but Mr. Ashok replied in Hindi, "Pinky thinks the same too. That's the only thing you and she agree on, but I won't have it, Mukesh. We don't know who's who in Delhi. This fellow, we can trust him. He's from home."

At that moment I looked at the rearview mirror, and I caught Mr. Ashok's eyes looking at me: and in those master's eyes, I saw the most unexpected emotion.

Pity.

"How much are they paying you, Country-Mouse?"

"Enough. I'm happy."

"Not telling me, eh, Country-Mouse? Good boy. A loyal servant to the end. Liking Delhi?"

"Yes."

"Ha! Don't lie to me, sister-fucker. I know you're completely lost here. You must hate it!"

He tried to put his hand on me, and I squirmed and moved back. He had a skin disease-vitiligo had turned his lips bright pink in the middle of a pitch-black face. I'd better explain about this skin disease, which afflicts so many poor people in our country. I don't know why you get it, but once you do, your skin changes color from brown to pink. Nine cases out of ten, it's a few bright pink spots on a boy's nose or cheeks like a star exploding on his face, or a rash of pink on the forearm like someone burned him with boiling water there, but sometimes a fellow's whole body has changed color, and as you walk past, you think, An American! You stop to gape; you want to go near and touch. Then you realize it's just one of ours, with that horrible condition.

In the case of this driver, since the flash of pink had completely discolored his lips-and nothing else-he looked like a clown at the circus with painted lips. My stomach churned just to see his face. Still, he was the only one of the drivers who was being nice to me, so I stayed close to him.

We were outside the mall. We-a dozen or so chauffeurs-were waiting for our masters to finish their shopping. We weren't allowed inside the mall, of course-no one had to tell us these things. We had made a ring by the side of the parking lot, and we were smoking and chatting-every now and then someone would emit a red jet of paan from his mouth.

On account of the fact that he too was from the Darkness-he had of course guessed my origin at once-the driver with the diseased lips gave me a course on how to survive Delhi and make sure I wasn't sent back to the Darkness on the top of a bus.

"The main thing to know about Delhi is that the roads are good, and the people are bad. The police are totally rotten. If they see you without a seat belt, you'll have to bribe them a hundred rupees. Our masters are not such a great lot, either. When they go for their late-night parties, it's hell for us. You sleep in the car, and the mosquitoes eat you alive. If they're malaria mosquitoes it's all right, you'll just be raving for a couple of weeks, but if it's the dengue mosquitoes, then you're in deep shit, and you'll die for sure. At two in the morning, he comes back, banging on the windows and shouting for you, and he's reeking of beer, and he farts in the car all the way back. The cold gets really bad in January. If you know he's having a late-night party, take along a blanket so you can cover yourself in the car. Keeps the mosquitoes away too. Now, you'll get bored sitting in the car and waiting for him to come back from his parties-I knew one driver who went nuts from the waiting-so you need something to read. You can read, can't you? Good. This is the absolutely best thing to read in the car."

He gave me a magazine with a catchy cover-a woman in her underwear was lying on a bed, cowering from the shadow of a man.

MURDER WEEKLY

RUPEES 4.50

EXCLUSIVE TRUE STORY:

"A GOOD BODY NEVER GOES TO WASTE"

MURDER. RAPE. REVENGE.

Now I have to tell you about this magazine, Murder Weekly, since our prime minister certainly won't tell you anything about it. It's sold in every newsstand in the city, alongside the cheap novels, and it is very popular reading among all the servants of the city-whether they be cooks, children's maids, or gardeners. Drivers are no different. Every week when this magazine comes out, with a cover image of a woman cowering from her would-be murderer, some driver has bought the magazine and is passing it around to the other drivers.

Now, don't panic at this information, Mr. Premier-no beads of chill sweat need form on your yellow brow. Just because drivers and cooks in Delhi are reading Murder Weekly, it doesn't mean that they are all about to slit their masters' necks. Of course, they'd like to. Of course, a billion servants are secretly fantasizing about strangling their bosses-and that's why the government of India publishes this magazine and sells it on the streets for just four and a half rupees so that even the poor can buy it. You see, the murderer in the magazine is so mentally disturbed and sexually deranged that not one reader would want to be like him-and in the end he always gets caught by some honest, hardworking police officer (ha!), or goes mad and hangs himself by a bedsheet after writing a sentimental letter to his mother or primary school teacher, or is chased, beaten, buggered, and garroted by the brother of the woman he has done in. So if your driver is busy flicking through the pages of Murder Weekly, relax. No danger to you. Quite the contrary.

It's when your driver starts to read about Gandhi and the Buddha that it's time to wet your pants, Mr. Jiabao.

After showing it to me, Vitiligo-Lips closed the magazine and threw it into the circle where the other drivers were sitting; they made a grab for it, like a bunch of dogs rushing after a bone. He yawned and looked at me.

"What does your boss do for a living, Country-Mouse?"

"I don't know."

"Being loyal or being stupid, Country-Mouse? Where is he from?"

"Dhanbad."

"He's into coal, then. Probably here to bribe ministers. It's a rotten business, coal." He yawned again. "I used to drive a man who sold coal. Bad, bad business. But my current boss is into steel, and he makes the coal men look like saints. Where does he live?"

I told him the name of our apartment block.

"My master lives there too! We're neighbors!"

He sidled right up to me; without moving away-that would have been rude-I tilted my body as far as I could from his lips.

"Country-Mouse-does your boss"-he looked around, and dropped his voice to a whisper-"need anything?"

"What do you mean?"

"Does your boss like foreign wine? I have a friend who works at a foreign embassy as a driver. He's got contacts there. You know the foreign-wine foreign-embassy scam?"

I shook my head.

"The scam is this, Country-Mouse. Foreign wine is very expensive in Delhi, because it's taxed. But the embassies get it in for free. They're supposed to drink their wine, but they sell it on the black market. I can get him other stuff too. Does he want golf balls? I've got people in the U.S. Consulate who will sell me that. Does he want women? I can get that too. If he's into boys, no problem."

"My master doesn't do these things. He's a good man."

The diseased lips opened up into a smile. "Aren't they all?"

He began whistling some Hindi film song. One of the drivers had begun reading out a story from the magazine; all the others had gone silent. I looked at the mall for a while.

I turned to the driver with the horrible pink lips and said, "I've got a question to ask you."

"All right. Ask. You know I'll do anything for you, Country-Mouse."

"This building-the one they call a mall-the one with the posters of women hanging on it-it's for shopping, right?"

"Right."

"And that"-I pointed to a shiny glass building to our left-"is that also a mall? I don't see any posters of women hanging on it."

"That's not a mall, Country-Mouse. That's an office building. They make calls from there to America."

"What kind of calls?"

"I don't know. My master's daughter works in one of those buildings too. I drop her off at eight o'clock and she comes back at two in the morning. I know she makes pots and pots of money in that building, because she spends it all day in the malls." He leaned in close-the pink lips were just centimeters from mine. "Between the two of us, I think it's rather odd-girls going into buildings late at night and coming out with so much cash in the morning."

He winked at me. "What else, Country-Mouse? You're a curious fellow."

