The White Tiger

meet such schedules, we have to drive recklessly; we have to keep hitting and hurting people on the roads. It’s a problem every taxi operator in this city faces. Don’t blame me.
    “Don’t worry about it, Asif,” I said. The boy looked so devastated.
    I’ve come to respect Muslims, sir. They’re not the brightest lot, except for those four poet fellows, but they make good drivers, and they’re honest people, by and large, although a few of them seem to get this urge to blow trains up every year. I wasn’t going to fire Asif over this.
    But I did ask him to find out the address of the boy, the one we had killed.
    He stared at me.
    “Why go, sir? We don’t have to fear anything from the parents. Please don’t do this.”
    I made him find the address and I made him give it to me.
    I took cash out of my locker in crisp new one-hundred-rupee notes; I put them in a brown envelope. I got into a car and drove myself to the place.
    The mother was the one who opened the door. She asked me what I wanted, and I said, “I am the owner of the taxi company.”
    I didn’t have to tell her which one.
    She brought me a cup of coffee in a cup set in a metal tumbler. They have exquisite manners, these South Indians.
    I poured the coffee into the tumbler, and sipped the correct way.
    There was a photo of a young man, with a large jasmine garland around it, up on the wall.
    I said nothing until I finished the coffee. Then I put the brown envelope on the table.
    An old man had come into the room now, and he stood staring at me.
    “First of all, I want to express my deep sorrow at the death of your son. Having lost relatives myself—so many of them—I know the pain that you have suffered. He should not have died.”
    “Second, the fault is mine. Not the driver’s. The police have let me off. That is the way of this jungle we live in. But I accept my responsibility. I ask for your forgiveness.”
    I pointed to the brown envelope lying on the table.
    “There are twenty-five thousand rupees in here. I don’t give it to you because I have to, but because I want to. Do you understand?”
    The old woman would not take the money.
    But the old man, the father, was eyeing the envelope. “At least you were man enough to come,” he said.
    “I want to help your other son,” I said. “He is a brave boy. He stood up to the police the other night. He can come and be a driver with me if you want. I will take care of him if you want.”
    The woman clenched her face and shook her head. Tears poured out of her eyes. It was understandable. She might have had the hopes for that boy that my mother had for me. But the father was amenable; men are more reasonable in such matters.
    I thanked him for the coffee, bowed respectfully before the bereaved mother, and left.
    Mohammad Asif was waiting for me at the office when I got back. He shook his head and said, “Why? Why did you waste so much money?”
    That’s when I thought, Maybe I’ve made a mistake . Maybe Asif will tell the other drivers I was frightened of the old woman, and they will think they can cheat me. It makes me nervous. I don’t like showing weakness in front of my employees. I know what that leads to.
    But I had to do something different; don’t you see? I can’t live the way the Wild Boar and the Buffalo and the Raven lived, and probably still live, back in Laxmangarh.
    I am in the Light now.
     
    Now, what happens in your typical Murder Weekly story—or Hindi film, for that matter? A poor man kills a rich man. Good. Then he takes the money. Good. But then he gets dreams in which the dead man pursues him with bloody fingers, saying, Mur-der-er, mur-der-er.
    Doesn’t happen like that in real life. Trust me. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stopped going to Hindi films.
    There was just that one night when Granny came chasing me on a water buffalo, but it never happened again.
    The real nightmare you get is the other kind. You toss about in the bed dreaming that you haven’t done it—that you lost your nerve and let Mr. Ashok get away—that you’re still in Delhi, still the servant of another man, and then you wake up.
    The sweating stops. The heartbeat slows.
    You did it! You killed him!
    About three months after I came to Bangalore, I went to a temple and performed last rites there for all of them: Kusum, Kishan, and all my aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces. I even said a prayer for the water buffalo. Who knows who has lived and who has not? And then I said