The White Tiger

country—the prime minister, the president, top ministers and bureaucrats—were discussing things, and writing them out, and stamping papers. Someone was saying—“There, five hundred million rupees for that dam!”—and someone was saying—“Fine, attack Pakistan, then!”
    I wanted to run around shouting: “Balram is here too! Balram is here too!”
    I got back into the car to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid and get arrested for it.
    It was getting dark when the two brothers came out of the building; a fat man walked out with them, and talked to them for a while, outside the car, and then shook their hands and waved goodbye to us.
    Mr. Ashok was dark and sullen when he got in. The Mongoose asked me to drive them back home—“without making any mistakes again, understand?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    They sat in silence, which confused me. If I had just gone into the President’s House, I’d roll down the windows and shout it aloud to everyone on the road!
    “Look at that.”
    “What?”
    “That statue.”
    I looked out the window to see a large bronze statue of a group of men—this is a well-known statue, which you will no doubt see in Delhi: at the head is Mahatma Gandhi, with his walking stick, and behind him follow the people of India, being led from darkness to light.
    The Mongoose squinted at the statue.
    “What about it? I’ve seen it before.”
    “We’re driving past Gandhi, after just having given a bribe to a minister. It’s a fucking joke , isn’t it.”
    “You sound like your wife now,” the Mongoose said. “I don’t like swearing—it’s not part of our traditions here.”
    But Mr. Ashok was too red in the face to keep quiet.
    “It is a fucking joke —our political system—and I’ll keep saying it as long as I like.”
    “Things are complicated in India, Ashok. It’s not like in America. Please reserve your judgment.”
     
    There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble—we’d move a foot—hope would rise—then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we’d be stuck again. Everyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck—the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution.
    A man driving a buffalo cart had stopped in front of us; a pile of empty car engine oil cans fifteen feet high had been tied by rope to his cart. His poor water buffalo! To carry all that load—while sucking in this air!
    The autorickshaw driver next to me began to cough violently—he turned to the side and spat, three times in a row. Some of the spit flecked the side of the Honda City. I glared—I raised my fist. He cringed, and namasted me in apology.
    “It’s like we’re in a concert of spitting!” Mr. Ashok said, looking at the autorickshaw driver.
    Well, if you were out there breathing that acid air, you’d be spitting like him too, I thought.
    The cars moved again—we gained three feet—then the red lights flashed and everything stopped again.
    “In Beijing apparently they’ve got a dozen ring roads. Here we have one. No wonder we keep getting jams. Nothing is planned. How will we ever catch up with the Chinese?”
    (By the way, Mr. Jiabao—a dozen ring roads? Wow.)
    Dim streetlights were glowing down onto the pavement on either side of the traffic; and in that orange-hued half-light, I could see multitudes of small, thin, grimy people squatting, waiting for a bus to take them somewhere, or with nowhere to go and about to unfurl a mattress and sleep right there. These poor bastards had come from the darkness to Delhi to find some light—but they were still in the darkness. Hundreds of them, there seemed to be, on either side of the traffic, and their life was entirely unaffected by the jam. Were they even aware that there was a jam? We were like two separate cities—inside and outside the dark egg. I knew I was in the right city. But my father, if he were alive, would be sitting on that pavement, cooking some rice gruel for dinner, and getting ready to lie down and sleep under a streetlamp, and I couldn’t stop