I pointed to one of the girls coming out of the mall.

"What about her, Country-Mouse? You like her?"

I blushed. "Tell me," I said, "don't the women in cities-like her-have hair in their armpits and on their legs like women in our villages?"

After half an hour, Mukesh Sir and Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam came out of the mall with shopping bags; I ran ahead to take their bags from them, and put them in the back of the car, and then closed the back and jumped into the driver's seat of the Honda City and drove them to their new home, which was up on the thirteenth floor of a gigantic apartment building. The name of the apartment building was Buckingham Towers B Block. It was next to another huge apartment building, built by the same housing company, which was Buckingham Towers A Block. Next to that was Windsor Manor A Block. And there were apartment blocks like this, all shiny and new, and with nice big English names, as far as the eye could see. Buckingham Towers B Block was one of the best-it had a nice big lobby, and an elevator in the lobby that all of us took up to the thirteenth floor.

Personally, I didn't like the apartment much-the whole place was the size of the kitchen in Dhanbad. There were nice, soft, white sofas inside, and on the wall above the sofas, a giant framed photo of Cuddles and Puddles. The Stork had not allowed them to come with us to the city.

I couldn't stand to look at those creatures, even in a photograph, and kept my eyes to the carpet the whole time I was in the room-which had the additional benefit of giving me the look of a pucca servant.

"Leave the bags anywhere you want, Balram."

"No. Put them down next to the table. Put them down exactly there," the Mongoose said.

After putting the bags down, I went into the kitchen to see if any cleaning needed to be done-there was a servant just to take care of the apartment, but he was a sloppy fellow, and as I said, they didn't really have a "driver," just a servant who drove the car sometimes. I knew without being told I also had to take care of the apartment. Any cleaning there was to be done, I would do, and then come back and wait near the door with folded hands until Mukesh Sir said, "You can go now. And be ready at eight a.m. No hanky-panky just because you're in the city, understand?"

Then I went down the elevator, got out of the building, and went down the stairs to the servants' quarters in the basement.

I don't know how buildings are designed in your country, but in India every apartment block, every house, every hotel is built with a servants' quarters-sometimes at the back, and sometimes (as in the case of Buckingham Towers B Block) underground-a warren of interconnected rooms where all the drivers, cooks, sweepers, maids, and chefs of the apartment block can rest, sleep, and wait. When our masters wanted us, an electric bell began to ring throughout the quarters-we would rush to a board and find a red light flashing next to the number of the apartment whose servant was needed upstairs.

I walked down two flights of stairs and pushed open the door to the servants' quarters.

The moment I got there, the other servants screamed-they yelled-they howled with laughter.

The vitiligo-lipped driver was sitting with them, howling the hardest. He had told them the question I had asked him. They could not get over their amusement; each one of them had to come up to me, and force his fingers through my hair, and call me a "village idiot," and slap me on the back too.

Servants need to abuse other servants. It's been bred into us, the way Alsatian dogs are bred to attack strangers. We attack anyone who's familiar.

There and then I resolved never again to tell anyone in Delhi anything I was thinking. Especially not another servant.

They kept teasing all evening long, and even at night, when we all went to the dormitory to sleep. Something about my face, my nose, my teeth, I don't know, it got on their nerves. They even teased me about my uniform. See, in cities the drivers do not wear uniforms. They said I looked like a monkey in that uniform. So I changed into a dirty shirt and trousers like the rest of them, but the teasing, it just went on all night long.

There was a man who swept the dormitory, and in the morning I asked him, "Isn't there someplace a man can be alone here?"

"There's one empty room on the other side of the quarters, but no one wants it," he told me. "Who wants to live alone?"

It was horrible, this room. The floor had not been finished, and there was a cheap whitish plaster on the walls in which you could see the marks of the hand that had applied the plaster. There was a flimsy little bed, barely big enough even for me, and a mosquito net on top of it.

It would do.

The second night, I did not sleep in the dormitory-I went to the room. I swept the floor, tied the mosquito net to four nails on the wall, and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, I understood why the mosquito net had been left there. Noises woke me up. The wall was covered with cockroaches, which had come to feed on the minerals or the limestone in the plaster; their chewing made a continuous noise, and their antennae trembled from every spot on the wall. Some of the cockroaches landed on top of the net; from inside, I could see their dark bodies against its white weave. I folded in the fiber of the net and crushed one of them. The other roaches took no notice of this; they kept landing on the net-and getting crushed. Maybe everyone who lives in the city gets to be slow and stupid like this, I thought, and smiled, and went to sleep.

"Had a good night among the roaches?" they teased when I came to the common toilet.

Any thought I had of rejoining the dormitory ended there. The room was full of roaches, but it was mine, and no one teased me. One disadvantage was that the electric bell did not penetrate this room-but that was a kind of advantage too, I discovered in time.

In the morning, after waiting my turn at the common toilet, and then my turn at the common sink, and then my turn at the common bathroom, I went up one flight of stairs, pushed open the door to the parking lot, and walked to the spot where the Honda City was parked. The car had to be wiped with a soft, wet cloth, inside and outside; a stick of incense had to be placed at the small statue of the goddess Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, which sat above the instrument board-this had the double advantage of getting rid of the mosquitoes that had sneaked in at night, and scenting the insides with an aroma of religion. I wiped the seats-nice, plush leather seats; I wiped the instruments; I lifted the leather mats on the floor and slapped the dust out of them. There were three magnetic stickers with images of the mother-goddess Kali on the dashboard-I had put them there, throwing out Ram Persad's magnetic stickers; I wiped them all. There was also a small fluffy ogre with a red tongue sticking out of its mouth hung by a chain from the rearview mirror. It was supposed to be a lucky charm, and the Stork liked to see it bob up and down as we drove. I punched the ogre in the mouth-then I wiped it clean. Next came the business of checking the box of paper tissues in the back of the car-it was elaborately carved and gilded, like something that a royal family had owned, though it was actually made of cardboard. I made sure there were fresh tissues in the box. Pinky Madam used dozens of tissues each time we went out-she said the pollution in Delhi was so bad. She had left her crushed and crumpled used tissues near the box, and I had to pick them up and throw them out.

The electric buzzer sounded through the parking lot. A voice over the lobby microphone said, "Driver Balram. Please report to the main entrance of Buckingham B Block with the car."

And so it was that I would get into the Honda City, drive up a ramp, and come out to see my first sunlight of the day.

The brothers were dressed in posh suits-they were standing at the door to the building, chatting and chirruping; when they got in, the Mongoose said, "The Congress Party headquarters, Balram. We went there the other day-I hope you remember it and don't get lost again."

I'm not going to let you down today, sir.

Rush hour in Delhi. Cars, scooters, motorbikes, autorickshaws, black taxis, jostling for space on the road. The pollution is so bad that the men on the motorbikes and scooters have a handkerchief wrapped around their faces-each time you stop at a red light, you see a row of men with black glasses and masks on their faces, as if the whole city were out on a bank heist that morning.

