The White Tiger

money in front of me and say, This is all? Do you know how much it costs to keep two sons studying in a foreign college? You should see the American Express bills they send me every month! And he'll ask for another envelope. Then another, then another, and so on. There is no end to things in India, Mr. Jiabao, as Mr. Ashok so correctly used to say. You'll have to keep paying and paying the fuckers. But I complain about the police the way the rich complain; not the way the poor complain.

The difference is everything.

The next day, sir, I called Mohammad Asif to the office. He was burning with shame over what he had done-I didn't need to reproach him.

And it was not his fault. Not mine either. Our outsourcing companies are so cheap that they force their taxi operators to promise them an impossible number of runs every night. To meet such schedules, we have to drive recklessly; we have to keep hitting and hurting people on the roads. It's a problem every taxi operator in this city faces. Don't blame me.

'Don't worry about it, Asif,' I said. The boy looked so devastated.

I've come to respect Muslims, sir. They're not the brightest lot, except for those four poet fellows, but they make good drivers, and they're honest people, by and large, although a few of them seem to get this urge to blow trains up every year. I wasn't going to fire Asif over this.

But I did ask him to find out the address of the boy, the one we had killed.

He stared at me.

'Why go, sir? We don't have to fear anything from the parents. Please don't do this.'

I made him find the address and I made him give it to me.

I took cash out of my locker in crisp new one-hundred-rupee notes; I put them in a brown envelope. I got into a car and drove myself to the place.

The mother was the one who opened the door. She asked me what I wanted, and I said, 'I am the owner of the taxi company.'

I didn't have to tell her which one.

She brought me a cup of coffee in a cup set in a metal tumbler. They have exquisite manners, these South Indians.

I poured the coffee into the tumbler, and sipped the correct way.

There was a photo of a young man, with a large jasmine garland around it, up on the wall.

I said nothing until I finished the coffee. Then I put the brown envelope on the table.

An old man had come into the room now, and he stood staring at me.

'First of all, I want to express my deep sorrow at the death of your son. Having lost relatives myself-so many of them-I know the pain that you have suffered. He should not have died.'

'Second, the fault is mine. Not the driver's. The police have let me off. That is the way of this jungle we live in. But I accept my responsibility. I ask for your forgiveness.'

I pointed to the brown envelope lying on the table.

'There are twenty-five thousand rupees in here. I don't give it to you because I have to, but because I want to. Do you understand?'

The old woman would not take the money.

But the old man, the father, was eyeing the envelope. 'At least you were man enough to come,' he said.

'I want to help your other son,' I said. 'He is a brave boy. He stood up to the police the other night. He can come and be a driver with me if you want. I will take care of him if you want.'

The woman clenched her face and shook her head. Tears poured out of her eyes. It was understandable. She might have had the hopes for that boy that my mother had for me. But the father was amenable; men are more reasonable in such matters.

I thanked him for the coffee, bowed respectfully before the bereaved mother, and left.

Mohammad Asif was waiting for me at the office when I got back. He shook his head and said, 'Why? Why did you waste so much money?'

That's when I thought, Maybe I've made a mistake. Maybe Asif will tell the other drivers I was frightened of the old woman, and they will think they can cheat me. It makes me nervous. I don't like showing weakness in front of my employees. I know what that leads to.

But I had to do something different; don't you see? I can't live the way the Wild Boar and the Buffalo and the Raven lived, and probably still live, back in Laxmangarh.

I am in the Light now.

* * *

Now, what happens in your typical Murder Weekly story-or Hindi film, for that matter? A poor man kills a rich man. Good. Then he takes the money. Good. But then he gets dreams in which the dead man pursues him with bloody fingers, saying, Mur-der-er, mur-der-er.

Doesn't happen like that in real life. Trust me. It's one of the reasons I've stopped going to Hindi films.

There was just that one night when Granny came chasing me on a water buffalo, but it never happened again.

The real nightmare you get is the other kind. You toss about in the bed dreaming that you haven't done it-that you lost your nerve and let Mr. Ashok get away-that you're still in Delhi, still the servant of another man, and then you wake up.

The sweating stops. The heartbeat slows.

You did it! You killed him!

About three months after I came to Bangalore, I went to a temple and performed last rites there for all of them: Kusum, Kishan, and all my aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces. I even said a prayer for the water buffalo. Who knows who has lived and who has not? And then I said to Kishan, and to Kusum, and to all of them: 'Now leave me in peace.'

And they have, sir, by and large.

One day I read a story in a newspaper: 'Family of 17 Murdered in North Indian Village.' My heart began to thump-seventeen? That can't be right-that's not mine. It was just one of those two-inch horror stories that appear every morning in the papers-they didn't give a name to the village. They just said it was somewhere in the Darkness-near Gaya. I read it again and again-seventeen! There aren't seventeen at home…I breathed out…But what if someone's had children…?

I crumpled that paper and threw it away. I stopped reading the newspaper for a few months after that. Just to be safe.

Look, here's what would have happened to them. Either the Stork had them killed, or had some of them killed, and the others beaten. Now, even if by some miracle he-or the police-didn't do that, the neighbors would have shunned them. See, a bad boy in one family casts the village's reputation into the dust. So the villagers would have forced them out-and they'd have to go to Delhi, or Calcutta, or Mumbai, to live under some concrete bridge, begging for their food, and without a hope for the future. That's not much better than being dead.

What's that you say, Mr. Jiabao? Do I hear you call me a cold-blooded monster?

There is a story I think I heard at a train station, sir, or maybe I read it on the torn page that had been used to wrap an ear of roasted corn I bought at the market-I can't remember. It was a story of the Buddha. One day a cunning Brahmin, trying to trick the Buddha, asked him, 'Master, do you consider yourself a man or a god?'

The Buddha smiled and said, 'Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.'

I'll give you the same answer to your question, Mr. Jiabao. You ask, 'Are you a man or a demon?'

Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are still sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

I shouldn't think of them at all. My family.

Dharam certainly doesn't.

He's figured out what's happened by now. I told him at first we were going on a holiday, and I think he bought it for a month or two. He doesn't say a word, but sometimes I see him watching me out of the corner of his eye.