Excerpt of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
(Page 2 of 15)
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Only three nations have never let themselves be ruled by foreigners: China, Afghanistan, and Abyssinia. These are the only three nations I admire.
Out of respect for the love of liberty shown by the Chinese people, and also in the belief that the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse, I offer to tell you, free of charge, the truth about Bangalore.
By telling you my life's story.
See, when you come to Bangalore, and stop at a traffic light, some boy will run up to your car and knock on your window, while holding up a bootlegged copy of an American business book, wrapped carefully in cellophane and with a title like:
TEN SECRETS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS!
or
BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR IN SEVEN EASY DAYS!
Don't waste your money on those American books. They're so yesterday.
I am tomorrow.
In terms of formal education, I may be somewhat lacking. I never finished school, to put it bluntly. Who cares! I haven't read many books, but I've read all the ones that count. I know by heart the works of the four greatest poets of all time -- Rumi, Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib, and a fourth fellow whose name I forget. I am a self-taught entrepreneur.
That's the best kind there is, trust me.
When you have heard the story of how I got to Bangalore and became one of its most successful (though probably least known) businessmen, you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious twenty-first century of man.
The century, more specifically, of the yellow and the brown man.
You and me.
It is a little before midnight now, Mr. Jiabao. A good time for me to talk.
I stay up the whole night, Your Excellency. And there's no one else in this 150-square-foot office of mine. Just me and a chandelier above me, although the chandelier has a personality of its own. It's a huge thing, full of small diamond-shaped glass pieces, just like the ones they used to show in the films of the 1970s. Though it's cool enough at night in Bangalore, I've put a midget fan -- five cobwebby blades -- right above the chandelier. See, when it turns, the small blades chop up the chandelier's light and fling it across the room. Just like the strobe light at the best discos in Bangalore.
This is the only 150-square-foot space in Bangalore with its own chandelier! But it's still a hole in the wall, and I sit here the whole night.
The entrepreneur's curse. He has to watch his business all the time.
Now I'm going to turn the midget fan on, so that the chandelier's light spins around the room.
I am relaxed, sir. As I hope you are.
Let us begin.
Before we do that, sir, the phrase in English that I learned from my ex-employer the late Mr. Ashok's ex-wife Pinky Madam is:
What a fucking joke.
-- -- --
Now, I no longer watch Hindi films -- on principle -- but back in the days when I used to, just before the movie got started, either the number 786 would flash against the black screen -- the Muslims think this is a magic number that represents their god -- or else you would see the picture of a woman in a white sari with gold sovereigns dripping down to her feet, which is the goddess Lakshmi, of the Hindus.
It is an ancient and venerated custom of people in my country to start a story by praying to a Higher Power.
I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some god's arse.
Which god's arse, though? There are so many choices.
Copyright © 2008 by Aravind Adiga