There was a good reason for the face masks; they say the air is so bad in Delhi that it takes ten years out of a man's life. Of course, those in the cars don't have to breathe the outside air-it is just nice, cool, clean, air-conditioned air for us. With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open-a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road-and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.

I was taking my particular dark egg right into the heart of the city. To my left I saw the domes of the President's House-the place where all the important business of the country is done. When the air pollution is really bad, the building is completely blotted out from the road; but today it shone beautifully.

In ten minutes, I was at the headquarters of the Congress Party. Now, this is an easy place to find, because there are always two or three giant cardboard billboards with the face of Sonia Gandhi outside.

I stopped the car, ran out, and opened the door for Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose; as he got out, Mr. Ashok said "We'll be back in half an hour."

This confused me; they never told me in Dhanbad when they'd be back. Of course it meant nothing. They could take two hours to come back, or three. But it was a kind of courtesy that they apparently now had to give me because we were in Delhi.

A group of farmers came to the headquarters, and weren't allowed inside, and shouted something or other, and left. A TV van came to the headquarters and honked; they were let in at once.

I yawned. I punched the little black ogre in its red mouth, and it bobbed back and forth. I turned my head around, from side to side.

I looked at the big poster of Sonia Gandhi. She was holding a hand up in the poster, as if waving to me-I waved back.

I yawned, closed my eyes, and slithered down my seat. With one eye open, I looked at the magnetic sticker of the goddess Kali-who is a very fierce black-skinned goddess, holding a scimitar, and a garland of skulls. I made a note to myself to change that sticker. She looked too much like Granny.

Two hours later, the brothers returned to the car.

"We're going to the President's House, Balram. Up the hill. You know the place?"

"Yes, sir, I've seen it."

Now, I'd already seen most of the famous sights of Delhi -the House of Parliament, the Jantar Mantar, the Qutub-but I'd not yet been to this place-the most important one of all. I drove toward Raisina Hill, and then all the way up the hill, stopping each time a guard put his hand out and checked inside the car, and then stopping right in front of one of the big domed buildings around the President's House.

"Wait in the car, Balram. We'll be back in thirty minutes."

For the first half an hour, I was too frightened to get out of the car. I opened the door-I stepped out-I took a look around. Somewhere inside these domes and towers that were all around me, the big men of this country-the prime minister, the president, top ministers and bureaucrats-were discussing things, and writing them out, and stamping papers. Someone was saying-"There, five hundred million rupees for that dam!"-and someone was saying-"Fine, attack Pakistan, then!"

I wanted to run around shouting: "Balram is here too! Balram is here too!"

I got back into the car to make sure I didn't do anything stupid and get arrested for it.

It was getting dark when the two brothers came out of the building; a fat man walked out with them, and talked to them for a while, outside the car, and then shook their hands and waved goodbye to us.

Mr. Ashok was dark and sullen when he got in. The Mongoose asked me to drive them back home-"without making any mistakes again, understand?"

"Yes, sir."

They sat in silence, which confused me. If I had just gone into the President's House, I'd roll down the windows and shout it aloud to everyone on the road!

"Look at that."

"What?"

"That statue."

I looked out the window to see a large bronze statue of a group of men-this is a well-known statue, which you will no doubt see in Delhi: at the head is Mahatma Gandhi, with his walking stick, and behind him follow the people of India, being led from darkness to light.

The Mongoose squinted at the statue.

"What about it? I've seen it before."

"We're driving past Gandhi, after just having given a bribe to a minister. It's a fucking joke, isn't it."

"You sound like your wife now," the Mongoose said. "I don't like swearing-it's not part of our traditions here."

But Mr. Ashok was too red in the face to keep quiet.

"It is a fucking joke-our political system-and I'll keep saying it as long as I like."

"Things are complicated in India, Ashok. It's not like in America. Please reserve your judgment."

There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble-we'd move a foot-hope would rise-then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we'd be stuck again. Everyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck-the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution.

A man driving a buffalo cart had stopped in front of us; a pile of empty car engine oil cans fifteen feet high had been tied by rope to his cart. His poor water buffalo! To carry all that load-while sucking in this air!

The autorickshaw driver next to me began to cough violently-he turned to the side and spat, three times in a row. Some of the spit flecked the side of the Honda City. I glared-I raised my fist. He cringed, and namasted me in apology.

"It's like we're in a concert of spitting!" Mr. Ashok said, looking at the autorickshaw driver.

Well, if you were out there breathing that acid air, you'd be spitting like him too, I thought.

The cars moved again-we gained three feet-then the red lights flashed and everything stopped again.

"In Beijing apparently they've got a dozen ring roads. Here we have one. No wonder we keep getting jams. Nothing is planned. How will we ever catch up with the Chinese?"

(By the way, Mr. Jiabao-a dozen ring roads? Wow.)

Dim streetlights were glowing down onto the pavement on either side of the traffic; and in that orange-hued half-light, I could see multitudes of small, thin, grimy people squatting, waiting for a bus to take them somewhere, or with nowhere to go and about to unfurl a mattress and sleep right there. These poor bastards had come from the darkness to Delhi to find some light-but they were still in the darkness. Hundreds of them, there seemed to be, on either side of the traffic, and their life was entirely unaffected by the jam. Were they even aware that there was a jam? We were like two separate cities-inside and outside the dark egg. I knew I was in the right city. But my father, if he were alive, would be sitting on that pavement, cooking some rice gruel for dinner, and getting ready to lie down and sleep under a streetlamp, and I couldn't stop thinking of that and recognizing his features in some beggar out there. So I was in some way out of the car too, even while I was driving it.

After an hour of thrashing through the traffic, we got home at last to Buckingham B Block. But the torture wasn't over.

As he was getting out of the car, the Mongoose tapped his pockets, looked confused for a moment, and said, "I've lost a rupee."

He snapped his fingers at me.

"Get down on your knees. Look for it on the floor of the car."

I got down on my knees. I sniffed in between the mats like a dog, all in search of that one rupee.

"What do you mean, it's not there? Don't think you can steal from us just because you're in the city. I want that rupee."

"We've just paid half a million rupees in a bribe, Mukesh, and now we're screwing this man over for a single rupee. Let's go up and have a scotch."

"That's how you corrupt servants. It starts with one rupee. Don't bring your American ways here."

Where that rupee coin went remains a mystery to me to this day, Mr. Premier. Finally, I took a rupee coin out of my shirt pocket, dropped it on the floor of the car, picked it up, and gave it to the Mongoose.

"Here it is, sir. Forgive me for taking so long to find it!"

There was a childish delight on his dark master's face. He put the rupee coin in his hand and sucked his teeth, as if it were the best thing that had happened to him all day.

I took the elevator up with the brothers, to see if any work was to be done in the apartment.

Pinky Madam was on the sofa watching TV; as soon as we got in, she said, "I've eaten already," turned the TV off, and went into another room. The Mongoose said he didn't want dinner, so Mr. Ashok would have to eat alone at the dinner table. He asked me to heat some of the vegetables in the fridge for him, and I went into the kitchen to do so.

Casting a quick look back as I opened the fridge door, I saw that he was on the verge of tears.

