The White Tiger

might throw up again, but the spasm passed.
    “Sometimes I wonder, Balram. I wonder what’s the point of living. I really wonder…”
    The point of living? My heart pounded. The point of your living is that if you die, who’s going to pay me three and a half thousand rupees a month?
    “You must believe in God, sir. You must go on. My granny says that if you believe in God, then good things will happen.”
    “That’s true, it’s true. We must believe,” he sobbed.
    “Once there was a man who stopped believing in God, and you know what happened?”
    “What?”
    “His buffalo died at once.”
    “I see.” He laughed. “I see.”
    “Yes, sir, it really happened. The next day he said, ‘God, I’m sorry, I believe in You,’ and guess what happened?”
    “His buffalo came back to life?”
    “Exactly!”
    He laughed again. I told him another story, and this made him laugh some more.
    Has there ever been a master-servant relationship like this one? He was so powerless, so lost, my heart just had to melt. Whatever anger I had against him for trying to pin Pinky Madam’s hit-and-run killing on me passed away that evening. That was her fault. Mr. Ashok had nothing to do with it. I forgave him entirely.
    I talked to him about the wisdom of my village—half repeating things I remembered Granny saying, and half making things up on the spot—and he nodded. It was a scene to put you in mind of that passage in the Bhagavad Gita, when our Lord Krishna—another of history’s famous chauffeurs—stops the chariot he is driving and gives his passenger some excellent advice on life and death. Like Krishna I philosophized—I joked—I even sang a song—all to make Mr. Ashok feel better.
    Baby, I thought, rubbing his back as he heaved and threw up one more time, you big, pathetic baby.
    I put my hand out and wiped the vomit from his lips, and cooed soothing words to him. It squeezed my heart to see him suffer like this—but where my genuine concern for him ended and where my self-interest began, I could not tell: no servant can ever tell what the motives of his heart are.
    Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love—or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?
    We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.
    The next day I went to a roadside temple in Gurgaon. I put a rupee before the two resident pairs of divine arses and prayed that Pinky Madam and Mr. Ashok should be reunited and given a long and happy life together in Delhi.
     
    A week passed like this, and then the Mongoose turned up from Dhanbad and Mr. Ashok and I went together to the station to collect him.
    The moment he arrived, everything changed for me. The intimacy was over between me and Mr. Ashok.
    Once again, I was only the driver. Once again, I was only the eavesdropper.
    “I spoke to her last night. She’s not coming back to India. Her parents are happy with her decision. This can end only one way.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Ashok. It’s okay. And don’t call her again. I’ll handle it from Dhanbad. If she makes any noise about wanting your money, I’ll just gently bring up that matter of the hit-and-run, see?”
    “It’s not the money I’m worried about, Mukesh—”
    “I know, I know.”
    The Mongoose put his hand on Mr. Ashok’s shoulder—just the way Kishan had put his hand on my shoulder so many times.
    We were driving past a slum: one of those series of makeshift tents where the workers at some construction site were living. The Mongoose was saying something, but Mr. Ashok wasn’t paying attention—he was looking out the window.
    My eyes obeyed his eyes. I saw the silhouettes of the slum dwellers close to one another inside the tents; you could make out one family—a husband, a wife, a child—all huddled around a stove inside one tent, lit up by a golden lamp. The intimacy seemed so complete—so crushingly complete. I understood what Mr. Ashok was going through.
    He lifted his hand—I prepared for his touch—but he wrapped it around the Mongoose’s shoulder.
    “When I was in America, I thought family was a burden, I don’t deny it. When you and Father tried to stop me from marrying Pinky because she wasn’t a Hindu I was furious with you, I don’t deny it. But without family, a man is nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had nothing but this driver in front of me for five nights. Now at last I have someone real by my side: you.”
    I went up to the apartment with them; the Mongoose