Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger

The Great Indian Rooster Coop. Do you have something like it in China too? I doubt it, Mr. Jiabao. Or you wouldn't need the Communist Party to shoot people and a secret police to raid their houses at night and put them in jail like I've heard you have over there. Here in India we have no dictatorship. No secret police.

That's because we have the coop.

Never before in human history have so few owed so much to so many, Mr. Jiabao. A handful of men in this country have trained the remaining 99.9 percent-as strong, as talented, as intelligent in every way-to exist in perpetual servitude; a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man's hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

You'll have to come here and see it for yourself to believe it. Every day millions wake up at dawn-stand in dirty, crowded buses-get off at their masters' posh houses-and then clean the floors, wash the dishes, weed the garden, feed their children, press their feet-all for a pittance. I will never envy the rich of America or England, Mr. Jiabao: they have no servants there. They cannot even begin to understand what a good life is.

Now, a thinking man like you, Mr. Premier, must ask two questions.

Why does the Rooster Coop work? How does it trap so many millions of men and women so effectively?

Secondly, can a man break out of the coop? What if one day, for instance, a driver took his employer's money and ran? What would his life be like?

I will answer both for you, sir.

The answer to the first question is that the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime minister will hand over to you, the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and tied to the coop.

The answer to the second question is that only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed-hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters-can break out of the coop. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature.

It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.

To go back to my story.

There is a sign in the National Zoo in New Delhi, near the cage with the white tiger, which says: Imagine yourself in the cage.

When I saw that sign, I thought, I can do that-I can do that with no trouble at all.

For a whole day I was down there in my dingy room, my legs pulled up to my chest, sitting inside that mosquito net, too frightened to leave the room. No one asked me to drive the car. No one came down to see me.

My life had been written away. I was to go to jail for a killing I had not done. I was in terror, and yet not once did the thought of running away cross my mind. Not once did the thought, I'll tell the judge the truth, cross my mind. I was trapped in the Rooster Coop.

What would jail be like? That was all I could think about. What kinds of strategies would I follow to escape the big, hairy, dirty men I would find in there?

I remembered a story from Murder Weekly in which a man sent to jail pretended to have AIDS so that no one would bugger him. Where was that copy of the magazine-if only I had it with me now, I could copy his exact words, his exact gestures! But if I said I had AIDS, would they assume I was a professional bugger-and bugger me even more?

I was trapped. Through the perforations of my net, I sat staring at the impressions of the anonymous hand that had applied the white plaster to the walls of the room.

"Country-Mouse!"

Vitiligo-Lips had come to the threshold of my room.

"Your boss is ringing the bell like crazy."

I put my head on the pillow.

He came into the room and pressed his black face and pink lips against the net. "Country-Mouse, are you ill? Is it typhoid? Cholera? Dengue?"

I shook my head. "I'm fine."

"Good to hear that."

With a big smile of his diseased lips, he left.

I went up like a man to his hanging-up the stairs, and into the apartment building, and then up the elevator to the thirteenth floor.

The Mongoose opened the door. There was no smile on his face this time-not a hint of what he had planned for me.

"You took your time coming. Father is here. He wants to have a word with you."

My heart raced. The Stork was here! He would save me! He wasn't useless, like his two sons. He was an old-fashioned master. He knew he had to protect his servants.

He was on the sofa, with his pale legs stretched out. As soon as he saw me his face broke open in a big smile, and I thought, He's smiling because he's saved me! But the old landlord wasn't thinking of me at all. Oh, no, he was thinking of things far more important than my life. He pointed to those two important things.

"Aah, Balram, my feet really need a good massage. It was a long trip by train."

My hand shook as it turned on the hot-water faucet in the bathroom. The water hit the bottom of the bucket and splashed all over my legs, and when I looked down I saw that they were almost rattling. A trickle of urine was running down them.

A minute later, a big smile on my face, I came to where the Stork was sitting and placed the bucket of hot water near him.

"Put your feet in, sir."

"Oh," he said, and closed his eyes; his lips parted and he began to make little moans, sir, and the sound of those moans drove me to press his feet harder and harder; my body began rocking as I did so and my head knocked the sides of his knees.

The Mongoose and Mr. Ashok were sitting in front of a TV screen, playing a computer game together.

The door to the bedroom opened, and Pinky Madam came out. She had no makeup on, and her face was a mess-black skin under her eyes, lines on her forehead. The moment she saw me, she got excited.

"Have you people told the driver?"

The Stork said nothing. Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose kept playing the game. "Has no one told him ? What a fucking joke! He's the one who was going to go to jail!"

Mr. Ashok said, "I suppose we should tell him." He looked at his brother, who kept his eyes on the TV screen.

The Mongoose said, "Fine."

Mr. Ashok turned to me.

"We have a contact in the police-he's told us that no one has reported seeing the accident. So your help won't be needed, Balram."

I felt such tremendous relief that I moved my hands abruptly, and the bucket of warm water spilled over, and then I scrambled to put the bucket upright. The Stork opened his eyes, smacked me on the head with his hand, and then closed his eyes.

Pinky Madam watched; her face changed. She ran into her room and slammed the door. (Who would have thought, Mr. Jiabao, that of this whole family, the lady with the short skirt would be the one with a conscience?)

The Stork watched her go into her room and said, "She's gone crazy, that woman. Wanting to find the family of the child and give them compensation-craziness. As if we were all murderers here." He looked sternly at Mr. Ashok. "You need to control that wife of yours better, son. The way we do it in the village."

Then he gave me a light tap on the head and said, "The water's gone cold."

I massaged his feet every morning for the next three days. One morning he had a little pain in his stomach, so the Mongoose made me drive him down to Max, which is one of Delhi 's most famous private hospitals. I stood outside and watched as the Mongoose and the old man went inside the beautiful big glass building. Doctors walked in and out with long white coats, and stethoscopes in their pockets. When I peeped in from outside, the hospital's lobby looked as clean as the inside of a five-star hotel.

The day after the hospital trip, I drove the Stork and the Mongoose down to the railway station, bought them the snacks they would need for their trip home, waited for the train to leave, and then drove the car back, wiped it down, went to a nearby Hanuman temple to say a prayer of thanks, came back to my room and fell inside the mosquito net, dead tired.