When you're the driver, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation-and then, just when the masters are coming to the crucial part of their talk-it always happens.

Some moron in a white jeep almost hits you while trying to overtake a car on the wrong side of the road. You swerve to the side, glare at the moron, curse him (silently)-and by the time you're eavesdropping again, the conversation in the backseat has moved on…and you never know how that sentence ended.

I knew something was wrong, but I hadn't realized how bad the situation had become until the morning Mr. Ashok said to me, "Today you'll drop Mukesh Sir at the railway station, Balram."

"Yes, sir." I hesitated. I wanted to ask, Just him?

Did that mean he was going back for good? Did that mean Pinky Madam had finally got rid of him with her door-slamming and tart remarks?

At six o'clock, I waited with the car outside the entranceway. I drove the brothers to the railway station. Pinky Madam did not come along.

I carried the Mongoose's bags to the right carriage of the train, then went to a stall and bought a dosa, wrapped in paper, for him. That was what he always liked to eat on the train. But I unwrapped the dosa and removed the potatoes, flinging them onto the rail tracks, because potatoes made him fart, and he didn't like that. A servant gets to know his master's intestinal tract from end to end-from lips to anus.

The Mongoose told me, "Wait. I have instructions for you."

I squatted in a corner of the railway carriage.

"Balram, you're not in the Darkness any longer."

"Yes, sir."

"There is a law in Delhi."

"Yes, sir."

"You know those bronze statues of Gandhi and Nehru that are everywhere? The police have put cameras inside their eyes to watch for the cars. They see everything you do, understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

Then he frowned, as if wondering what else to say. He said, "The air conditioner should be turned off when you are on your own."

"Yes, sir."

"Music should not be played when you are on your own."

"Yes, sir."

"At the end of each day you must give us a reading of the meter to make sure you haven't been driving the car on your own."

"Yes, sir."

The Mongoose turned to Mr. Ashok and touched him on the forearm. "Take some interest in this, Ashok Brother, you'll have to check up on the driver when I'm gone."

But Mr. Ashok was playing with his cell phone. He put it down and said, "The driver's honest. He's from Laxmangarh. I saw his family when I went there." Then he went back to his cell phone.

"Don't talk like that. Don't make a joke of what I'm saying," the Mongoose said.

But he was paying no attention to his brother-he kept punching the buttons on his cell phone: "One minute, one minute, I'm talking to a friend in New York."

Drivers like to say that some men are first-gear types. Mr. Ashok was a classic first-gear man. He liked to start things, but nothing held his attention for long.

Looking at him, I made two discoveries, almost simultaneously. Each filled me with a sense of wonder. Firstly, you could "talk" on a cell phone-to someone in New York -just by punching on its buttons. The wonders of modern science never cease to amaze me!

Secondly, I realized that this tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, foreign-educated man, who would be my only master in a few minutes, when the long whistle blew and this train headed off toward Dhanbad, was weak, helpless, absentminded, and completely unprotected by the usual instincts that run in the blood of a landlord.

If you were back in Laxmangarh, we would have called you the Lamb.

"Why are you grinning like a donkey?" the Mongoose snapped at me, and I almost fell over apologizing to him.

That evening, at eight o'clock, Mr. Ashok sent a message to me through another servant: "Be ready in half an hour, Balram. Pinky Madam and I will be going out."

And the two of them did come down, about two and three-quarters of an hour later.

The moment the Mongoose left, I swear, the skirts became even shorter.

When she sat in the back, I could see half her boobs hanging out of her clothes each time I had to look in the rearview mirror.

This put me in a very bad situation, sir. For one thing, my beak was aroused, which is natural in a healthy young man like me. On the other hand, as you know, master and mistress are like father and mother to you, so how can you get excited by the mistress?

I simply avoided looking at the rearview mirror. If there was a crash, it wouldn't be my fault.

Mr. Premier, maybe when you have been driving, in the thick traffic, you have stopped your car and lowered your window; and then you have felt the hot, panting breath of the exhaust pipe of a truck next to you. Now be aware, Mr. Premier, that there is a hot panting diesel engine just in front of your own nose.

Me.

Each time she came in with that low black dress, my beak got big. I hated her for wearing that dress; but I hated my beak even more for what it was doing.

At the end of the month, I went up to the apartment. He was sitting there, alone, on the couch beneath the framed photo of the two Pomeranians.

"Sir?"

"Hm. What's up, Balram?"

"It's been a month."

"So?"

"Sir…my wages."

"Ah, yes. Three thousand, right?" He whipped out his wallet-it was fat with notes-and flicked out three notes onto the table. I picked them up and bowed. Something of what his brother had been saying must have got to him, because he said, "You're sending some of it home, aren't you?"

"All of it, sir. Just what I need to eat and drink here-the rest goes home."

"Good, Balram. Good. Family is a good thing."

At ten o'clock that night I walked down to the market just around the corner from Buckingham Towers B Block. It was the last shop in the market; on a billboard above it, huge black letters in Hindi said:

"ACTION" ENGLISH LIQUOR SHOP

INDIAN-MADE FOREIGN LIQUOR SOLD HERE

It was the usual civil war that you find in a liquor shop in the evenings: men pushing and straining at the counter with their hands outstretched and yelling at the top of their voices. The boys behind the counter couldn't hear a word of what was being said in that din, and kept getting orders mixed up, and that led to more yelling and fighting. I pushed through the crowd-got to the counter, banged my fist, and yelled, "Whiskey! The cheapest kind! Immediate service-or someone will get hurt, I swear!"

It took me fifteen minutes to get a bottle. I stuffed it down my trousers, for there was nowhere else to hide it, and went back to Buckingham.

"Balram. You took your time."

"Forgive me, madam."

"You look ill, Balram. Are you all right?"

"Yes, madam. I have a headache. I didn't sleep well last night."

"Now make some tea. I hope you can cook better than you can drive?"

"Yes, madam."

"I hear you're a Halwai, your family are cooks. Do you know some special traditional type of ginger tea?"

"Yes, madam."

"Then make it."

I had no idea what Pinky Madam wanted, but at least her boobs were covered-that was a relief.

I got the teakettle ready and began making tea. I had just got the water boiling when the kitchen filled up with perfume. She was watching from the threshold.

My head was still spinning from last night's whiskey. I had been chewing aniseed all morning so no one would notice the stench of booze on my breath, but I was still worried, so I turned away from her as I washed a chunk of ginger under the tap.

"What are you doing?" she shouted.

"Washing ginger, madam."

"That's with your right hand. What's your left hand doing?"

"Madam?"

I looked down.

"Stop scratching your groin with your left hand!"

"Don't be angry, madam. I'll stop."

But it was no use. She would not stop shouting:

"You're so filthy! Look at you, look at your teeth, look at your clothes! There's red paan all over your teeth, and there are red spots on your shirt. It's disgusting! Get out-clean up the mess you've made in the kitchen and get out."

I put the piece of ginger back in the fridge, turned off the boiling water, and went downstairs.

I got in front of the common mirror and opened my mouth. The teeth were red, blackened, rotting from paan. I washed my mouth out, but the lips were still red.

