I went up to the apartment with them; the Mongoose wanted me to make a meal for them, and I made a daal and chapattis, and a dish of okra. I served them, and then I cleaned the utensils and plates.

During dinner, the Mongoose said, "If you're getting depressed, Ashok, why don't you try yoga and meditation? There's a yoga master on TV, and he's very good-this is what he does every morning on his program." He closed his eyes, breathed in, and then exhaled slowly, saying, "Ooooooom."

When I came out of the kitchen, wiping my hands on the sides of my pants, the Mongoose said, "Wait."

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and dangled it with a big grin, as if it were a prize for me.

"You have a letter from your granny. What is her name?" He began to cut the letter open with a thick black finger.

"Kusum, sir."

"Remarkable woman," he said, and rubbed his forearms up and down.

I said, "Sir, don't bother yourself. I can read."

He cut the letter open. He began reading it aloud.

Mr. Ashok spoke in English-and I guessed what he said: "Doesn't he have the right to read his own letters?"

And his brother replied in English, and again I guessed, rather than understood, his meaning: "He won't mind a thing like this. He has no sense of privacy. In the villages there are no separate rooms so they just lie together at night and fuck like that. Trust me, he doesn't mind."

He turned so that the light was behind him and began to read aloud:

"Dear grandson. This is being written by Mr. Krishna, the schoolteacher. He remembers you fondly and refers to you by your old nickname, the White Tiger. Life has become hard here. The rains have failed. Can you ask your employer for some money for your family? And remember to send the money home."

The Mongoose put the letter down.

"That's all these servants want. Money, money, money. They're called your servants, but they suck the lifeblood out of you, don't they?"

He continued reading the letter.

"With your brother Kishan I said, 'Now is the time,' and he did it-he married. With you, I do not order. You are different from all the others. You are deep, like your mother. Even as a boy you were so; when you would stop near the pond and stare at the Black Fort with your mouth open, in the morning, and evening, and night. So I do not order you to marry. But I tempt you with the joys of married life. It is good for the community. Every time there is a marriage there is more rain in the village. The water buffalo will get fatter. It will give more milk. These are known facts. We are all so proud of you, being in the city. But you must stop thinking only about yourself and think about us too. First you must visit us and eat my chicken curry. Your loving Granny. Kusum."

The Mongoose was about to give me the letter, but Mr. Ashok took it from him and read it again.

"Sometimes they express themselves so movingly, these villagers," he said, before flinging the letter on the table for me to pick up.

In the morning, I drove the Mongoose to the railway station, and got him his favorite snack, the dosa, once again, from which I removed the potatoes, flinging them on the tracks, before handing it over to him. I got down onto the platform and waited. He chomped on the dosa in his seat; down below on the tracks, a mouse nibbled on the discarded potatoes.

I drove back to the apartment block. I took the elevator to the thirteenth floor. The door was open.

"Sir!" I shouted, when I saw what was going on in the living room. "Sir, this is madness!"

He had put his feet in a plastic bucket and was massaging them himself.

"You should have told me, I would have massaged you!" I shouted, and reached down to his feet.

He shrieked. "No!"

I said, "Yes, sir, you must-I'm failing in my duty if I let you do it yourself!" and forced my hands into the dirty water in the bucket, and squeezed his feet.

"No!"

Mr. Ashok kicked the bucket, and the water spilled all over the floor.

"How stupid can you people get?" He pointed to the door. "Get out! Can you leave me alone for just five minutes in a day? Do you think you can manage that?"

That evening I had to drive him to the mall again. I stayed inside the car after he got out; I did not mix with any of the other drivers.

Even at night, the construction work goes on in Gurgaon-big lights shine down from towers, and dust rises from pits, scaffolding is being erected, and men and animals, both shaken from their sleep and bleary and insomniac, go around and around carrying concrete rubble or bricks.

A man from one of these construction sites was leading an ass; it wore a bright red saddle, and on this saddle were two metal troughs, filled to the brim with rubble. Behind this ass, two smaller ones, of the same color, were also saddled with metal troughs full of rubble. These smaller asses were walking slower, and the lead ass stopped often and turned to them, in a way that made you think it was their mother.

At once I knew what was troubling me.

I did not want to obey Kusum. She was blackmailing me; I understood why she had sent that letter through the Mongoose. If I refused, she would blow the whistle on me-tell Mr. Ashok I hadn't been sending money home.

Now, it had been a long time since I had dipped my beak into anything, sir, and the pressure had built up. The girl would be so young-seventeen or eighteen-and you know what girls taste like at that age, like watermelons. Any diseases, of body or mind, get cured when you penetrate a virgin. These are known facts. And then there was the dowry that Kusum would screw out of the girl's family. All that twenty-four-karat gold, all that cash fresh from the bank. At least some of it I'd keep for myself. All these were sound arguments in favor of marriage.

But on the other hand.

See, I was like that ass now. And all I would do, if I had children, was teach them to be asses like me, and carry rubble around for the rich.

I put my hands on the steering wheel, and my fingers tightened into a strangling grip.

The way I had rushed to press Mr. Ashok's feet, the moment I saw them, even though he hadn't asked me to! Why did I feel that I had to go close to his feet, touch them and press them and make them feel good-why? Because the desire to be a servant had been bred into me: hammered into my skull, nail after nail, and poured into my blood, the way sewage and industrial poison are poured into Mother Ganga.

I had a vision of a pale stiff foot pushing through a fire.

"No," I said.

I pulled my feet up onto the seat, got into the lotus position, and said, " Om," over and over again. How long I sat that evening in the car with my eyes closed and legs crossed like the Buddha I don't know, but the giggling and scratching noise made me open my eyes. All the other drivers had gathered around me-one of them was scratching the glass with his fingernails. Someone had seen me in the lotus position inside the locked car. They were gaping at me as if I were something in a zoo.

I scrambled out of the lotus position at once. I put a big grin on my face-I got out of the car to a volley of thumps and blows and shrieks of laughter, all of which I meekly accepted, while murmuring, "Just trying it out, yoga-they show it on TV all the time, don't they?"

The Rooster Coop was doing its work. Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters, or entrepreneurs.

Yes, that's the sad truth, Mr. Premier.

The coop is guarded from the inside.

Mr. Premier, you must excuse me-the phone is ringing. I'll be back in a minute.