Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger

That's the driver's fate. Every other servant thinks he can boss over us.

There are strict rules at the five-stars about where the drivers keep their cars while their masters are inside. Sometimes they put you in a parking spot downstairs. Sometimes in the back. Sometimes up at the front, near the trees. And you sit there and wait, for an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, yawning and doing nothing, until the guard at the door, the fellow with the turban, mumbles into a microphone, saying, "Driver So-and-So, you may come to the glass door with the car. Your master is waiting for you."

The drivers were waiting near the parking lot of the hotel, in their usual key-chain-swirling, paan -chewing, gossipmongering, ammonia-releasing circle. Crouching and jabbering like monkeys.

The driver with the diseased lips was sitting apart from them, engrossed in his magazine. On this week's cover, there was a photo of a woman lying on a bed, her clothes undone; her lover stood next to her, raising a knife over her head.

MURDER WEEKLY

RUPEES 4.50

EXCLUSIVE TRUE STORY:

"HE WANTED HIS MASTER'S WIFE."

LOVE-RAPE-REVENGE!

"Been thinking about what I said, Country-Mouse?" he asked me, as he flipped through a story.

"About getting your master something he'd like? Hashish, or girls, or golf balls? Genuine golf balls from the U.S. Consulate?"

"He's not that kind."

The pink lips twisted into a smile. "Want to know a secret? My master likes film actresses. He takes them to a hotel in Jangpura, with a big, glowing T sign on it, and hammers them there."

He named three famous Mumbai actresses his master had "hammered."

"And yet he looks like a goody-goody. Only I know-and I tell you, all the masters are the same. One day you'll believe me. Now come read a story with me."

We read like that, in total silence. After the third murder story, I went to the side, to a clump of trees, to take an ammonia break. He walked along with me.

Our piss hit the bark of the tree just inches apart.

"I've got a question for you."

"About city girls again?"

"No. About what happens to old drivers."

"Huh?"

"I mean what will happen to me a few years from now? Do I make enough money to buy a house and then set up a business of my own?"

"Well," he said, "a driver is good till he's fifty or fifty-five. Then the eyes go bad and they kick you out, right? That's thirty years from now, Country-Mouse. If you save from today, you'll make enough to buy a small home in some slum. If you've been a bit smarter and made a little extra on the side, then you'll have enough to put your son in a good school. He can learn English, he can go to university. That's the best-case scenario. A house in a slum, a kid in college."

" Best -case?"

"Well, on the other hand, you can get typhoid from bad water. Boss sacks you for no reason. You get into an accident-plenty of worst-case scenarios."

I was still pissing, but he put a hand on me. "There's something I've got to ask you, Country-Mouse. Are you all right?"

I looked at him sideways. "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but some of the drivers are talking about it openly. You sit by yourself in your master's car the whole time, you talk to yourself…You know what you need? A woman. Have you seen the slum behind the malls? They're not bad-looking-nice and plump. Some of us go there once a week. You can come too."

"DRIVER BALRAM, WHERE ARE YOU?"

It was the call from the microphone at the gate of the hotel. Mr. Turban was at the microphone-speaking in the most pompous, stern voice possible: "DRIVER BALRAM REPORT AT ONCE TO THE DOOR. NO DELAY. YOUR MASTER WANTS YOU."

I zipped up and ran, wiping my wet fingers on the back of my pants.

Mr. Ashok was walking out of the hotel with his hands around a girl when I brought the car up to the gate.

She was a slant-eyed one, with yellow skin. A foreigner. A Nepali. Not even of his caste or background. She sniffed about the seats-the seats that I had polished-and jumped on them.

Mr. Ashok put his hands on the girl's bare shoulders. I took my eyes away from the mirror.

I have never approved of debauchery inside cars, Mr. Jiabao.

But I could smell the mingling of their perfumes-I knew exactly what was going on behind me.

I thought he would ask me to drive him home now, but no-the carnival of fun just went on and on. He wanted to go to PVR Saket.

Now, PVR Saket is the scene of a big cinema, which shows ten or twelve cinemas at the same time, and charges over a hundred and fifty rupees per cinema-yes, that's right, a hundred and fifty rupees! That's not all: you've also got plenty of places to drink beer, dance, pick up girls, that sort of thing. A small bit of America in India.

Beyond the last shining shop begins the second PVR. Every big market in Delhi is two markets in one-there is always a smaller, grimier mirror image of the real market, tucked somewhere into a by-lane.

This is the market for the servants. I crossed over to this second PVR-a line of stinking restaurants, tea stalls, and giant frying pans where bread was toasted in oil. The men who work in the cinemas, and who sweep them clean, come here to eat. The beggars have their homes here.

I bought a tea and a potato vada, and sat under a banyan tree to eat.

"Brother, give me three rupees." An old woman, looking lean and miserable, with her hand stretched out.

"I'm not one of the rich, mother-go to that side and ask them."

"Brother-"

"Let me eat, all right? Just leave me alone!"

She went. A knife-grinder came and set up his stall right next to my tree. Holding two knives in his hand, he sat on his machine-it was one of the foot-pedaled whetstones-and began pedaling. Sparks began buzzing a couple of inches away from me.

"Brother, do you have to do your work here ? Don't you see a human being is trying to eat?"

He stopped pedaling, blinked, then put the blades to the whizzing whetstone again, as if he hadn't heard a word I'd said.

I threw the potato vada at his feet:

"How stupid can you people get?"

The old beggar woman made the crossing with me, into the other PVR. She hitched up her sari, took a breath, and then began her routine: "Sister, just give me three rupees. I haven't eaten since morning…"

A giant pile of old books lay in the center of the market, arranged in a large, hollow square, like the mandala made at weddings to hold the sacred fire. A small man sat cross-legged on a stack of magazines in the center of the square of books, like the priest in charge of this mandala of print. The books drew me toward them like a big magnet, but as soon as he saw me, the man sitting on the magazines snapped, "All the books are in English."

"So?"

"Do you read English?" he barked.

"Do you read English?" I retorted.

There. That did it. Until then his tone of talking to me had been servant-to-servant; now it became man-to-man. He stopped and looked me over from top to bottom.

"No," he said, breaking into a smile, as if he appreciated my balls.

"So how do you sell the books without knowing English?"

"I know which book is what from the cover," he said. "I know this one is Harry Potter." He showed it to me. "I know this one is James Hadley Chase." He picked it up. "This is Kahlil Gibran-this is Adolf Hitler-Desmond Bagley- The Joy of Sex. One time the publishers changed the Hitler cover so it looked like Harry Potter, and life was hell for a week after that."

"I just want to stand around the books. I had a book once. When I was a boy."

"Suit yourself."

So I stood around that big square of books. Standing around books, even books in a foreign language, you feel a kind of electricity buzzing up toward you, Your Excellency. It just happens, the way you get erect around girls wearing tight jeans.