The White Tiger

the cellophane transparent. I saw four large dark fruits inside the bag—and each dark fruit said, You’ve already done it. In your heart you’ve already taken it . Then the headlights passed; the cellophane turned opaque; the four dark fruits vanished.
    Even the road—the smooth, polished road of Delhi that is the finest in all of India—knew my secret.
    One day at a traffic signal, the driver of the car next to me lowered the window and spat out: he had been chewing paan, and a vivid red puddle of expectorate splashed on the hot midday road and festered there like a living thing, spreading and sizzling. A second later, he spat again—and now there was a second puddle on the road. I stared at the two puddles of red, spreading spit—and then:
The left-hand puddle of spit seemed to say:
 
But the right-hand puddle of spit seemed to say:
Your father wanted you to be an honest man.
 
Your father wanted you to be a man .
Mr. Ashok does not hit you or spit on you, like people did to your father.
 
Mr. Ashok made you take the blame when his wife killed that child on the road.
Mr. Ashok pays you well, 4,000 rupees a month. He has been raising your salary without your even asking.
 
This is a pittance. You live in a city. What do you save? Nothing.
Remember what the Buffalo did to his servant’s family. Mr. Ashok will ask his father to do the same to your family once you run away.
 
The very fact that Mr. Ashok threatens your family makes your blood boil!
    I turned my face away from the red puddles. I looked at the red bag sitting in the center of my rearview mirror, like the exposed heart of the Honda City.
    That day I dropped Mr. Ashok off at the Imperial Hotel, and he said, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, Balram.”
    Instead of parking the car, I drove to the train station, which is in Pahar Ganj, not far from the hotel.
    People were lying on the floor of the station. Dogs were sniffing at the garbage. The air was moldy. So this is what it will be like, I thought.
    The destinations of all the trains were up on a blackboard.
Benaras
Jammu
Amritsar
Mumbai
Ranchi
    What would be my destination, if I were to come here with a red bag in my hand?
    As if in answer, shining wheels and bright lights began flashing in the darkness.
    Now, if you visit any train station in India, you will see, as you stand waiting for your train, a row of bizarre-looking machines with red lightbulbs, kaleidoscopic wheels, and whirling yellow circles. These are your-fortune-and-weight-for-one-rupee machines that stand on every rail platform in the country.
    They work like this. You put your bags down to the side. You stand on them. Then you insert a one-rupee coin into the slot.
    The machine comes to life; levers start to move inside, things go clankety-clank, and the lights flash like crazy. Then there is a loud noise, and a small stiff chit of cardboard colored either green or yellow will pop out of the machine. The lights and noise calm down. On this chit will be written your fortune, and your weight in kilograms.
    Two kinds of people use these machines: the children of the rich, or the fully grown adults of the poorer class, who remain all their lives children.
    I stood gazing at the machines, like a man without a mind. Six glowing machines were shining at me: lightbulbs of green and yellow and kaleidoscopes of gold and black that were turning around and around.
    I got up on one of the machines. I sacrificed a rupee—it gobbled the coin, made noise, gave off more lights, and released a chit.
LUNNA SCALES CO.
NEW DELHI 110 055
     
YOUR WEIGHT
     
59
     
“Respect for the law is the first command of the gods.”
    I let the fortune-telling chit fall on the floor and I laughed.
    Even here, in the weight machine of a train station, they try to hoodwink us. Here, on the threshold of a man’s freedom, just before he boards a train to a new life, these flashing fortune machines are the final alarm bell of the Rooster Coop.
    The sirens of the coop were ringing—its wheels turning—its red lights flashing! A rooster was escaping from the coop! A hand was thrust out—I was picked up by the neck and shoved back into the coop.
    I picked the chit up and reread it.
    My heart began to sweat. I sat down on the floor.
    Think, Balram. Think of what the Buffalo did to his servant’s family.
    Above me I heard wings thrashing. Pigeons were sitting on the roof beams all around the station; two of them had flown from a beam and began wheeling