She was right. The paan-which I'd chewed for years, like my father and like Kishan and everyone else I knew-was discoloring my teeth and corroding my gums.

The next evening, Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam came down to the entranceway fighting, got into the car fighting, and kept fighting as I drove the Honda City from Buckingham Towers B Block onto the main road.

"Going to the mall, sir?" I asked, the moment they were quiet.

Pinky Madam let out a short, high laugh.

I expected such things from her, but not from him-yet he joined in too.

"It's not maal, it's a mall," he said. "Say it again."

I kept saying "maal," and they kept asking me to repeat it, and then giggled hysterically each time I did so. By the end they were holding hands again. So some good came out of my humiliation-I was glad for that, at least.

They got out of the car, slammed the door, and went into the mall; a guard saluted as they came close, then the glass doors opened by themselves and swallowed the two of them in.

I did not get out of the car: it helped me concentrate my mind better if I was here. I closed my eyes.

Moool.

No, that wasn't it.

Mowll.

Malla.

"Country-Mouse! Get out of the car and come here!"

A little group of drivers crouched in a circle outside the parking lot in the mall. One of them began shouting at me, waving a copy of a magazine in his hand.

It was the driver with the diseased lips. I put a big smile on my face and went up to him.

"Any more questions about city life, Country-Mouse?" he asked. Cannonades of laughter all around him.

He put a hand on me and whispered, "Have you thought about what I said, sweetie pie? Does your master need anything? Ganja? Girls? Boys? Golf balls-good-quality American golf balls, duty-free?"

"Don't offer him all these things now," another driver said. This one was crouching on his knees, swinging a key chain with the keys to his master's car like a boy with a toy. "He's raw from the village, still pure. Let city life corrupt him first." He snatched the magazine-Murder Weekly, of course-and began reading out loud. The gossip stopped. All the drivers drew closer.

"It was a rainy night. Vishal lay in bed, his breath smelling of alcohol, his eyes glancing out the window. The woman next door had come home, and was about to remove her-"

The man with the vitiligo lips shouted, "Look there! It's happening today too-"

The driver with the magazine, annoyed at this disturbance, kept reading-but the others were standing up now, looking in the direction of the mall.

What was happening, Mr. Premier, was one of those incidents that were so common in the early days of the shopping mall, and which were often reported in the daily newspapers under the title "Is There No Space for the Poor in the Malls of New India?"

The glass doors had opened, but the man who wanted to go into them could not do so. The guard at the door had stopped him. He pointed his stick at the man's feet and shook his head-the man had sandals on his feet. All of us drivers too had sandals on our feet. But everyone who was allowed into the mall had shoes on their feet.

Instead of backing off and going away-as nine in ten in his place would have done-the man in the sandals exploded, "Am I not a human being too?"

He yelled it so hard that the spit burst from his mouth like a fountain and his knees were trembling. One of the drivers let out a whistle. A man who had been sweeping the outer compound of the mall put down his broom and watched.

For a moment the man at the door looked ready to hit the guard-but then he turned around and walked away.

"That fellow has balls," one of the drivers said. "If all of us were like that, we'd rule India, and they would be polishing our boots."

Then the drivers got back into their circle. The reading of the story resumed.

I watched the keys circling in the key chain. I watched the smoke rising from the cigarettes. I watched the paan hit the earth in red diagonals.

The worst part of being a driver is that you have hours to yourself while waiting for your employer. You can spend this time chitchatting and scratching your groin. You can read murder and rape magazines. You can develop the chauffeur's habit-it's a kind of yoga, really-of putting a finger in your nose and letting your mind go blank for hours (they should call it the "bored driver's asana"). You can sneak a bottle of Indian liquor into the car-boredom makes drunks of so many honest drivers.

But if the driver sees his free time as an opportunity, if he uses it to think, then the worst part of his job becomes the best.

That evening, while driving back to the apartment, I looked into the rearview mirror. Mr. Ashok was wearing a T-shirt.

It was like no T-shirt I would ever choose to buy at a store. The larger part of it was empty and white and there was a small design in the center. I would have bought something very colorful, with lots of words and designs on it. Better value for the money.

Then one night, after Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam had gone up, I went out to the local market. Under the glare of naked yellow lightbulbs, men squatted on the road, selling basketfuls of glassy bangles, steel bracelets, toys, head scarves, pens, and key chains. I found the fellow selling T-shirts.

"No," I kept saying to each shirt he showed me-until I found one that was all white, with a small word in English in the center. Then I went looking for the man selling black shoes.

I bought my first toothpaste that night. I got it from the man who usually sold me paan; he had a side business in toothpastes that canceled out the effects of paan.

SHAKTI WHITENER

WITH CHARCOAL AND CLOVES TO CLEAN YOUR TEETH

ONLY ONE RUPEE FIFTY PAISE!

As I brushed my teeth with my finger, I noticed what my left hand was doing: it had crawled up to my groin without my noticing-the way a lizard goes stealthily up a wall-and was about to scratch.

I waited. The moment it moved, I seized it with the right hand.

I pinched the thick skin between the thumb and the index finger, where it hurts the most, and held it like that for a whole minute. When I let go, a red welt had formed on the skin of the palm.

There.

That's your punishment for groin-scratching from now on.

In my mouth, the toothpaste had thickened into a milky foam; it began dripping down the sides of my lips. I spat it out.

Brush. Brush. Spit.

Brush. Brush. Spit.

Why had my father never told me not to scratch my groin? Why had my father never taught me to brush my teeth in milky foam? Why had he raised me to live like an animal? Why do all the poor live amid such filth, such ugliness?

Brush. Brush. Spit.

Brush. Brush. Spit.

If only a man could spit his past out so easily.

Next morning, as I drove Pinky Madam to the mall, I felt a small parcel of cotton pressing against my shoe-clad feet. She left, slamming the door; I waited for ten minutes. And then, inside the car, I changed.

I went to the gateway of the mall in my new white T-shirt. But there, the moment I saw the guard, I turned around-went back to the Honda City. I got into the car and punched the ogre three times. I touched the stickers of the goddess Kali, with her long red tongue, for good luck.

This time I went to the rear entrance.

I was sure the guard in front of the door would challenge me and say, No, you're not allowed in, even with a pair of black shoes and a T-shirt that is mostly white with just one English word on it. I was sure, until the last moment, that I would be caught, and called back, and slapped and humiliated there.

Even as I was walking inside the mall, I was sure someone would say, Hey! That man is a paid driver! What's he doing in here? There were guards in gray uniforms on every floor-all of them seemed to be watching me. It was my first taste of the fugitive's life.

I was conscious of a perfume in the air, of golden light, of cool, air-conditioned air, of people in T-shirts and jeans who were eyeing me strangely. I saw an elevator going up and down that seemed made of pure golden glass. I saw shops with walls of glass, and huge photos of handsome European men and women hanging on each wall. If only the other drivers could see me now!

Getting out was as tricky as getting in, but again the guards didn't say a word to me, and I walked back to the parking lot, got into the car, and changed back into my usual, richly colored shirt, and left the rich man's plain T-shirt in a bundle near my feet.

