…And that was how, Your Excellency, my employer’s marriage came to an end.
Other drivers have techniques to prolong the marriages of their masters. One of them told me that whenever the fighting got worse he drove fast, so they would get home quickly; whenever they got romantic he let the car slow down. If they were shouting at each other he asked them for directions; if they were kissing he turned the music up. I feel some part of the responsibility falls on me, that their marriage broke up while I was the driver.
----
(This little rectangular mirror inside that car, Mr. Jiabao – has no one ever noticed before how embarrassing it is? How, every now and then, when master and driver find each other’s eyes in this mirror, it swings open like a door into a changing room, and the two of them have suddenly caught each other naked?)
----
Keep you ears open in Bangalore – in any city or town in India – and you will hear stirrings, rumours, threats of insurrection. Men sit under lampposts at night and read. Men huddle together and discuss and point fingers to the heavens. One night, will they all join together – will they destroy the Rooster Coop?
Ha!
Maybe once in a hundred years there is a revolution that frees the poor. I read this in one of those old textbook pages people in tea stalls used to wrap greasy samosas with. See, only four men in history have led successful revolutions to free the slaves and kill their masters, this page said:
Alexander the Great.
Abraham Lincoln of America.
Mao of your country.
And a fourth man. It may have been Hitler, I can’t remember. But I don’t think a fifth name is getting added to the list anytime soon.
An Indian revolution?
No, sir. It won’t happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else – from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own Beneras.
The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out and read.
Instead of which, they’re all sitting in front of colour TVs and watching cricket and shampoo advertisements.
----
Other drivers have techniques to prolong the marriages of their masters. One of them told me that whenever the fighting got worse he drove fast, so they would get home quickly; whenever they got romantic he let the car slow down. If they were shouting at each other he asked them for directions; if they were kissing he turned the music up. I feel some part of the responsibility falls on me, that their marriage broke up while I was the driver.
----
(This little rectangular mirror inside that car, Mr. Jiabao – has no one ever noticed before how embarrassing it is? How, every now and then, when master and driver find each other’s eyes in this mirror, it swings open like a door into a changing room, and the two of them have suddenly caught each other naked?)
----
Keep you ears open in Bangalore – in any city or town in India – and you will hear stirrings, rumours, threats of insurrection. Men sit under lampposts at night and read. Men huddle together and discuss and point fingers to the heavens. One night, will they all join together – will they destroy the Rooster Coop?
Ha!
Maybe once in a hundred years there is a revolution that frees the poor. I read this in one of those old textbook pages people in tea stalls used to wrap greasy samosas with. See, only four men in history have led successful revolutions to free the slaves and kill their masters, this page said:
Alexander the Great.
Abraham Lincoln of America.
Mao of your country.
And a fourth man. It may have been Hitler, I can’t remember. But I don’t think a fifth name is getting added to the list anytime soon.
An Indian revolution?
No, sir. It won’t happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else – from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. Every man must make his own Beneras.
The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out and read.
Instead of which, they’re all sitting in front of colour TVs and watching cricket and shampoo advertisements.
----
nice blog
ReplyDeletegood work
loved the book...for the sheer simplicity and never seen before metaphors...
Thanks Ankit.
ReplyDeleteI loved the book too, for that, for its solid storyline and for how Aravind Adiga has so effortlessly, yet precisely, brought home the point of the book (a practical one at that).
Its good food for thought.