The White Tiger

chair, walked over to where I was crouched, and got down on one knee. He sniffed the air.
    “Your breath smells of aniseed.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “People chew that to hide the alcohol on their breath. Have you been drinking?”
    “No, sir. My caste, we’re teetotalers.”
    He kept sniffing, coming closer all the time.
    I took in a big breath; held it in the pit of my belly; then I forced it out, in a belch, right to his face.
    “That’s disgusting, Balram,” he said with a look of horror. He stood up and took two steps back.
    “Sorry, sir.”
    “Get out!”
    I came out sweating.
    The next day, I drove him and Mr. Ashok to some minister’s or bureaucrat’s house in New Delhi; they went out with the red bag. Afterwards, I took them to a hotel, where they had lunch—I gave the hotel staff instructions: no potatoes in the food—then drove the Mongoose to the railway station.
    I put up with his usual threats and warnings—no A/C, no music, no wasting fuel, blah blah blah. I stood on the platform and watched as he ate his snack. When the train left, I danced around the platform and clapped my hands. Two homeless urchins were watching me, and they laughed—they clapped their hands too. One of them began singing a song from the latest Hindi film, and we danced together on the platform.
    Next morning, I was in the apartment, and Mr. Ashok was fiddling with the red bag and getting ready to leave, when the phone began to ring.
    I said, “I’ll take the bag down, sir. I’ll wait in the car.”
    He hesitated, then held the bag out in my direction. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
    I closed the door of the apartment. I walked to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited. It was a heavy bag, and I had to shift it about in my palm.
    The elevator had reached the fourth floor.
    I turned and looked at the view from the balcony of the thirteenth floor—the lights were shining from Gurgaon’s malls, even in broad daylight. A new mall had opened in the past week. Another one was under construction. The city was growing.
    The elevator was coming up fast. It was about to reach the eleventh floor.
    I turned and ran.
    Kicking the door of the fire escape open, hurrying down two flights of dark stairs, I clicked the red bag open.
    All at once, the entire stairwell filled up with dazzling light—the kind that only money can give out.
    Twenty-five minutes later, when Mr. Ashok came down, punching the buttons on his cell phone, he found the red bag waiting for him on his seat. I held up a shining silver disk as he closed the door.
    “Shall I play Sting for you, sir?”
    As we drove, I tried hard not to look at the red bag—it was torture for me, just like when Pinky Madam used to sit in short skirts.
    At a red light, I looked at the rearview mirror. I saw my thick mustache and my jaw. I touched the mirror. The angle of the image changed. Now I saw long beautiful eyebrows curving on either side of powerful, furrowed brow muscles; black eyes were shining below those tensed muscles. The eyes of a cat watching its prey.
    Go on, just look at the red bag, Balram—that’s not stealing, is it?
    I shook my head.
    And even if you were to steal it, Balram, it wouldn’t be stealing.
    How so? I looked at the creature in the mirror.
    See—Mr. Ashok is giving money to all these politicians in Delhi so that they will excuse him from the tax he has to pay. And who owns that tax, in the end? Who but the ordinary people of this country —you !
    “What is it, Balram? Did you say something?”
    I tapped the mirror. My mustache rose into view again, and the eyes disappeared, and it was only my own face staring at me now.
    “This fellow in front of me is driving rashly, sir. I was just grumbling.”
    “Keep your cool, Balram. You’re a good driver, don’t let the bad ones get to you.”
    The city knew my secret. One morning, the President’s House was covered in smog and blotted out from the road; it seemed as though there were no government in Delhi that day. And the dense pollution that was hiding the prime minister and all his ministers and bureaucrats said to me:
    They won’t see a thing you do. I’ll make sure of that.
    I drove past the red wall of Parliament House. A guard with a gun was watching me from a lookout post on the red wall—he put his gun down the moment he saw me.
    Why would I stop you? I’d do the same, if I could.
    At night a woman walked with a cellophane bag; my headlights shone into the bag and turned