The White Tiger

directly over my head, as if in slow motion—pulled into their breasts, I saw two sets of red claws.
    Not far from me I saw a woman lying on the floor, with nice full breasts inside a tight blouse. She was snoring. I could see a one-rupee note stuffed into her cleavage, its lettering and color visible through the weave of her bright green blouse. She had no luggage. That was all she had in the world. One rupee. And yet look at her—snoring blissfully, without a care in the world.
    Why couldn’t things be so simple for me?
    A low growling noise made me turn. A black dog was turning in circles behind me. A pink patch of skin—an open wound—glistened on its left butt; and the dog had twisted on itself in an attempt to gnaw at the wound. The wound was just out of reach of its teeth, but the dog was going crazy from pain—trying to attack the wound with its slavering mouth, it kept moving in mad, precise, pointless circles.
    I looked at the sleeping woman—at her heaving breasts. Behind me the growling went on and on.
    That Sunday, I took Mr. Ashok’s permission, saying I wanted to go to a temple, and went into the city. I took a bus down to Qutub, and from there a jeep-taxi down to G.B. Road.
    This, Mr. Premier, is the famous “red-light district” (as they say in English) of Delhi.
    An hour here would clear all the evil thoughts out of my head. When you retain semen in your lower body, it leads to evil movements in the fluids of your upper body. In the Darkness we know this to be a fact.
    It was just five o’clock and still light, but the women were waiting for me, as they wait for all men, at all times of the day.
    Now, I’ve been to these streets before—as I’ve confessed to you—but this time was different. I heard them above me—the women—jeering and taunting from the grilled windows of the brothels—but this time I couldn’t bear to look up at them.
    A paan -maker sat on a wooden stall outside the gaudy blue door of a brothel, using a knife to spread spices on moist leaves that he had picked out of a bowl of water, which is the first step in the preparation of paan; in the small square space below his stall sat another man, boiling milk in a vessel over the hissing blue flame of a gas stove.
    “What’s the matter with you? Look at the women.”
    The pimp, a small man with a big nose covered in red warts, had caught me by the wrist.
    “You look like you can afford a foreign girl. Take a Nepali girl. Aren’t they beauties? Look up at them, son!”
    He took my chin—maybe he thought I was a shy virgin, out on my first expedition here—and forced me to look up.
    The Nepalis up there, behind the barred window, were really good-looking: very light-skinned and with those Chinese eyes that just drive us Indian men mad. I shook the pimp’s hand off my face.
    “Take any one! Take all! Aren’t you man enough, son?”
    Normally this would have been enough for me to burst into the brothel, hollering for blood.
    But sometimes what is most animal in a man may be the best thing in him. From my waist down, nothing stirred. They’re like parrots in a cage. It’ll be one animal fucking another animal.
    “Chew paan —it will help if you’re having trouble getting it up!” the seller of paan shouted from his stand. He held up a fresh, wet paan leaf, and shook it so the droplets splashed on my face.
    “Drink hot milk—it helps too!” shouted the small, shrunken man below him who was boiling the milk.
    I watched the milk. It seethed, and spilled down the sides of the stainless steel vessel; the small, shrunken man smiled—he provoked the boiling milk with a spoon—it became frothier and frothier, hissing with outrage.
    I charged into the paan -seller, pushing him off his perch, scattering his leaves, and spilling his water. I kicked the midget in his face. Screams broke out from above. The pimps rushed at me; shoving and kicking for dear life, I ran out of that street.
    Now, G.B. Road is in Old Delhi, about which I should say something. Remember, Mr. Premier, that Delhi is the capital of not one but two countries—two Indias. The Light and the Darkness both flow into Delhi. Gurgaon, where Mr. Ashok lived, is the bright, modern end of the city, and this place, Old Delhi, is the other end. Full of things the modern world forgot all about—rickshaws, old stone buildings, the Muslims. On a Sunday, though, there is something more: if you keep pushing through the crowd that is always there, go past