The White Tiger

He knows.

At night we eat together, sitting across the table, watching each other and not saying much. After he's done eating, I give him a glass of milk. Two nights ago, after he finished his milk, I asked him, 'Don't you ever think of your mother?'

Not a word.

'Your father?'

He smiled at me and then he said, 'Give me another glass of milk, won't you, Uncle?'

I got up. He added, 'And a bowl of ice cream too.'

'Ice cream is for Sundays, Dharam,' I said.

'No. It's for today.'

And he smiled at me.

Oh, he's got it all figured out, I tell you. Little blackmailing thug. He's going to keep quiet as long as I keep feeding him. If I go to jail, he loses his ice cream and glasses of milk, doesn't he? That must be his thinking. The new generation, I tell you, is growing up with no morals at all.

He goes to a good school here in Bangalore -an English school. Now he pronounces English like a rich man's son. He can say 'pizza' the way Mr. Ashok said it. (And doesn't he love eating pizza-that nasty stuff?) I watch with pride as he does his long division on clean white paper at the dinner table. All these things I never learned.

One day, I know, Dharam, this boy who is drinking my milk and eating my ice cream in big bowls, will ask me, Couldn't you have spared my mother? Couldn't you have written to her telling her to escape in time?

And then I'll have to come up with an answer-or kill him, I suppose. But that question is still a few years away. Till then we'll have dinner together, every evening, Dharam, last of my family, and me.

That leaves only one person to talk about.

My ex.

I thought there was no need to offer a prayer to the gods for him, because his family would be offering very expensive prayers all along the Ganga for his soul. What can a poor man's prayers mean to the 36,000,004 gods in comparison with those of the rich?

But I do think about him a lot-and, believe it or not, I do miss him. He didn't deserve his fate.

I should have cut the Mongoose's neck.

* * *

Now, Your Excellency, a great leap forward in Sino-Indian relations has been taken in the past seven nights. Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai, as they say. I have told you all you need to know about entrepreneurship-how it is fostered, how it overcomes hardships, how it remains steadfast to its true goals, and how it is rewarded with the gold medal of success.

Sir: although my story is done, and my secrets are now your secrets, if you allow me, I would leave you with one final word.

(That's an old trick I learned from the Great Socialist-just when his audience is yawning, he says 'one final word'-and then he goes on for two more hours. Ha!)

When I drive down Hosur Main Road, when I turn into Electronics City Phase 1 and see the companies go past, I can't tell you how exciting it is to me. General Electric, Dell, Siemens-they're all here in Bangalore. And so many more are on their way. There is construction everywhere. Piles of mud everywhere. Piles of stones. Piles of bricks. The entire city is masked in smoke, smog, powder, cement dust. It is under a veil. When the veil is lifted, what will Bangalore be like?

Maybe it will be a disaster: slums, sewage, shopping malls, traffic jams, policemen. But you never know. It may turn out to be a decent city, where humans can live like humans and animals can live like animals. A new Bangalore for a new India. And then I can say that, in my own way, I helped to make New Bangalore.

Why not? Am I not a part of all that is changing this country? Haven't I succeeded in the struggle that every poor man here should be making-the struggle not to take the lashes your father took, not to end up in a mound of indistinguishable bodies that will rot in the black mud of Mother Ganga? True, there was the matter of murder- which is a wrong thing to do, no question about it. It has darkened my soul. All the skin-whitening creams sold in the markets of India won't clean my hands again.

But isn't it likely that everyone who counts in this world, including our prime minister (including you, Mr. Jiabao), has killed someone or other on their way to the top? Kill enough people and they will put up bronze statues to you near Parliament House in Delhi -but that is glory, and not what I am after. All I wanted was the chance to be a man-and for that, one murder was enough.

What comes next for me? I know that's what you're wondering.

Let me put it this way. This afternoon, driving down M.G. Road, which is our posh shopping road with lots of American shops and technology companies, I saw the Yahoo! people putting up a new sign outside their office:

HOW BIG CAN YOU THINK?

I took my hands off the wheel and held them wider than an elephant's cock.

'That big, sister-fucker!'

I love my start-up-this chandelier, and this silver laptop, and these twenty-six Toyota Qualises-but honestly, I'll get bored of it sooner or later. I'm a first-gear man, Mr. Premier. In the end, I'll have to sell this start-up to some other moron-entrepreneur, I mean-and head into a new line. I'm thinking of real estate next. You see, I'm always a man who sees 'tomorrow' when others see 'today.' The whole world will come to Bangalore tomorrow. Just drive to the airport and count the half-built glass-and-steel boxes as you pass them. Look at the names of the American companies that are building them. And when all these Americans come here, where do you think they're all going to sleep? On the road?

Ha!

Anywhere there's an empty apartment, I take a look at it, I wonder, How much can I get from an American for this in 2010? If the place has a future as the home of an American, I put a down payment on it at once. The future of real estate is Bangalore, Mr. Jiabao. You can join in the killing if you want-I'll help you out!

After three or four years in real estate, I think I might sell everything, take the money, and start a school-an English-language school-for poor children in Bangalore. A school where you won't be allowed to corrupt anyone's head with prayers and stories about God or Gandhi-nothing but the facts of life for these kids. A school full of White Tigers, unleashed on Bangalore! We'd have this city at our knees, I tell you. I could become the Boss of Bangalore. I'd fix that assistant commissioner of police at once. I'd put him on a bicycle and have Asif knock him over with the Qualis.

All this dreaming I'm doing-it may well turn out to be nothing.

See, sometimes I think I will never get caught. I think the Rooster Coop needs people like me to break out of it. It needs masters like Mr. Ashok-who, for all his numerous virtues, was not much of a master-to be weeded out, and exceptional servants like me to replace them. At such times, I gloat that Mr. Ashok's family can put up a reward of a million dollars on my head, and it will not matter. I have switched sides: I am now one of those who cannot be caught in India. At such moments, I look up at this chandelier, and I just want to throw my hands up and holler, so loudly that my voice would carry over the phones in the call-center rooms all the way to the people in America:

I've made it! I've broken out of the coop!

But at other times someone in the street calls out, 'Balram,' and I turn my head and think, I've given myself away.

Getting caught-it's always a possibility. There's no end to things in India, as Mr. Ashok used to say. You can give the police all the brown envelopes and red bags you want, and they might still screw you. A man in a uniform may one day point a finger at me and say, Time's up, Munna.

Yet even if all my chandeliers come crashing down to the floor-even if they throw me in jail and have all the other prisoners dip their beaks into me-even if they make me walk the wooden stairs to the hangman's noose-I'll never say I made a mistake that night in Delhi when I slit my master's throat.