Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger

Then the thing behind the bamboo bars stopped moving. It turned its face to my face. The tiger's eyes met my eyes, like my master's eyes have met mine so often in the mirror of the car.

All at once, the tiger vanished.

A tingling went from the base of my spine into my groin. My knees began to shake; I felt light. Someone near me shrieked. "His eyes are rolling! He's going to faint!" I tried to shout back at her: "It's not true: I'm not fainting!" I tried to show them all I was fine, but my feet were slipping. The ground beneath me was shaking. Something was digging its way toward me, and then claws tore out of mud and dug into my flesh and pulled me down into the dark earth.

My last thought, before everything went dark, was that now I understood those pinches and raptures- now I understood why lovers come to the zoo.

That evening, Dharam and I sat on the floor in my room, and I spread a blue letter before him. I put a pen in his hands.

"I'm going to see how good a letter-writer you are, Dharam. I want you to write to Granny and tell her what happened today at the zoo."

He wrote it down in his slow, beautiful hand. He told her about the hippos, and the chimpanzees, and the swamp deer.

"Tell her about the tiger."

He hesitated, then wrote: We saw a white tiger in a cage.

"Tell her everything. "

He looked at me, and wrote: Uncle Balram fainted in front of the white tiger in the cage.

"Better still-I'll dictate; write it down."

He wrote it all down for ten minutes, writing so fast that his pen got black and oozy with overflowing ink-he stopped to wipe the nib against his hair, and went back to the writing. In the end he read out what he had written:

I called out to the people around me, and we carried Uncle to a banyan tree. Someone poured water on his face. The good people slapped Uncle hard and made him wake up. They turned to me and said, "Your uncle is raving-he's saying goodbye to his grandmother. He must think he's going to die." Uncle's eyes were open now. "Are you all right, Uncle?" I asked. He took my hand and he said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I asked, "Sorry for what?" And he said, "I can't live the rest of my life in a cage, Granny. I'm so sorry." We took the bus back to Gurgaon and had lunch at the tea shop. It was very hot, and we sweated a lot. And that was all that happened today.

"Write whatever you want after that to her, and post it tomorrow, as soon as I leave in the car-but not before. Understand?"

It was raining all morning, a light, persistent kind of rain. I heard the rain, though I could not see it. I went to the Honda City, placed the incense stick inside, wiped the seats, wiped the stickers, and punched the ogre in the mouth. I threw a bundle near the driver's seat. I shut all the doors and locked them.

Then, taking two steps back from the Honda City, I bowed low to it with folded palms.

I went to see what Dharam was doing. He was looking lonely, so I made a paper boat for him, and we sailed it in the gutter outside the apartment block.

After lunch, I called Dharam into my room.

I put my hands on his shoulders; slowly I turned him around so he faced away from me. I dropped a rupee coin on the ground.

"Bend down and pick that up."

He did so, and I watched. Dharam combed his hair just like Mr. Ashok did-with a part down the middle; when you stood up over him, there was a clear white line down his scalp, leading up to the spot on the crown where the strands of a man's hairline radiate from.

"Stand up straight."

I turned him around a full circle. I dropped the rupee again.

"Pick it up one more time."

I watched the spot.

Telling him to sit in a corner of the room and keep watch over me, I went inside my mosquito net, folded my legs, closed my eyes, touched my palms to my knees, and breathed in.

I don't know how long I sat like the Buddha, but it lasted until one of the servants shouted out that I was wanted at the front door. I opened my eyes-Dharam was sitting in a corner of the room, watching me.

"Come here," I said-I gave him a hug, and put ten rupees into his pocket. He'd need that.

"Balram, you're late! The bell is ringing like crazy!"

I walked to the car, inserted the key, and turned the engine on. Mr. Ashok was standing at the entrance with an umbrella and a cell phone. He was talking on the phone as he got into the car and slammed the door.

"I still can't believe it. The people of this country had a chance to put an efficient ruling party back in power, and instead they have voted in the most outrageous bunch of thugs. We don't deserve-" He put the phone aside for a moment and said, "First to the city, Balram-I'll tell you where"-and then resumed the phone talk.

The roads were greasy with mud and water. I drove slowly.

"…parliamentary democracy, Father. We will never catch up with China for this single reason."

First stop was in the city-at one of the usual banks. He took the red bag and went in, and I saw him inside the glass booth, pressing the buttons of the cash machine. When he came back, I could feel that the weight of the bag on the backseat had increased. We went from bank to bank, and the weight of the red bag grew. I felt its pressure increase on my lower back-as if I were taking Mr. Ashok and his bag not in a car, but the way my father would take a customer and his bag-in a rickshaw.

Seven hundred thousand rupees.

It was enough for a house. A motorbike. And a small shop. A new life.

My seven hundred thousand rupees.

"Now to the Sheraton, Balram."

"Yes, sir."

I turned the key-started the car, changed gear. We moved.

"Play some Sting, Balram. Not too loud."

"Yes, sir."

I put the CD on. The voice of Sting came on. The car picked up speed. In a little while, we passed the famous bronze statue of Gandhi leading his followers from darkness to the light.

Now the road emptied. The rain was coming down lightly. If we kept going this way, we would come to the hotel-the grandest of all in the capital of my country, the place where visiting heads of state, like yourself, always stay. But Delhi is a city where civilization can appear and disappear within five minutes. On either side of us right now there was just wilderness and rubbish.

In the rearview mirror I saw him paying attention to nothing but his cell phone. A blue glow from the phone lit up his face. Without looking up, he asked me, "What's wrong, Balram? Why has the car stopped?"

I touched the magnetic stickers of the goddess Kali for luck, then opened the glove compartment. There it was-the broken bottle, with its claws of glass.

"There's something off with the wheel, sir. Just give me a couple of minutes."

Before I could even touch it, I swear, the door of the car opened. I was out in the drizzle.

There was soggy black mud everywhere. Picking my way over mud and rainwater, I squatted near the left rear wheel, which was hidden from the road by the body of the car. There was a large clump of bushes to one side-and a stretch of wasteland beyond.

You've never seen the road this empty. You'd swear it's been arranged just for you.

The only light inside the car was the blue glow from his cell phone. I rapped against his glass with a finger. He turned to me without lowering the window.

I mouthed out the words, "There's a problem, sir."

He did not lower the window; he did not step out. He was playing with his cell phone: punching the buttons and grinning. He must be sending a message to Ms. Uma.

Pressed to the wet glass, my lips made a grin.

He released the phone. I made a fist and thumped on his glass. He lowered the window with a look of displeasure. Sting's soft voice came through the window.