The White Tiger

before—he yelled at Kusum:
    “How many times have I told you: Munna must read and write!”
    Kusum was startled, but only for a moment. She yelled back:
    “This fellow came running back from school—don’t blame me! He’s a coward, and he eats too much. Put him to work in the tea shop and let him make some money.”
    My aunts and cousin-sisters gathered around her. I crawled behind my father’s back as they told him the story of my cowardice.
    Now, you may find it incredible that a boy in a village would be frightened of a lizard. Rats, snakes, monkeys, and mongooses don’t bother me at all. On the contrary—I love animals. But lizards…each time I see one, no matter how tiny, it’s as if I turn into a girl. My blood freezes.
    There was a giant cupboard in my classroom, whose door was always slightly ajar—no one knew what it was there for. One morning, the door creaked open, and a lizard jumped out.
    It was light green in color, like a half-ripe guava. Its tongue flicked in and out of its mouth. It was at least two feet long.
    The other boys barely noticed. Until someone saw my face. They gathered in a circle around me.
    Two of them pinned my hands behind my back and held my head still. Someone caught the thing in his hands, and began walking toward me with slow, exaggerated steps. Making no noise—only flicking its red tongue in and out of its mouth—the lizard came closer and closer to my face. The laughter grew louder. I couldn’t make a noise. The teacher was snoring at his desk behind me. The lizard’s face came right up to my face; and then it opened its light green mouth, and then I fainted for the second time in my life.
    I had not gone back to school since that day.
    My father did not laugh when he heard the story. He took a deep breath; I felt his chest expanding against me.
    “You let Kishan drop out of school, but I told you this fellow had to stay in school. His mother told me he’d be the one who made it through school. His mother said—”
    “Oh, to hell with his mother!” Kusum shouted. “She was a crazy one, and she’s dead, and thank goodness. Now listen to me: let the boy go to the tea shop like Kishan, that’s what I say.”
    The next day my father came with me to my school, for the first and last time. It was dawn; the place was empty. We pushed the door open. A dim blue light filled the classroom. Now, our schoolteacher was a big paan -and-spit man—and his expectorate made a sort of low, red wallpaper on three walls around us. When he went to sleep, which he usually did by noon, we stole paan from his pockets; distributed it amongst ourselves and chewed on it; and then, imitating his spitting style—hands on hips, back arched slightly—took turns spitting at the three dirty walls.
    A faded mural of the Lord Buddha surrounded by deer and squirrels decorated the fourth wall—it was the only wall that the teacher spared. The giant lizard the color of a half-ripe guava was sitting in front of this wall, pretending to be one of the animals at the feet of the Lord Buddha.
    It turned its head to us; I saw its eyes shine.
    “Is this the monster?”
    The lizard turned its head this way and that, looking for an exit. Then it began banging the wall. It was no different from me; it was terrified.
    “Don’t kill it, Daddy—just throw it out the window, please?”
    The teacher was lying in one corner of the room, reeking of booze, snoring soundly. Near him was the pot of toddy he had emptied the previous night—my father picked it up.
    The lizard ran, and he ran behind it, swinging the pot of toddy at it.
    “Don’t kill it, Daddy—please!”
    But he wouldn’t listen. He kicked the cupboard, and the lizard darted out, and he chased it again, smashing everything in his way, and yelling, “Heeyaa! Heeyaa!” He pounded it with the pot of toddy until the pot broke. He smashed its neck with his fist. He stamped on its head.
    The air became acrid: a stench of crushed flesh. He picked the dead lizard up and flung it out the door.
    My father sat panting against the mural of the Lord Buddha surrounded by the gentle animals.
    When he caught his breath, he said, “My whole life, I have been treated like a donkey. All I want is that one son of mine—at least one—should live like a man.”
    What it meant to live like a man was a mystery. I thought it meant being like Vijay, the bus conductor. The bus stopped for half an hour at Laxmangarh, and the passengers got off, and the