"Look at that."

"What?"

"That statue."

I looked out the window to see a large bronze statue of a group of men-this is a well-known statue, which you will no doubt see in Delhi: at the head is Mahatma Gandhi, with his walking stick, and behind him follow the people of India, being led from darkness to light.

The Mongoose squinted at the statue.

"What about it? I've seen it before."

"We're driving past Gandhi, after just having given a bribe to a minister. It's a fucking joke, isn't it."

"You sound like your wife now," the Mongoose said. "I don't like swearing-it's not part of our traditions here."

But Mr. Ashok was too red in the face to keep quiet.

"It is a fucking joke-our political system-and I'll keep saying it as long as I like."

"Things are complicated in India, Ashok. It's not like in America. Please reserve your judgment."

There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble-we'd move a foot-hope would rise-then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we'd be stuck again. Everyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck-the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution.

A man driving a buffalo cart had stopped in front of us; a pile of empty car engine oil cans fifteen feet high had been tied by rope to his cart. His poor water buffalo! To carry all that load-while sucking in this air!

The autorickshaw driver next to me began to cough violently-he turned to the side and spat, three times in a row. Some of the spit flecked the side of the Honda City. I glared-I raised my fist. He cringed, and namasted me in apology.

"It's like we're in a concert of spitting!" Mr. Ashok said, looking at the autorickshaw driver.

Well, if you were out there breathing that acid air, you'd be spitting like him too, I thought.

The cars moved again-we gained three feet-then the red lights flashed and everything stopped again.

"In Beijing apparently they've got a dozen ring roads. Here we have one. No wonder we keep getting jams. Nothing is planned. How will we ever catch up with the Chinese?"

(By the way, Mr. Jiabao-a dozen ring roads? Wow.)

Dim streetlights were glowing down onto the pavement on either side of the traffic; and in that orange-hued half-light, I could 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. These poor bastards had come from the darkness to Delhi to find some light-but they were still in the darkness. Hundreds of them, there seemed to be, on either side of the traffic, and their life was entirely unaffected by the jam. Were they even aware that there was a jam? We were like two separate cities-inside and outside the dark egg. I knew I was in the right city. But my father, if he were alive, would be sitting on that pavement, cooking some rice gruel for dinner, and getting ready to lie down and sleep under a streetlamp, and I couldn't stop thinking of that and recognizing his features in some beggar out there. So I was in some way out of the car too, even while I was driving it.

After an hour of thrashing through the traffic, we got home at last to Buckingham B Block. But the torture wasn't over.

As he was getting out of the car, the Mongoose tapped his pockets, looked confused for a moment, and said, "I've lost a rupee."

He snapped his fingers at me.

"Get down on your knees. Look for it on the floor of the car."

I got down on my knees. I sniffed in between the mats like a dog, all in search of that one rupee.

"What do you mean, it's not there? Don't think you can steal from us just because you're in the city. I want that rupee."

"We've just paid half a million rupees in a bribe, Mukesh, and now we're screwing this man over for a single rupee. Let's go up and have a scotch."

"That's how you corrupt servants. It starts with one rupee. Don't bring your American ways here."

Where that rupee coin went remains a mystery to me to this day, Mr. Premier. Finally, I took a rupee coin out of my shirt pocket, dropped it on the floor of the car, picked it up, and gave it to the Mongoose.

"Here it is, sir. Forgive me for taking so long to find it!"

There was a childish delight on his dark master's face. He put the rupee coin in his hand and sucked his teeth, as if it were the best thing that had happened to him all day.

I took the elevator up with the brothers, to see if any work was to be done in the apartment.

Pinky Madam was on the sofa watching TV; as soon as we got in, she said, "I've eaten already," turned the TV off, and went into another room. The Mongoose said he didn't want dinner, so Mr. Ashok would have to eat alone at the dinner table. He asked me to heat some of the vegetables in the fridge for him, and I went into the kitchen to do so.

Casting a quick look back as I opened the fridge door, I saw that he was on the verge of tears.

When you're the driver, you never see the whole picture. Just flashes, glimpses, bits of conversation-and then, just when the masters are coming to the crucial part of their talk-it always happens.

Some moron in a white jeep almost hits you while trying to overtake a car on the wrong side of the road. You swerve to the side, glare at the moron, curse him (silently)-and by the time you're eavesdropping again, the conversation in the backseat has moved on…and you never know how that sentence ended.

I knew something was wrong, but I hadn't realized how bad the situation had become until the morning Mr. Ashok said to me, "Today you'll drop Mukesh Sir at the railway station, Balram."

"Yes, sir." I hesitated. I wanted to ask, Just him?

Did that mean he was going back for good? Did that mean Pinky Madam had finally got rid of him with her door-slamming and tart remarks?

At six o'clock, I waited with the car outside the entranceway. I drove the brothers to the railway station. Pinky Madam did not come along.

I carried the Mongoose's bags to the right carriage of the train, then went to a stall and bought a dosa, wrapped in paper, for him. That was what he always liked to eat on the train. But I unwrapped the dosa and removed the potatoes, flinging them onto the rail tracks, because potatoes made him fart, and he didn't like that. A servant gets to know his master's intestinal tract from end to end-from lips to anus.

The Mongoose told me, "Wait. I have instructions for you."

I squatted in a corner of the railway carriage.

"Balram, you're not in the Darkness any longer."

"Yes, sir."

"There is a law in Delhi."

"Yes, sir."

"You know those bronze statues of Gandhi and Nehru that are everywhere? The police have put cameras inside their eyes to watch for the cars. They see everything you do, understand that?"

"Yes, sir."

Then he frowned, as if wondering what else to say. He said, "The air conditioner should be turned off when you are on your own."

"Yes, sir."

"Music should not be played when you are on your own."

"Yes, sir."

"At the end of each day you must give us a reading of the meter to make sure you haven't been driving the car on your own."