I came running out to where the other drivers were sitting. None of them had noticed me going in or coming out. They were too occupied with something else. One of the drivers-it was the fellow who liked to twirl his key chain all the time-had a cell phone with him. He forced me to take a look at his phone.

"Do you call your wife with this thing?"

"You can't talk to anyone with it, you fool-it's a one-way phone!"

"So what's the point of a phone you can't talk to your family with?"

"It's so that my master can call me and give me instructions on where to pick him up. I just have to keep it here-in my pocket-wherever I go."

He took the phone back from me, rubbed it clean, and put it in his pocket. Until this evening, his status in the drivers' circle had been low: his master drove only a Maruti-Suzuki Zen, a small car. Today he was being as bossy as he wanted. The drivers were passing his cell phone from hand to hand and gazing at it like monkeys gaze at something shiny they have picked up. There was the smell of ammonia in the air; one of the drivers was pissing not far from us.

Vitiligo-Lips was watching me from a corner.

"Country-Mouse," he said. "You look like a fellow who wants to say something."

I shook my head.

The traffic grew worse by the day. There seemed to be more cars every evening. As the jams grew worse, so did Pinky Madam's temper. One evening, when we were just crawling down M.G. Road into Gurgaon, she lost it completely. She began screaming.

"Why can't we go back, Ashoky? Look at this fucking traffic jam. It's like this every other day now."

"Please don't begin that again. Please."

"Why not? You promised me, Ashoky, we'll be in Delhi just three months and get some paperwork done and go back. But I'm starting to think you only came here to deal with this income-tax problem. Were you lying to me the whole time?"

It wasn't his fault, what happened between them-I will insist on that, even in a court of law. He was a good husband, always coming up with plans to make her happy. On her birthday, for instance, he had me dress up as a maharaja, with a red turban and dark cooling glasses, and serve them their food in this costume. I'm not talking of any ordinary home cooking, either-he got me to serve her some of that stinking stuff that comes in cardboard boxes and drives all the rich absolutely crazy.

She laughed and laughed and laughed when she saw me in my costume, bowing low to her with the cardboard box. I served them, and then, as Mr. Ashok had instructed, stood near the portrait of Cuddles and Puddles with folded hands and waited.

"Ashok," she said. "Now hear this. Balram, what is it we're eating?"

I knew it was a trap, but what could I do?-I answered. The two of them burst into giggles.

"Say it again, Balram."

They laughed again.

"It's not piJJA. It's piZZa. Say it properly."

"Wait-you're mispronouncing it too. There's a T in the middle. Peet. Zah."

"Don't correct my English, Ashok. There's no T in pizza. Look at the box."

I had to hold my breath as I stood there waiting for them to finish. The stuff smelled so awful.

"He's cut the pizza so badly. I just don't understand how he can come from a caste of cooks."

"You've just dismissed the cook. Please don't fire this fellow too-he's an honest one."

When they were done, I scraped the food off the plates and washed them. From the kitchen window, I could see the main road of Gurgaon, full of the lights of the shopping malls. A new mall had just opened up at the end of the road, and the cars were streaming into its gates.

I pulled the window shade down and went back to washing dishes.

"Pijja."

"Pzijja."

"Zippja."

"Pizja."

I wiped the sink with my palm and turned off the lights.

The two of them had gone into their bedroom. I heard shouting from inside. On tiptoe, I went to the closed door. I put my ear to the wood.

Shouting rose from both sides-followed by a scream-followed by the sound of man's flesh slapping woman's flesh.

About time you took charge, O Lamb-that-was-born-from-the-loins-of-a-landlord. I locked the door behind me and took the elevator down.

Half an hour later, just when I was about to fall asleep, another of the servants came and yelled for me. The bell was ringing! I put on my pants, washed my hands again and again at the common tap, and drove the car up to the entrance of the building.

"Drive us into the city."

"Yes, sir. Where in the city?"

"Any place you want to go, Pinky?"

No word from her.

"Take us to Connaught Place, Balram."

Neither husband nor wife talked as I drove. I still had the maharaja outfit on. Mr. Ashok looked at Pinky Madam nervously half a dozen times.

"You're right, Pinky," he said in a husky voice. "I didn't mean to challenge you on what you said. But I told you, there's only one thing wrong with this place-we have this fucked-up system called parliamentary democracy. Otherwise, we'd be just like China -"

"Ashok. I have a headache. Please."

"We'll have some fun tonight. There's a good T.G.I. Friday's here. You'll like it."

When we got to Connaught Place, he made me stop in front of a big red neon light.

"Wait for us here, Balram. We'll be back in twenty minutes."

They had been gone for an hour and I was still inside the car, watching the lights of Connaught Place.

I punched the fluffy black ogre a dozen times. I looked at the magnetic stickers of goddess Kali with her skulls and her long red tongue-I stuck my tongue out at the old witch. I yawned.

It was well past midnight and very cold.

I would have loved to play some music to pass the time, but of course the Mongoose had forbidden that.

I opened the door of the car: there was an acrid smell in the air. The other drivers had made a fire for themselves, which they kept going by shoving bits of plastic into it.

The rich of Delhi, to survive the winter, keep electrical heaters, or gas heaters, or even burn logs of wood in their fireplaces. When the homeless, or servants like night watchmen and drivers who are forced to spend time outside in winter, want to keep warm, they burn whatever they find on the ground. One of the best things to put in the fire is cellophane, the kind used to wrap fruits, vegetables, and business books in: inside the flame, it changes its nature and melts into a clear fuel. The only problem is that while burning, it gives off a white smoke that makes your stomach churn.

Vitiligo-Lips was feeding bags of cellophane into the fire; with his free hand he waved to me.

"Country-Mouse, don't sit there by yourself! That leads to bad thoughts!"

The warmth was so tempting.

But no. My mouth would tickle if I went near them, and I would ask for paan.

"Look at the snob! He's even dressed like a maharaja today!"

"Come join us, maharaja of Buckingham!"

Away from the warmth, away from temptation I walked, down the pathways of Connaught Place, until the smell of churned mud filled the air.

There is construction work in any direction you look in Delhi. Glass skeletons being raised for malls or office blocks; rows of gigantic T-shaped concrete supports, like a line of anvils, where the new bridges or overpasses are coming up; huge craters being dug for new mansions for the rich. And here too, in the heart of Connaught Place, even in the middle of the night, under the glare of immense spotlights, construction went on. A giant pit had been excavated. Machines were rumbling from inside it.

I had heard of this work: they were putting a railway under the ground of Delhi. The pit they had made for this work was as large as any of the coal mines I'd seen in Dhanbad. Another man was watching the pit with me-a well-dressed man in a shirt and tie and pants with nice pleats. Normally his kind would never talk to me, but maybe my maharaja tunic confused him.

"This city is going to be like Dubai in five years, isn't it?"

"Five?" I said contemptuously. "In two years!"

"Look at that yellow crane. It's a monster."

It was a monster, sitting at the top of the pit with huge metal jaws alternately gorging and disgorging immense quantities of mud. Like creatures that had to obey it, men with troughs of mud on their heads walked in circles around the machine; they did not look much bigger than mice. Even in the winter night the sweat had made their shirts stick to their glistening black bodies.

