The White Tiger

of my shirt pocket, dropped it on the floor of the car, picked it up, and gave it to the Mongoose.

'Here it is, sir. Forgive me for taking so long to find it!'

There was a childish delight on his dark master's face. He put the rupee coin in his hand and sucked his teeth, as if it were the best thing that had happened to him all day.

I took the elevator up with the brothers, to see if any work was to be done in the apartment.

Pinky Madam was on the sofa watching TV; as soon as we got in, she said, 'I've eaten already,' turned the TV off, and went into another room. The Mongoose said he didn't want dinner, so Mr. Ashok would have to eat alone at the dinner table. He asked me to heat some of the vegetables in the fridge for him, and I went into the kitchen to do so.

Casting a quick look back as I opened the fridge door, I saw that he was on the verge of tears.

* * *

When you're the driver, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation-and then, just when the masters are coming to the crucial part of their talk-it always happens.

Some moron in a white jeep almost hits you while trying to overtake a car on the wrong side of the road. You swerve to the side, glare at the moron, curse him (silently)-and by the time you're eavesdropping again, the conversation in the backseat has moved on…and you never know how that sentence ended.

I knew something was wrong, but I hadn't realized how bad the situation had become until the morning Mr. Ashok said to me, 'Today you'll drop Mukesh Sir at the railway station, Balram.'

'Yes, sir.' I hesitated. I wanted to ask, Just him?

Did that mean he was going back for good? Did that mean Pinky Madam had finally got rid of him with her door-slamming and tart remarks?

At six o'clock, I waited with the car outside the entranceway. I drove the brothers to the railway station. Pinky Madam did not come along.

I carried the Mongoose's bags to the right carriage of the train, then went to a stall and bought a dosa, wrapped in paper, for him. That was what he always liked to eat on the train. But I unwrapped the dosa and removed the potatoes, flinging them onto the rail tracks, because potatoes made him fart, and he didn't like that. A servant gets to know his master's intestinal tract from end to end-from lips to anus.

The Mongoose told me, 'Wait. I have instructions for you.'

I squatted in a corner of the railway carriage.

'Balram, you're not in the Darkness any longer.'

'Yes, sir.'

'There is a law in Delhi.'

'Yes, sir.'

'You know those bronze statues of Gandhi and Nehru that are everywhere? The police have put cameras inside their eyes to watch for the cars. They see everything you do, understand that?'

'Yes, sir.'

Then he frowned, as if wondering what else to say. He said, 'The air conditioner should be turned off when you are on your own.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Music should not be played when you are on your own.'

'Yes, sir.'

'At the end of each day you must give us a reading of the meter to make sure you haven't been driving the car on your own.'

'Yes, sir.'

The Mongoose turned to Mr. Ashok and touched him on the forearm. 'Take some interest in this, Ashok Brother, you'll have to check up on the driver when I'm gone.'

But Mr. Ashok was playing with his cell phone. He put it down and said, 'The driver's honest. He's from Laxmangarh. I saw his family when I went there.' Then he went back to his cell phone.

'Don't talk like that. Don't make a joke of what I'm saying,' the Mongoose said.

But he was paying no attention to his brother-he kept punching the buttons on his cell phone: 'One minute, one minute, I'm talking to a friend in New York.'

Drivers like to say that some men are first-gear types. Mr. Ashok was a classic first-gear man. He liked to start things, but nothing held his attention for long.

Looking at him, I made two discoveries, almost simultaneously. Each filled me with a sense of wonder. Firstly, you could 'talk' on a cell phone-to someone in New York -just by punching on its buttons. The wonders of modern science never cease to amaze me!

Secondly, I realized that this tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, foreign-educated man, who would be my only master in a few minutes, when the long whistle blew and this train headed off toward Dhanbad, was weak, helpless, absentminded, and completely unprotected by the usual instincts that run in the blood of a landlord.

If you were back in Laxmangarh, we would have called you the Lamb.

'Why are you grinning like a donkey?' the Mongoose snapped at me, and I almost fell over apologizing to him.

That evening, at eight o'clock, Mr. Ashok sent a message to me through another servant: 'Be ready in half an hour, Balram. Pinky Madam and I will be going out.'

And the two of them did come down, about two and three-quarters of an hour later.

The moment the Mongoose left, I swear, the skirts became even shorter.

When she sat in the back, I could see half her boobs hanging out of her clothes each time I had to look in the rearview mirror.

This put me in a very bad situation, sir. For one thing, my beak was aroused, which is natural in a healthy young man like me. On the other hand, as you know, master and mistress are like father and mother to you, so how can you get excited by the mistress?

I simply avoided looking at the rearview mirror. If there was a crash, it wouldn't be my fault.

Mr. Premier, maybe when you have been driving, in the thick traffic, you have stopped your car and lowered your window; and then you have felt the hot, panting breath of the exhaust pipe of a truck next to you. Now be aware, Mr. Premier, that there is a hot panting diesel engine just in front of your own nose.

Me.

Each time she came in with that low black dress, my beak got big. I hated her for wearing that dress; but I hated my beak even more for what it was doing.

* * *

At the end of the month, I went up to the apartment. He was sitting there, alone, on the couch beneath the framed photo of the two Pomeranians.

'Sir?'

'Hm. What's up, Balram?'

'It's been a month.'

'So?'

'Sir…my wages.'

'Ah, yes. Three thousand, right?' He whipped out his wallet-it was fat with notes-and flicked out three notes onto the table. I picked them up and bowed. Something of what his brother had been saying must have got to him, because he said, 'You're sending some of it home, aren't you?'

'All of it, sir. Just what I need to eat and drink here-the rest goes home.'

'Good, Balram. Good. Family is a good thing.'

At ten o'clock that night I walked down to the market just around the corner from Buckingham Towers B Block. It was the last shop in the market; on a billboard above it, huge black letters in Hindi said: