In his journey from village to city, from Laxmangarh to Delhi, the entrepreneur's path crosses any number of provincial towns that have the pollution and noise and traffic of a big city-without any hint of the true city's sense of history, planning, and grandeur. Half-baked cities, built for half-baked men.
There was money in the air in Dhanbad. I saw buildings with sides made entirely of glass, and men with gold in their teeth. And all this glass and gold-all of it came from the coal pits. Outside the town, there was coal, more coal than you would find anywhere else in the Darkness, maybe more coal than anywhere else in the world. Miners came to eat at my tea shop-I always gave them the best service, because they had the best tales to tell.
They said that the coal mines went on and on for miles and miles outside the town. In some places there were fires burning under the earth and sending smoke into the air-fires that had been burning continuously for a hundred years!
And it was at the tea shop in this city built by coal, while wiping a table and lingering to overhear a conversation, that my life changed.
'You know, sometimes I think I did the wrong thing in life, becoming a miner.'
'Then? What else can people like you and me become? Politicians?'
'Everyone's getting a car these days-and you know how much they pay their drivers? One thousand seven hundred rupees a month!'
I dropped my rag. I ran to Kishan, who was cleaning out the insides of an oven.
After my father's death, it was Kishan who took care of me. I don't attempt to hide his role in making me who I am today. But he had no entrepreneurial spunk at all. He would have been happy to let me sink in the mud.
'Nothing doing,' Kishan said. 'Granny said stick to the tea shop-and we'll stick to the tea shop.'
I went to all the taxi stands; down on my knees I begged random strangers; but no one would agree to teach me car-driving for free.
It was going to cost me three hundred rupees to learn how to drive a car.
Three hundred rupees!
Today, in Bangalore, I can't get enough people for my business. People come and people go. Good men never stay. I'm even thinking of advertising in the newspaper.
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Go to any pub or bar in Bangalore with your ears open and it's the same thing you hear: can't get enough call-center workers, can't get enough software engineers, can't get enough sales managers. There are twenty, twenty-five pages of job advertisements in the newspaper every week.
Things are different in the Darkness. There, every morning, tens of thousands of young men sit in the tea shops, reading the newspaper, or lie on a charpoy humming a tune, or sit in their rooms talking to a photo of a film actress. They have no job to do today. They know they won't get any job today. They've given up the fight.
They're the smart ones.
The stupid ones have gathered in a field in the center of the town. Every now and then a truck comes by, and all the men in the field rush to it with their hands outstretched, shouting, 'Take me! Take me!'
Everyone pushed me; I pushed back, but the truck scooped up only six or seven men and left the rest of us behind. They were off on some construction or digging job-the lucky bastards. Another half hour of waiting. Another truck came. Another scramble, another fight. After the fifth or sixth fight of the day, I finally found myself at the head of the crowd, face-to-face with the truck driver. He was a Sikh, a man with a big blue turban. In one hand he held a wooden stick, and he swung the stick to drive back the crowd.
'Everyone!' he shouted. 'Take off your shirts! I've got to see a man's nipples before I give him a job!'
He looked at my chest; he squeezed the nipples-slapped my butt-glared into my eyes-and then poked the stick against my thigh: 'Too thin! Fuck off!'
'Give me a chance, sir-my body is small but there's a lot of fight in it-I'll dig for you, I'll haul cement for you, I'll-'
He swung his stick; it hit me on the left ear. I fell down, and others rushed to take my place.
I sat on the ground, rubbed my ear, and watched the truck leave in a big cloud of dust.
The shadow of an eagle passed over my body. I burst into tears.
'White Tiger! There you are!'
Kishan and Cousin Dilip lifted me up from the ground, big smiles on their faces. Great news! Granny had agreed to let them invest in my driving classes. 'There's only one thing,' Kishan said. 'Granny says you're a greedy pig. She wants you to swear by all the gods in heaven that you won't forget her once you get rich.'
'I swear.'
'Pinch your neck and swear-you'll send every rupee you make every month back to Granny.'
We went into the house where the taxi drivers lived. An old man in a brown uniform, which was like an ancient army outfit, was smoking a hookah that was warmed up by a bowl of live coals. Kishan explained the situation to him.
The old driver asked, 'What caste are you?'
'Halwai.'
'Sweet-makers,' the old driver said, shaking his head. 'That's what you people do. You make sweets. How can you learn to drive?' He pointed his hookah at the live coals. 'That's like getting coals to make ice for you. Mastering a car'-he moved the stick of an invisible gearbox-'it's like taming a wild stallion-only a boy from the warrior castes can manage that. You need to have aggression in your blood. Muslims, Rajputs, Sikhs-they're fighters, they can become drivers. You think sweet-makers can last long in fourth gear?'
Coal was taught to make ice, starting the next morning at six. Three hundred rupees, plus a bonus, will do that. We practiced in a taxi. Each time I made a mistake with the gears, he slapped me on the skull. 'Why don't you stick to sweets and tea?'
For every hour I spent in the car, he made me spend two or three under it-I was made a free repair mechanic for all the taxis in the stand; late every evening, I emerged from under a taxi like a hog from sewage, my face black with grease, my hands shiny with engine oil. I dipped into a Ganga of black-and came out a driver.
'Listen,' the old driver said when I was handing him over the hundred rupees he had been promised as bonus. 'It's not enough to drive. You've got to become a
He patted me on the back.
'You're better than I thought-you
He walked; I followed. It was evening. We went through dim streets and markets. We walked for half an hour, while everything around us grew dark-and then it was as if we had stepped out into fireworks.
The street was full of colored doors and colored windows, and in each door and each window, a woman was looking out at me with a big smile. Ribbons of red paper and silver foil glittered between the rooftops of the street; tea was being boiled in stalls by the sides of the road. Four men rushed at us at once. The old driver explained that they should keep away, since it was my first time. 'Let him enjoy the sights first. That's the best part of this game, isn't it-the looking!'
'Sure, sure,' the men said, and stepped back. 'That's what we want him to do-enjoy!'
I walked with the old driver, my mouth open, gaping at all the gorgeous women jeering and taunting me from behind their grilled windows-all of them begging me to dip my beak into them!
The old driver explained the nature of the wares on offer. Up in one building, sitting on a windowsill in such a way that we could see the full spread of their gleaming dark legs, were the 'Americans': girls in short skirts and high platform shoes, carrying pink handbags with names in English written on them in sequins. They were slim and athletic-for men who like the Western kind. In this corner, sitting in the threshold of an open house, the