It was freezing cold when I returned to the car. All the other drivers had left. Still no sign of my masters. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I had had for dinner.

A nice hot curry with juicy chunks of dark meat. Big puddles of red oil in the gravy.

Nice.

They woke me up by banging on my window. I scrambled out and opened the doors for them. Both were loud and happy, and reeked of some English liquor: whatever it was, I hadn't yet tried it at the shop.

I tell you, they were going at it like animals as I drove them out of Connaught Place. He was pushing his hand up and down her thigh, and she was giggling. I watched one second too long. He caught me in the mirror.

I felt like a child that had been watching his parents through a slit in their bedroom door. My heart began to sweat-I half expected him to catch me by the collar, and fling me to the ground, and stamp me with his boots, the way his father used to do to fishermen in Laxmangarh.

But this man, as I've told you, was different-he was capable of becoming someone better than his father. My eyes had touched his conscience; he nudged Pinky Madam and said, "We're not alone, you know."

She became grumpy at once, and turned her face to the side. Five minutes passed in silence. Reeking of English liquor, she leaned toward me.

"Give me the steering wheel."

"No, Pinky, don't, you're drunk, let him-"

"What a fucking joke! Everyone in India drinks and drives. But you won't let me do it?"

"Oh, I hate this." He slumped on his seat. "Balram, remember never to marry."

"Is he stopping at the traffic signal? Balram, why are you stopping? Just drive!"

"It is a traffic signal, Pinky. Let him stop. Balram, obey the traffic rules. I command you."

"I command you to drive, Balram! Drive!"

Completely confused by this time, I compromised-I took the car five feet in front of the white line, and then came to a stop.

"Did you see what he did?" Mr. Ashok said. "That was pretty clever."

"Yes, Ashok. He's a fucking genius."

The timer next to the red light said that there were still thirty seconds to go before the light changed to green. I was watching the timer when the giant Buddha materialized on my right. A beggar child had come up to the Honda City holding up a beautiful plaster-of-paris statue of the Buddha. Every night in Delhi, beggars are always selling something by the roadside, books or statues or strawberries in boxes-but for some reason, perhaps because my nerves were in such a bad state, I gazed at this Buddha longer than I should have.

…it was just a tilt of my head, just a thing that happened for half a second, but she caught me out.

"Balram appreciates the statue," she said.

Mr. Ashok chuckled.

"Sure, he's a connoisseur of fine art."

She cracked the egg open-she lowered the window and said, "Let's see it," to the beggar child.

He-or she, you can never tell with beggar children-pushed the Buddha into the Honda.

"Do you want to buy the sculpture, driver?"

"No, madam. I'm sorry."

"Balram Halwai, maker of sweets, driver of cars, connoisseur of sculpture."

"I'm sorry, madam."

The more I apologized, the more amused the two of them got. At last, putting an end to my agony, the light changed to green, and I drove away from the wretched Buddha as fast as I could.

She reached over and squeezed my shoulder. "Balram, stop the car." I looked at Mr. Ashok's reflection-he said nothing.

I stopped the car.

"Balram, get out. We're leaving you to spend the night with your Buddha. The maharaja and the Buddha, together for the night."

She got into the driver's seat, started the car, and drove away, while Mr. Ashok, dead drunk, giggled and waved goodbye at me. If he hadn't been drunk, he never would have allowed her to treat me like this-I'm sure of that. People were always taking advantage of him. If it were just me and him in that car, nothing bad would ever have happened to either of us.

There was a traffic island separating the two sides of the road, and trees had been planted in the island. I sat down under a tree.

The road was dead-then two cars went by, one behind the other, their headlights making a continuous ripple on the leaves, like you see on the branches of trees that grow by a lake. How many thousands of such beautiful things there must be to see in Delhi. If you were just free to go wherever you wanted, and do whatever you wanted.

A car was coming straight toward me, flashing its headlights on and off and sounding its horns. The Honda City had done a U-turn-an illegal U-turn, mind you-down the road, and was charging right at me, as if to plow me over. Behind the wheel I saw Pinky Madam, grinning and howling, while Mr. Ashok, next to her, was smiling.

Did I see a wrinkle of worry for my fate on his forehead-did I see his hand reach across and steady the steering wheel so that the car wouldn't hit me?

I like to think so.

The car stopped half a foot in front of me, with a screech of burning rubber. I cringed: how my poor tires had suffered, because of this woman.

Pinky Madam opened the door and popped her grinning face out.

"Thought I had really left you behind, Mr. Maharaja?"

"No, madam."

"You're not angry, are you?"

"Not at all." And then I added, to make it more believable, "Employers are like mother and father. How can one be angry with them?"

I got into the backseat. They did another U-turn across the middle of the avenue, and then drove off at top speed, racing through one red light after the other. The two of them were shrieking, and pinching each other, and making giggling noises, and, helpless to do anything, I was just watching the show from the backseat, when the small black thing jumped into our path, and we hit it and knocked it over and rolled the wheels of the car over it.

From the way the wheels crunched it completely, and from how there was no noise when she stopped the car, not even a whimper or a barking, I knew at once what had happened to the thing we had hit.

She was too drunk to brake at once-by the time she had, we had hurtled on another two or three hundred yards, and then we came to a complete stop. In the middle of the road. She had kept her hands on the wheel; her mouth was open.

"A dog?" Mr. Ashok asked me. "It was a dog, wasn't it?"

I nodded. The streetlights were too dim, and the object-a large black lump-was too far behind us already to be seen clearly. There was no other car in sight. No other living human being in sight.

As if in slow motion, her hands moved back from the wheel and covered her ears.

"It wasn't a dog! It wasn't a-"

Without a word between us, Mr. Ashok and I acted as a team. He grabbed her, put a hand on her mouth, and pulled her out of the driver's seat; I rushed out of the back. We slammed the doors together; I turned the ignition key and drove the car at full speed all the way back to Gurgaon.

Halfway through she quieted down, but then, as we got closer to the apartment block, she started up again. She said, "We have to go back."

"Don't be crazy, Pinky. Balram will get us back to the apartment block in a few minutes. It's all over."

"We hit something, Ashoky." She spoke in the softest of voices. "We have to take that thing to the hospital."

"No."

Her mouth opened again-she was going to scream again in a second. Before she could do that, Mr. Ashok gagged her with his palm-he reached for the box of facial tissues and stuffed the tissues into her mouth; while she tried to spit them out, he tore the scarf from around her neck, tied it tightly around her mouth, and shoved her face into his lap and held it down there.

When we got to the apartment, he dragged her to the elevator with the scarf still around her mouth.

I got a bucket and washed the car. I wiped it down thoroughly, and scrubbed out every bit of blood and flesh-there was a bit of both around the wheels.

When he came down, I was washing the tires for the fourth time.

"Well?"

I showed him a piece of bloodied green fabric that had got stuck to the wheel.

"It's cheap stuff, sir, this green cloth," I said, rubbing the rough material between my fingers. "It's what they put on children."

