The White Tiger

wails and kisses and tears! You’d think I’d been born into a caste of performing actors! And all the time, while clutching the Stork’s feet, I was staring at his huge, dirty, uncut toenails, and thinking, What is he doing in Dhanbad? Why isn’t he back home, screwing poor fishermen of their money and humping their daughters?
    “Get up, boy,” he said—big, uncut toenails scratched my cheeks. Mr. Ashok—the man on the terrace, of course—was by his side now.
    “You’re really from Laxmangarh?”
    “Yes, sir. I used to work in the tea shop—the one with the big photo of Gandhi in it. I used to break coals there. You came once to have tea.”
    “Ah…the old village.” He closed his eyes. “Do people there still remember me? It’s been three years since I was there.”
    “Of course, sir—people say, ‘Our father is gone, Thakur Ramdev is gone, the best of the landlords is gone, who will protect us now?’”
    The Stork enjoyed hearing that. He turned to Mr. Ashok. “Let’s see how good he is. Call Mukesh too. Let’s go for a spin.”
    Only later did I understand how lucky I’d been. Mr. Ashok had come back from America just the previous day; a car had been bought for him. A driver was needed for the car. And on that day I had turned up.
    Now, there were two cars in the garage. One was your standard Maruti Suzuki—that little white car you see all over India—and the other was the Honda City. Now, the Maruti is a small, simple fellow, a perfect servant to the driver; the moment you turn the ignition key, he does exactly what the driver wants him to. The Honda City is a larger car, a more sophisticated creature, with a mind of his own; he has power steering, and an advanced engine, and he does what he wants to. Given that I was so nervous then, if the Stork had told me to take the driving test in the Honda City, that would have been the end of me, sir. But luck was on my side.
    They made me drive the Maruti Suzuki.
    The Stork and Mr. Ashok got into the back; a small dark man—Mukesh Sir, the Stork’s other son—got into the front seat and gave me orders. The Nepali guard watched with a darkened face as I took the car out of the gates—and into the city of Dhanbad.
    They made me drive them around for half an hour, and then told me to head back.
    “Not bad,” the old man said as he got out of the car. “Fellow is cautious and good. What’s your last name again?”
    “Halwai.”
    “Halwai…” He turned to the small dark man. “What caste is that, top or bottom?”
    And I knew that my future depended on the answer to this question.
     
    I should explain a thing or two about caste. Even Indians get confused about this word, especially educated Indians in the cities. They’ll make a mess of explaining it to you. But it’s simple, really.
    Let’s start with me.
    See: Halwai, my name, means “sweet-maker.”
    That’s my caste—my destiny. Everyone in the Darkness who hears that name knows all about me at once. That’s why Kishan and I kept getting jobs at sweetshops wherever we went. The owner thought, Ah, they’re Halwais, making sweets and tea is in their blood.
    But if we were Halwais, then why was my father not making sweets but pulling a rickshaw? Why did I grow up breaking coals and wiping tables, instead of eating gulab jamuns and sweet pastries when and where I chose to? Why was I lean and dark and cunning, and not fat and creamy-skinned and smiling, like a boy raised on sweets would be?
    See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well kept, orderly zoo. Everyone in his place, everyone happy. Goldsmiths here. Cowherds here. Landlords there. The man called a Halwai made sweets. The man called a cowherd tended cows. The untouchable cleaned feces. Landlords were kind to their serfs. Women covered their heads with a veil and turned their eyes to the ground when talking to strange men.
    And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August, 1947—the day the British left—the cages had been let open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law. Those that were the most ferocious, the hungriest, had eaten everyone else up, and grown big bellies. That was all that counted now, the size of your belly. It didn’t matter whether you were a woman, or a Muslim, or an untouchable: anyone with a belly could rise up. My father’s father must have