Read The White Tiger for Free Online

being praised by the school inspector in front of my teacher and fellow students, being called a “White Tiger,” being given a book, and being promised a scholarship: all this constituted good news, and the one infallible law of life in the Darkness is that good news becomes bad news—and soon.
    My cousin-sister Reena got hitched off to a boy in the next village. Because we were the girl’s family, we were screwed. We had to give the boy a new bicycle, and cash, and a silver bracelet, and arrange for a big wedding—which we did. Mr. Premier, you probably know how we Indians enjoy our weddings—I gather that these days people come from other countries to get married Indian-style. Oh, we could have taught those foreigners a thing or two, I tell you! Film songs blasting out from a black tape recorder, and drinking and dancing all night! I got smashed, and so did Kishan, and so did everyone in the family, and for all I know, they probably poured hooch into the water buffalo’s trough.
    Two or three days passed. I was in my classroom, sitting at the back, with the black slate and chalk that my father had brought me from one of his trips to Dhanbad, working on the alphabet on my own. The boys were chatting or fighting. The teacher had passed out.
    Kishan was standing in the doorway of the classroom. He gestured with his fingers.
    “What is it, Kishan? Are we going somewhere?”
    Still he said nothing.
    “Should I bring my book along? And my chalk?”
    “Why not?” he said. And then, with his hand on my head, he led me out.
    The family had taken a big loan from the Stork so they could have a lavish wedding and a lavish dowry for my cousin-sister. Now the Stork had called in his loan. He wanted all the members of the family working for him and he had seen me in school, or his collector had. So they had to hand me over too.
    I was taken to the tea shop. Kishan folded his hands and bowed to the shopkeeper. I bowed to the shopkeeper too.
    “Who’s this?” The shopkeeper squinted at me.
    He was sitting under a huge portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, and I knew already that I was going to be in big trouble.
    “My brother,” Kishan said. “He’s come to join me.”
    Then Kishan dragged the oven out from the tea shop and told me to sit down. I sat down next to him. He brought a gunnysack; inside was a huge pile of coals. He took out a coal, smashed it on a brick, and then poured the black chunks into the oven.
    “Harder,” he said, when I hit the coal against the brick. “Harder, harder.”
    Finally I got it right—I broke the coal against the brick. He got up and said, “Now break every last coal in this bag like that.”
    A little later, two boys came around from school to watch me. Then two more boys came; then two more. I heard giggling.
    “What is the creature that comes along only once in a generation?” one boy asked loudly.
    “The coal breaker,” another replied.
    And then all of them began to laugh.
    “Ignore them,” Kishan said. “They’ll go away on their own.”
    He looked at me.
    “You’re angry with me for taking you out of school, aren’t you?”
    I said nothing.
    “You hate the idea of having to break coals, don’t you?”
    I said nothing.
    He took the largest piece of coal in his hand and squeezed it. “Imagine that each coal is my skull: they will get much easier to break.”
    He’d been taken out of school too. That happened after my cousin-sister Meera’s wedding. That had been a big affair too.
     
    Working in a tea shop. Smashing coals. Wiping tables. Bad news for me, you say?
    To break the law of his land—to turn bad news into good news—is the entrepreneur’s prerogative.
    Tomorrow, Mr. Jiabao, starting again at midnight I’ll tell you how I gave myself a better education at the tea shop than I could have got at any school. Right now, though, it’s time for me to stop staring at this chandelier and get to work. It is almost three in the morning. This is when Bangalore comes to