"And do you think the child…" He couldn't say the word.

"There was no sound at all, sir. No sound at all. And the body didn't move even a bit."

"God, Balram, what will we do now-what will we-" He slapped his hand to his thigh. "What are these children doing, walking about Delhi at one in the morning, with no one to look after them?"

When he had said this, his eyes lit up.

"Oh, she was one of those people."

"Who live under the flyovers and bridges, sir. That's my guess too."

"In that case, will anyone miss her…?"

"I don't think so, sir. You know how those people in the Darkness are: they have eight, nine, ten children-sometimes they don't know the names of their own children. Her parents-if they're even here in Delhi, if they even know where she is tonight-won't go to the police."

He put a hand on my shoulder, the way he had been touching Pinky Madam's shoulder earlier in the night.

Then he put a finger on his lips.

I nodded. "Of course, sir. Now sleep well-it's been a difficult night for you and Pinky Madam."

I removed the maharaja tunic, and then I went to sleep. I was tired as hell-but on my lips there was the big, contented smile that comes to one who has done his duty by his master even in the most difficult of moments.

The next morning, I wiped the seats of the car as usual-I wiped the stickers with the face of the goddess-I wiped the ogre-and then I lit up the incense stick and put it inside so that the seats would smell nice and holy. I washed the wheels one more time, to make sure there was not a spot of blood I had missed in the night.

Then I went back to my room and waited. In the evening one of the other drivers brought a message that I was wanted in the lobby-without the car. The Mongoose was waiting for me up there. I don't know how he got to Delhi this fast-he must have rented a car and driven all night. He gave me a big smile and patted me on the shoulder. We went up to the apartment in the elevator.

He sat down on the table, and said, "Sit, sit, make yourself comfortable, Balram. You're part of the family."

My heart filled up with pride. I crouched on the floor, happy as a dog, and waited for him to say it again. He smoked a cigarette. I had never before seen him do that. He looked at me with narrowed eyes.

"Now, it's important that you stay here in Buckingham Towers B Block and not go anywhere else-not even to A Block-for a few days. And not say a word to anyone about what happened."

"Yes, sir."

He looked at me for a while, smoking. Then he said again, "You're part of the family, Balram."

"Yes, sir."

"Now go downstairs to the servants' quarters and wait there."

"Yes, sir."

An hour passed, and then I got called upstairs again.

This time there was a man in a black coat sitting at the dinner table next to the Mongoose. He was looking over a printed piece of paper and reading it silently with his lips, which were stained red with paan. Mr. Ashok was on the phone in his room; I heard his voice through the closed door. The door to Pinky Madam's room was closed too. The whole house had been handed over to the Mongoose.

"Sit down, Balram. Make yourself comfortable."

"Yes, sir."

I squatted and made myself uncomfortable again.

"Would you like some paan, Balram?" the Mongoose asked.

"No, sir."

He smiled. "Don't be shy, Balram. You chew paan, don't you?" He turned to the man in the black coat. "Give him something to chew, please."

The man in the black coat reached into his pocket and held out a small green paan. I stuck my palm out. He dropped it into my palm without touching me.

"Put it in your mouth, Balram. It's for you."

"Yes, sir. It's very good. Chewy. Thank you."

"Let's go over all this slowly and clearly, okay?" the man in the black suit said. The red juice almost dripped out of his mouth as he spoke.

"All right."

"The judge has been taken care of. If your man does what he is to do, we'll have nothing to worry about."

"My man will do what he is to do, no worries about that. He's part of the family. He's a good boy."

"Good, good."

The man in the black coat looked at me and held out a piece of paper.

"Can you read, fellow?"

"Yes, sir." I took the paper from his hand and read:

TO WHOMSOEVER IT MAY CONCERN,

I, BALRAM HALWAI, SON OF VIKRAM HALWAI, OF LAXMANGARH VILLAGE IN THE DISTRICT OF GAYA, DO MAKE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT OF MY OWN FREE WILL AND INTENTION:

THAT I DROVE THE CAR THAT HIT AN UNIDENTIFIED PERSON, OR PERSONS, OR PERSON AND OBJECTS, ON THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 23RD THIS YEAR. THAT I THEN PANICKED AND REFUSED TO FULFILL MY OBLIGATIONS TO THE INJURED PARTY OR PARTIES BY TAKING THEM TO THE NEAREST HOSPITAL EMERGENCY WARD. THAT THERE WERE NO OTHER OCCUPANTS OF THE CAR AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. THAT I WAS ALONE IN THE CAR, AND ALONE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THAT HAPPENED.

I SWEAR BY ALMIGHTY GOD THAT I MAKE THIS STATEMENT UNDER NO DURESS AND UNDER INSTRUCTION FROM NO ONE.

SIGNATURE OR THUMBPRINT:

(BALRAM HALWAI)

STATEMENT MADE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE FOLLOWING WITNESSES.

KUSUM HALWAI, OF LAXMANGARH VILLAGE,

GAYA DISTRICT

CHAMANDAS VARMA, ADVOCATE, DELHI HIGH

COURT

Smiling affectionately at me, the Mongoose said, "We've already told your family about it. Your granny, what's her name?"

"…"

"I didn't hear that."

"…m."

"Yes, that's it. Kusum. I drove down to Laxmangarh-it's a bad road, isn't it?-and explained everything to her personally. She's quite a woman."

He rubbed his forearms and made a big grin, so I knew he was telling the truth.

"She says she's so proud of you for doing this. She's agreed to be a witness to the confession as well. That's her thumbprint on the page, Balram. Just below the spot where you're going to sign."

"If he's illiterate, he can press his thumb," the man in the black coat said. "Like this." He pressed his thumb against the air.

"He's literate. His grandmother told me he was the first in the family to read and write. She said you always were a smart boy, Balram."

I looked at the paper, pretending to read it again, and it began to shake in my hands.

What I am describing to you here is what happens to drivers in Delhi every day, sir. You don't believe me-you think I'm making all this up, Mr. Jiabao?

When you're in Delhi, repeat the story I've told you to some good, solid middle-class man of the city. Tell him you heard this wild, extravagant, impossible story from some driver about being framed for a murder his master committed on the road. And watch as your good, solid middle-class friend's face blanches. Watch how he swallows hard-how he turns away to the window-watch how he changes the topic at once.

The jails of Delhi are full of drivers who are there behind bars because they are taking the blame for their good, solid middle-class masters. We have left the villages, but the masters still own us, body, soul, and arse.

Yes, that's right: we all live in the world's greatest democracy.

What a fucking joke.

Doesn't the driver's family protest? Far from it. They would actually go about bragging. Their boy Balram had taken the fall, gone to Tihar Jail for his employer. He was loyal as a dog. He was the perfect servant.

The judges? Wouldn't they see through this obviously forced confession? But they are in the racket too. They take their bribe, they ignore the discrepancies in the case. And life goes on.

For everyone but the driver.

That is all for tonight, Mr. Premier. It's not yet three a.m., but I've got to end here, sir. Even to think about this again makes me so angry I might just go out and cut the throat of some rich man right now.