The White Tiger (or the showcase of the Republic of India)

On Roads: All roads look the same, all of them go around and around grassy circles in which men are sleeping or eating or playing cards, and then four roads shoot off from that grassy circle and then you go down one road, and you hit another grassy circle where men are sleeping or playing cards, and then four more roads go off from it. So you just keep getting lost, and lost, and lost in Calcutta.

On Traffic: In a city of nearly 15 million, there are fierce jams on the road round-the-clock. Cars, scooters, motorbikes, black taxis, jostling for space on the road. Every five minutes the traffic trembles—you move a foot—hope rises—then the red lights flash on the cars ahead and you’re stuck again. Everyone honks. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blends into one continuous wail that sounds like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes fill the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glow in front of every headlight; the exhaust grows so fat and thick it cannot rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around you. The pollution is so bad the the men on the motorbikes and scooters have a handkerchief wrapped around their faces—each time you stop at a red light, you see a row of men with black glasses and masks on their faces, as if the whole city were out on a bank heist that morning. They say the air is so bad in Calcutta that it takes ten years off a man’s life.  Matches are continuously being struck—the drivers of buses, taxis, autorickshaws light cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution. People take to spitting and coughing violently because of the acidic air.  Of course, those in the cars don’t have to breathe the outside air—it is just nice, cool, clean, air-conditioned air for them. With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like sealed vessels down the roads of Calcutta. Every now and then a vessel will crack open—a woman’s hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out of an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road—and then the window goes up, and the vessel is resealed. The cars move again—you gain three feet—then the red lights flash and everything stops again.

On Homelessness: Dim streetlights glow down onto the pavement on either side of traffic; and in that orange-hued half light, you can see multitudes of small, thin, grimy people squatting, waiting for a bus to take them somewhere, or with nowhere to go and about to unfurl a mattress and sleep right there. Hundreds of them, there seem to be, on either side of traffic, and their life is entirely unaffected by traffic jams. It’s as if there are two parallel universes, two separate cities: inside and outside the car. A slight turn to the left and there people sit, on the pavement, cooking some rice gruel for dinner and getting ready to lie down and sleep under a streetlamp. Thousands of people live on the sides of roads in Calcutta. Many of which have migrated in from small villages in pursuit of employment. Any Bengali can point them out—you can tell by their thin bodies, filthy faces, by the animal-like way they live under huge bridges and overpasses, making fires and washing and taking lice out of their hair while the cars roar past them.  They pose a particular danger to drivers, as they never wait for a red-light—5 year-old children simply dashing across the road on impulse.  During winter, the rich, to survive the winter, keep electrical heaters, or gas heaters, or even burn logs of wood int heir fireplaces. When the homeless, or servants like night watchmen and drivers who are forced to spend time outside in winter, want to keep warm, they burn whatever they find on the ground. On of the best tings to put in the fire is Cellophane, the kind used to wrap fruits, vegetables, and business books in: inside the flame, it changes it nature and melts into a clear fuel. The only problem is that while burning, it gives off a white smoke thatmakes your stomach churn.

On Servants: In India, the rich don’t have drivers, cooks, maids, barbers and tailors. They simply have servants. Anytime the driver is not driving the car, he must sweep the floor of the courtyard, make tea, clean cobwebs with a long broom, massage his master’s feet, or chase a cow out of the compound. At all times, he must make himself useful. And regarding housing, in India, every apartment block, every house, every hotel is built with servant’s quarters—sometimes at the back, and sometimes underground. Most often it is a warren of interconnected rooms where all the drivers, cooks, sweepers, and chefs of the apartment block can rest, sleep and wait. When masters want them, an electric bell rings throughout the quarters and servants rush to a board to find the red light flashing next to the number of the apartment whose servant is needed upstairs. There are common toilets, common sinks, and common bathrooms—all of which require a servant to wait his turn.

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