The White Tiger

Father. We will never catch up with China for this single reason.”
    First stop was in the city—at one of the usual banks. He took the red bag and went in, and I saw him inside the glass booth, pressing the buttons of the cash machine. When he came back, I could feel that the weight of the bag on the backseat had increased. We went from bank to bank, and the weight of the red bag grew. I felt its pressure increase on my lower back—as if I were taking Mr. Ashok and his bag not in a car, but the way my father would take a customer and his bag—in a rickshaw.
    Seven hundred thousand rupees.
    It was enough for a house. A motorbike. And a small shop. A new life.
    My seven hundred thousand rupees.
    “Now to the Sheraton, Balram.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    I turned the key—started the car, changed gear. We moved.
    “Play some Sting, Balram. Not too loud.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    I put the CD on. The voice of Sting came on. The car picked up speed. In a little while, we passed the famous bronze statue of Gandhi leading his followers from darkness to the light.
    Now the road emptied. The rain was coming down lightly. If we kept going this way, we would come to the hotel—the grandest of all in the capital of my country, the place where visiting heads of state, like yourself, always stay. But Delhi is a city where civilization can appear and disappear within five minutes. On either side of us right now there was just wilderness and rubbish.
    In the rearview mirror I saw him paying attention to nothing but his cell phone. A blue glow from the phone lit up his face. Without looking up, he asked me, “What’s wrong, Balram? Why has the car stopped?”
    I touched the magnetic stickers of the goddess Kali for luck, then opened the glove compartment. There it was—the broken bottle, with its claws of glass.
    “There’s something off with the wheel, sir. Just give me a couple of minutes.”
    Before I could even touch it, I swear, the door of the car opened. I was out in the drizzle.
    There was soggy black mud everywhere. Picking my way over mud and rainwater, I squatted near the left rear wheel, which was hidden from the road by the body of the car. There was a large clump of bushes to one side—and a stretch of wasteland beyond.
    You’ve never seen the road this empty. You’d swear it’s been arranged just for you.
    The only light inside the car was the blue glow from his cell phone. I rapped against his glass with a finger. He turned to me without lowering the window.
    I mouthed out the words, “There’s a problem, sir.”
    He did not lower the window; he did not step out. He was playing with his cell phone: punching the buttons and grinning. He must be sending a message to Ms. Uma.
    Pressed to the wet glass, my lips made a grin.
    He released the phone. I made a fist and thumped on his glass. He lowered the window with a look of displeasure. Sting’s soft voice came through the window.
    “What is it, Balram?”
    “Sir, will you step out, there is a problem.”
    “What problem?”
    His body just wouldn’t budge! It knew—the body knew—though the mind was too stupid to figure it out.
    “The wheel, sir. I’ll need your help. It’s stuck in the mud.”
    Just then headlights flashed on me: a car was coming down the road. My heart skipped a beat. But it just drove right past us, splashing muddy water at my feet.
    He put a hand on the door and was about to step out, but some instinct of self-preservation still held him back.
    “It’s raining, Balram. Do you think we should call for help?”
    He wriggled and moved away from the door.
    “Oh, no, sir. Trust me. Come out.”
    He was still wriggling—his body was moving as far from me as it could. I’m losing him, I thought, and this forced me to do something I knew I would hate myself for, even years later. I really didn’t want to do this—I really didn’t want him to think, even in the two or three minutes he had left to live, that I was that kind of driver—the one that resorts to blackmailing his master—but he had left me no option:
    “It’s been giving problems ever since that night we went to the hotel in Jangpura.”
    He looked up from the cell phone at once.
    “The one with the big T sign on it. You remember it, don’t you, sir? Ever since that night, sir, nothing has been the same with this car.”
    His lips parted, then closed. He’s thinking: Blackmail? Or an innocent reference to the past? Don’t give him time to settle.
    “Come out of the