The White Tiger

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 “traditionals”—fat, chunky types in saris, for those who like value for their money. There were eunuchs in one window—teenagers in the next window. The face of a small boy appeared from between a woman’s legs and then vanished.
    A blinding flash of light: a blue door opened, and four light-skinned Nepali women, in gorgeous red petticoats, looked out.
    “Them!” I shouted. “Them! Them! Them!”
    “Good,” the old driver said. “I like that too—I always go for the foreign ones.”
    We went in, and he picked a woman from the four, and I picked another woman, and we went into two rooms, and the woman I picked closed the door behind me.
    My first time!
    Half an hour later, when the old driver and I staggered back, drunk and happy, to his house, I put coals in his hookah. I brought him the hookah and watched as he took a deep, contented suck on the pipe. Smoke came out of his nostrils.
    “What is it now? I’ve taught you to be a driver and a man—what more do you want?”
    “Sir…can’t you ask the taxi men if they need someone? I’ll work for free at first. I need a job.”
    The old driver laughed. “I haven’t had work in forty years, you nitwit. How the fuck can I help you? Now get lost.”
    So, next morning, I was walking from house to house, knocking on gates and on front doors of the rich, asking if anyone wanted a driver—a good driver—an experienced driver—for their car.
    Everyone said no. You didn’t get a job that way. You had to know someone in the family to get a job. Not by knocking on the gate and asking.
    There’s no reward for entrepreneurship in most of India, Your Excellency. It’s a sad fact.
    Every evening I came home tired and close to tears, but Kishan said, “Keep trying. Someone will say yes in the end.”
    So I went looking, from house to house, house to house, house to house. Finally, after two weeks of asking and being told to get lost, I got to a house with ten-foot-high walls, and a cage of iron grilles around each window.
    A sly, slant-eyed Nepali with a white mustache peered at me through the bars of the gate.
    “What do you want?”
    I didn’t like the way he asked that one bit; I put a big smile on my face.
    “Any need of a driver, sir? I’ve got four years’ experience. My master recently died, so I—”
    “Fuck off. We have a driver already,” the Nepali said. He twirled a big bunch of keys and grinned.
    My heart sank, and I was about to turn away—when I saw a figure on the terrace, a fellow in long loose white clothes, walking around and around, lost deep in thought. I swear by God, sir—I swear by all thirty-six million and four of them—the moment I saw his face, I knew: This is the master for me.
    Some dark fate had tied his lifeline to mine, because at that very moment he looked down.
    I knew he was coming down to save me. I just had to divert this Nepali fucker as long as possible.
    “I’m a good driver, sir. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t steal.”
    “Fuck off, don’t you understand?”
    “I don’t disrespect God, I don’t disrespect my family.”
    “What’s wrong with you? Get lost, at once—”
    “I don’t gossip about my masters, I don’t steal, I don’t blaspheme.”
    Just then, the door of the house opened. But it was not the man on the terrace—it was an older man, with a big white mustache that was thick, and curved, and pointy at the tips.
    “What is going on, Ram Bahadur?” he asked the Nepali.
    “He’s begging, sir. Begging for money.”
    I banged on the gate. “I am from your village, sir. I am from Laxmangarh! The village near the Black Fort! Your village!”
    The old man was the Stork!
    He stared at me for the longest time, and then he told the Nepali guard, “Let the boy in.”
    Swoosh!—As soon as the gate was open, I dived straight at the Stork’s feet. No Olympic runner could have gone in as fast as I did through those gates; the Nepali had no chance at all of blocking me.
    You should have seen me that day—what a performance of