By the dim lights of Delhi, I saw hundreds that night, under trees, shrines, intersections, on benches, squinting at newspapers, holy books, journals, Communist Party pamphlets. What were they reading about? What were they talking about?
But what else?
Of the end of the world.
A beggar sitting by the side of the road, a nearly naked man coated with grime, and with wild unkempt hair in long coils like snakes, looked into my eyes:
Colored pieces of glass have been embedded into the boundary wall of Buckingham Towers B Block-to keep robbers out. When headlights hit them, the shards glow, and the wall turns into a Technicolored, glass-spined monster.
The gatekeeper stared at me as I drove in. I saw rupee notes shining in his eyes.
This was the second time he had seen me going out and returning on my own.
In the parking lot, I got out of the driver's seat and carefully closed the door. I opened the passenger's door, and went inside, and passed my hand along the leather. I passed my hands from one side of the leather seats to the other three times, and then I found what I was looking for.
I held it up to the light.
A strand of golden hair!
I've got it in my desk to this day.
The Sixth Night
The dreams of the rich, and the dreams of the poor-they never overlap, do they?
See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?
Losing weight and looking like the poor.
Every evening, the compound around Buckingham Towers B Block becomes an exercise ground. Plump, paunchy men and even plumper, paunchier women, with big circles of sweat below their arms, are doing their evening 'walking.'
See, with all these late-night parties, all that drinking and munching, the rich tend to get fat in Delhi. So they walk to lose weight.
Now, where should a human being walk? In the outdoors-by a river, inside a park, around a forest.
However, displaying their usual genius for town planning, the rich of Delhi had built this part of Gurgaon with no parks, lawns, or playgrounds-it was just buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and more buildings. There was a pavement outside, but that was for the poor to live on. So if you wanted to do some 'walking,' it had to be done around the concrete compound of your own building.
Now, while they walked around the apartment block, the fatsos made their thin servants-most of them drivers-stand at various spots on that circle with bottles of mineral water and fresh towels in their hands. Each time they completed a circuit around the building, they stopped next to their man, grabbed the bottle-gulp-grabbed the towel-wipe, wipe-then it was off on round two.
Vitiligo-Lips was standing in one corner of the compound, with his bottle and his master's sweaty towel. Every few minutes, he turned to me with a twinkle in his eyes-his boss, the steel man, who was bald until two weeks ago, now sported a head of thick black hair-an expensive toupee job he had gone all the way to England for. This toupee was the main subject of discussion in the monkey-circle these days-the other drivers had offered Vitiligo- Lips ten rupees to resort to the old tricks of braking unexpectedly, or taking the car full speed over a pothole, to knock over his master's toupee at least once.
The secrets of their masters were spilled and dissected every evening by the monkey-circle-though if any of them made the divorce a topic of discussion, he knew he would have to deal with me. On Mr. Ashok's privacy I allowed no one to infringe.
I was standing just a few feet from Vitiligo-Lips, with my master's bottle of mineral water in my hand and his sweat-stained towel on my shoulder.
Mr. Ashok was about to complete his circle-I could smell his sweat coming toward me. This was round number three for him. He took the bottle, drained it, wiped his face with his towel, and draped it back on my shoulder.
'I'm done, Balram. Bring the towel and bottle up, okay?'
'Yes, sir,' I said, and watched him go into the apartment block. He took a walk once or twice a week, but it clearly wasn't enough to counter his nights of debauchery-I saw a big, wet paunch pressing against his white T- shirt. How repulsive he was, these days.
I signaled to Vitiligo-Lips before going down to the parking lot.
Ten minutes later, I smelled the steel man's sweat and heard footsteps. Vitiligo-Lips had come down. I called him over to the Honda City-it was the only place in the world I felt fully safe anymore.
'What is it, Country-Mouse? Want another magazine?'
'Not that. Something else.'
I got down on my haunches; I squatted by one of the tires of the City. I scraped the grooves of the tire with a fingernail. He squatted too.
I showed him the strand of golden hair-I kept it tied around my wrist, like a locket. He brought my wrist to his nose-he rubbed the strand between his fingers, sniffed it, and let my wrist down.
'No problem.' He winked. 'I told you your master would get lonely.'
'Don't talk about him!' I seized his neck. He shook me off.
'Are you crazy? You tried to choke me!'
I scraped the grooves of the tire again. 'How much will it cost?'
'High-class or low-class? Virgin or nonvirgin? All depends.'
'I don't care. She just has to have golden hair-like in the shampoo advertisements.'
'Cheapest is ten, twelve thousand.'
'That's too much. He won't pay more than four thousand seven hundred.'
'Six thousand five hundred, Country-Mouse. That's the minimum. White skin has to be respected.'
'All right.'
'When does he want it, Country-Mouse?'
'I'll tell you. It'll be soon. And another thing-I want to know another thing.'
I put my face on the tire and breathed in the smell of the leather. For strength.
'How many ways are there for a driver to cheat his master?'
Mr. Jiabao, I am aware that it is a common feature of those cellophane-wrapped business books to feature small 'sidebars.' At this stage of the story, to relieve you of tedium, I would like to insert my own 'sidebar' into the narrative of the modern entrepreneur's growth and development.
HOW DOES THE ENTERPRISING DRIVER
EARN A LITTLE EXTRA CASH?
1. When his master is not around, he can siphon petrol from the car, with a funnel. Then sell the petrol.
2. When his master orders him to make a repair to the car, he can go to a corrupt mechanic; the mechanic will inflate the price of the repair, and the driver will receive a cut. This is a list of a few entrepreneurial mechanics who help entrepreneurial drivers:
