The White Tiger

sir.”
     
    One morning there was a knocking on the door of the drivers’ quarters, and when I went out, Pinky Madam was standing with two rackets in her hand.
    A net had been tied between two poles in one corner of the courtyard; she got on one side of the net and I got on the other side. She hit the shuttle—it rose up, and then fell near my foot.
    “Hey! Move! Hit it back!”
    “Sorry, madam. I’m so sorry.”
    I’d never played this game before. I hit the shuttle back to her, and it went straight into the net.
    “Oh, you’re useless . Where is that other driver?”
    Ram Persad dashed up to the net at once. He had been watching the game all the time from the side. He knew exactly how to play badminton.
    I watched him hit the shuttle cleanly over the net and match her shot for shot, and my belly burned.
    Is there any hatred on earth like the hatred of the number two servant for the number one?
    Though we slept in the same room, just a few feet apart, we never said a word to each other—never a Hello, or How’s your mother doing, nothing. I could feel heat radiate out from him all night—I knew he was cursing me and putting spells on me in his sleep. See, he began every day by bowing in front of at least twenty pictures of various gods he kept in his side of the room, and saying, “Om, om, om.” As he did this, he looked at me through the corner of his eye, as if to say, Don’t you pray? What are you, a Naxal?
    One evening I went to the market and bought two dozen of the cheapest idols of Hanuman and Ram I could find and brought them back and packed them into the room. So both of us now had the same number of gods in the room; and we drowned out each other’s prayers in the morning while bowing before our respective deities.
    The Nepali was hand in hand with Ram Persad. One day he burst into my room and put a big plastic bucket down on the floor with a thud.
    “Do you like dogs, village boy?” he asked with a big smile.
    There were two white Pomeranians in the house—Cuddles and Puddles. The rich expect their dogs to be treated like humans, you see—they expect their dogs to be pampered, and walked, and petted, and even washed! And guess who had to do the washing? I got down on my knees and began scrubbing the dogs, and then lathering them, and foaming them, and then washing them down, and taking a blow dryer and drying their skin. Then I took them around the compound on a chain while the king of Nepal sat in a corner and shouted, “Don’t pull the chain so hard! They’re worth more than you are!”
    By the time I was done with Puddles and Cuddles, I walked back, sniffing my hands—the only thing that can take the smell of dog skin off a servant’s hands is the smell of his master’s skin.
    Mr. Ashok was standing outside my room.
    I ran up to him and bowed low. He went into the room; I followed, still crouched over. He bent low to make his way through the doorway—the doorway was built for undernourished servants, not for a tall, well-fed master like him. He looked at the ceiling dubiously.
    “How awful,” he said.
    Until then I had never noticed how the paint on the ceiling was peeling off in large flakes, and how there were spiderwebs in every corner. I had been so happy in this room until now.
    “Why is there such a smell? Open the windows.”
    He sat down on Ram Persad’s bed and poked it with his fingertips. It felt hard. I immediately stopped being jealous of Ram Persad.
    (And so I saw the room with his eyes; smelled it with his nose; poked it with his fingers—I had already begun to digest my master!)
    He looked in my direction, but avoided my gaze, as if he were guilty about something.
    “You and Ram Persad will both get a better room to sleep in. And separate beds. And some privacy.”
    “Please don’t do that, sir. This place is like a palace for us.”
    That made him feel better. He looked at me.
    “You’re from Laxmangarh, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I was born in Laxmangarh. But I haven’t seen it since. Were you born there too?”
    “Yes, sir. Born and raised there.”
    “What’s it like?”
    Before I could answer, he said, “It must be so nice.”
    “Like paradise, sir.”
    He looked me up and down, from head to toe, the way I had been looking at him ever since I had come to the house.
    His eyes seemed full of wonder: how could two such contrasting specimens of humanity be produced by the same soil, sunlight, and water?
    “Well, I want to go there