The White Tiger

thinking of that and recognizing his features in some beggar out there. So I was in some way out of the car too, even while I was driving it.
    After an hour of thrashing through the traffic, we got home at last to Buckingham B Block. But the torture wasn’t over.
    As he was getting out of the car, the Mongoose tapped his pockets, looked confused for a moment, and said, “I’ve lost a rupee.”
    He snapped his fingers at me.
    “Get down on your knees. Look for it on the floor of the car.”
    I got down on my knees. I sniffed in between the mats like a dog, all in search of that one rupee.
    “What do you mean, it’s not there? Don’t think you can steal from us just because you’re in the city. I want that rupee.”
    “We’ve just paid half a million rupees in a bribe, Mukesh, and now we’re screwing this man over for a single rupee. Let’s go up and have a scotch.”
    “That’s how you corrupt servants. It starts with one rupee. Don’t bring your American ways here.”
    Where that rupee coin went remains a mystery to me to this day, Mr. Premier. Finally, I took a rupee coin out of my shirt pocket, dropped it on the floor of the car, picked it up, and gave it to the Mongoose.
    “Here it is, sir. Forgive me for taking so long to find it!”
    There was a childish delight on his dark master’s face. He put the rupee coin in his hand and sucked his teeth, as if it were the best thing that had happened to him all day.
    I took the elevator up with the brothers, to see if any work was to be done in the apartment.
    Pinky Madam was on the sofa watching TV; as soon as we got in, she said, “I’ve eaten already,” turned the TV off, and went into another room. The Mongoose said he didn’t want dinner, so Mr. Ashok would have to eat alone at the dinner table. He asked me to heat some of the vegetables in the fridge for him, and I went into the kitchen to do so.
    Casting a quick look back as I opened the fridge door, I saw that he was on the verge of tears.
     
    When you’re the driver, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation—and then, just when the masters are coming to the crucial part of their talk—it always happens.
    Some moron in a white jeep almost hits you while trying to overtake a car on the wrong side of the road. You swerve to the side, glare at the moron, curse him (silently)—and by the time you’re eavesdropping again, the conversation in the backseat has moved on…and you never know how that sentence ended.
    I knew something was wrong, but I hadn’t realized how bad the situation had become until the morning Mr. Ashok said to me, “Today you’ll drop Mukesh Sir at the railway station, Balram.”
    “Yes, sir.” I hesitated. I wanted to ask, Just him?
    Did that mean he was going back for good? Did that mean Pinky Madam had finally got rid of him with her door-slamming and tart remarks?
    At six o’clock, I waited with the car outside the entranceway. I drove the brothers to the railway station. Pinky Madam did not come along.
    I carried the Mongoose’s bags to the right carriage of the train, then went to a stall and bought a dosa, wrapped in paper, for him. That was what he always liked to eat on the train. But I unwrapped the dosa and removed the potatoes, flinging them onto the rail tracks, because potatoes made him fart, and he didn’t like that. A servant gets to know his master’s intestinal tract from end to end—from lips to anus.
    The Mongoose told me, “Wait. I have instructions for you.”
    I squatted in a corner of the railway carriage.
    “Balram, you’re not in the Darkness any longer.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “There is a law in Delhi.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You know those bronze statues of Gandhi and Nehru that are everywhere? The police have put cameras inside their eyes to watch for the cars. They see everything you do, understand that?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Then he frowned, as if wondering what else to say. He said, “The air conditioner should be turned off when you are on your own.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Music should not be played when you are on your own.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “At the end of each day you must give us a reading of the meter to make sure you haven’t been driving the car on your own.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The Mongoose turned to Mr. Ashok and touched him on the forearm. “Take some interest in this, Ashok Brother, you’ll have to check up on the driver when I’m gone.”
    But Mr. Ashok was playing with