The White Tiger

the men cleaning the other men’s ears by poking rusty metal rods into them, past the men selling small fish trapped in green bottles full of brine, past the cheap shoe market and the cheap shirt market, you will come to the great secondhand book market of Darya Ganj.
    You may have heard of this market, sir, since it is one of the wonders of the world. Tens of thousands of dirty, rotting, blackened books on every subject—Technology, Medicine, Sexual Pleasure, Philosophy, Education, and Foreign Countries—heaped upon the pavement from Delhi Gate onwards all the way until you get to the market in front of the Red Fort. Some books are so old they crumble when you touch them; some have silverfish feasting on them—some look like they were retrieved from a flood, or from a fire. Most shops on the pavement are shuttered down; but the restaurants are still open, and the smell of fried food mingles with the smell of rotting paper. Rusting exhaust fans turn slowly in the ventilators of the restaurants like the wings of giant moths.
    I went amid the books and sucked in the air: it was like oxygen after the stench of the brothel.
    There was a thick crowd of book buyers fighting over the books with the sellers, and I pretended to be one of the buyers. I leapt into the books, picking them up, reading them like this, flip, flip, flip, until a bookseller shouted, “You going to buy it or read it for free?”
    “It’s no good,” I would say, and put the book down and go to the next bookseller, and pick up something he had, and flip flip flip. Never paying anyone a single rupee, flipping through books for free, I kept looting bookseller after bookseller all evening long!
    Some books were in Urdu, the language of the Muslims—which is all just scratches and dots, as if some crow dipped its feet in black ink and pressed them to the page. I was going through one such book when a bookseller said, “Can you read Urdu?”
    He was an old Muslim, with a pitch-black face that was bedewed with sweat, like a begonia leaf after the rains, and a long white beard.
    I said: “Can you read Urdu?”
    He opened the book, cleared his throat, and read, “ ‘You were looking for the key for years.’ Understood that?” He looked at me, wide furrows on his black forehead.
    “Yes, Muslim uncle.”
    “Shut up, you liar. And listen.”
    He cleared his throat again.
    “‘You were looking for the key for years/But the door was always open!’”
    He closed the book. “That’s called poetry. Now get lost.”
    “Please, Muslim uncle,” I begged. “I’m just a rickshaw-puller’s son from the Darkness. Tell me all about poetry. Who wrote the poem?”
    He shook his head, but I kept flattering him, telling him how fine his beard was, how fair his skin was (ha!), how it was obvious from his nose and forehead that he wasn’t some pigherd who had converted but a true-blue Muslim who had flown here on a magic carpet all the way from Mecca, and he grunted with satisfaction. He read me another poem, and another one—and he explained the true history of poetry, which is a kind of secret, a magic known only to wise men. Mr. Premier, I won’t be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of the pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years. That’s why, one day, some wise men, out of compassion for the poor, left them signs and symbols in poems, which appear to be about roses and pretty girls and things like that, but when understood correctly spill out secrets that allow the poorest man on earth to conclude the ten-thousand-year-old brain-war on terms favorable to himself. Now, the four greatest of these wise poets were Rumi, Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib, and another fellow whose name I was told but have forgotten.
    (Who was that fourth poet? It drives me crazy that I can’t recall his name. If you know it, send me an e-mail.)
    “Muslim uncle, I have another question for you.”
    “What do I look like? Your schoolteacher? Don’t keep asking me questions.”
    “The last one, I promise. Tell me, Muslim uncle, can a man make himself vanish with poetry?”
    “What do you mean—like vanish through black magic?” He looked at me. “Yes, that