Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger

"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.