The White Tiger

caught. I think the Rooster Coop needs people like me to break out of it. It needs masters like Mr. Ashok—who, for all his numerous virtues, was not much of a master—to be weeded out, and exceptional servants like me to replace them. At such times, I gloat that Mr. Ashok’s family can put up a reward of a million dollars on my head, and it will not matter. I have switched sides: I am now one of those who cannot be caught in India. At such moments, I look up at this chandelier, and I just want to throw my hands up and holler, so loudly that my voice would carry over the phones in the call-center rooms all the way to the people in America:
    I’ve made it! I’ve broken out of the coop!
    But at other times someone in the street calls out, “Balram,” and I turn my head and think, I’ve given myself away.
    Getting caught—it’s always a possibility. There’s no end to things in India, as Mr. Ashok used to say. You can give the police all the brown envelopes and red bags you want, and they might still screw you. A man in a uniform may one day point a finger at me and say, Time’s up, Munna.
    Yet even if all my chandeliers come crashing down to the floor—even if they throw me in jail and have all the other prisoners dip their beaks into me—even if they make me walk the wooden stairs to the hangman’s noose—I’ll never say I made a mistake that night in Delhi when I slit my master’s throat.
    I’ll say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it means not to be a servant.
    I think I am ready to have children, Mr. Premier.
    Ha!
Yours forever,
Ashok Sharma
The White Tiger
Of Bangalore
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