How so? I looked at the creature in the mirror.

See-Mr. Ashok is giving money to all these politicians in Delhi so that they will excuse him from the tax he has to pay. And who owns that tax, in the end? Who but the ordinary people of this country-you!

"What is it, Balram? Did you say something?"

I tapped the mirror. My mustache rose into view again, and the eyes disappeared, and it was only my own face staring at me now.

"This fellow in front of me is driving rashly, sir. I was just grumbling."

"Keep your cool, Balram. You're a good driver, don't let the bad ones get to you."

The city knew my secret. One morning, the President's House was covered in smog and blotted out from the road; it seemed as though there were no government in Delhi that day. And the dense pollution that was hiding the prime minister and all his ministers and bureaucrats said to me:

They won't see a thing you do. I'll make sure of that.

I drove past the red wall of Parliament House. A guard with a gun was watching me from a lookout post on the red wall-he put his gun down the moment he saw me.

Why would I stop you? I'd do the same, if I could.

At night a woman walked with a cellophane bag; my headlights shone into the bag and turned the cellophane transparent. I saw four large dark fruits inside the bag-and each dark fruit said, You've already done it. In your heart you've already taken it. Then the headlights passed; the cellophane turned opaque; the four dark fruits vanished.

Even the road-the smooth, polished road of Delhi that is the finest in all of India -knew my secret.

One day at a traffic signal, the driver of the car next to me lowered the window and spat out: he had been chewing paan, and a vivid red puddle of expectorate splashed on the hot midday road and festered there like a living thing, spreading and sizzling. A second later, he spat again-and now there was a second puddle on the road. I stared at the two puddles of red, spreading spit-and then:

I turned my face away from the red puddles. I looked at the red bag sitting in the center of my rearview mirror, like the exposed heart of the Honda City.

That day I dropped Mr. Ashok off at the Imperial Hotel, and he said, "I'll be back in twenty minutes, Balram."

Instead of parking the car, I drove to the train station, which is in Pahar Ganj, not far from the hotel.

People were lying on the floor of the station. Dogs were sniffing at the garbage. The air was moldy. So this is what it will be like, I thought.

The destinations of all the trains were up on a blackboard.

Benaras

Jammu

Amritsar

Mumbai

Ranchi

What would be my destination, if I were to come here with a red bag in my hand?

As if in answer, shining wheels and bright lights began flashing in the darkness.

Now, if you visit any train station in India, you will see, as you stand waiting for your train, a row of bizarre-looking machines with red lightbulbs, kaleidoscopic wheels, and whirling yellow circles. These are your-fortune-and-weight-for-one-rupee machines that stand on every rail platform in the country.

They work like this. You put your bags down to the side. You stand on them. Then you insert a one-rupee coin into the slot.

The machine comes to life; levers start to move inside, things go clankety-clank, and the lights flash like crazy. Then there is a loud noise, and a small stiff chit of cardboard colored either green or yellow will pop out of the machine. The lights and noise calm down. On this chit will be written your fortune, and your weight in kilograms.

Two kinds of people use these machines: the children of the rich, or the fully grown adults of the poorer class, who remain all their lives children.

I stood gazing at the machines, like a man without a mind. Six glowing machines were shining at me: lightbulbs of green and yellow and kaleidoscopes of gold and black that were turning around and around.

I got up on one of the machines. I sacrificed a rupee-it gobbled the coin, made noise, gave off more lights, and released a chit.

LUNNA SCALES CO.

NEW DELHI 110 055

YOUR WEIGHT

59

"Respect for the law is the first command of the gods."

I let the fortune-telling chit fall on the floor and I laughed.

Even here, in the weight machine of a train station, they try to hoodwink us. Here, on the threshold of a man's freedom, just before he boards a train to a new life, these flashing fortune machines are the final alarm bell of the Rooster Coop.

The sirens of the coop were ringing-its wheels turning-its red lights flashing! A rooster was escaping from the coop! A hand was thrust out-I was picked up by the neck and shoved back into the coop.

I picked the chit up and reread it.

My heart began to sweat. I sat down on the floor.

Think, Balram. Think of what the Buffalo did to his servant's family.

Above me I heard wings thrashing. Pigeons were sitting on the roof beams all around the station; two of them had flown from a beam and began wheeling directly over my head, as if in slow motion-pulled into their breasts, I saw two sets of red claws.

Not far from me I saw a woman lying on the floor, with nice full breasts inside a tight blouse. She was snoring. I could see a one-rupee note stuffed into her cleavage, its lettering and color visible through the weave of her bright green blouse. She had no luggage. That was all she had in the world. One rupee. And yet look at her-snoring blissfully, without a care in the world.

Why couldn't things be so simple for me?

A low growling noise made me turn. A black dog was turning in circles behind me. A pink patch of skin-an open wound-glistened on its left butt; and the dog had twisted on itself in an attempt to gnaw at the wound. The wound was just out of reach of its teeth, but the dog was going crazy from pain-trying to attack the wound with its slavering mouth, it kept moving in mad, precise, pointless circles.

I looked at the sleeping woman-at her heaving breasts. Behind me the growling went on and on.

That Sunday, I took Mr. Ashok's permission, saying I wanted to go to a temple, and went into the city. I took a bus down to Qutub, and from there a jeep-taxi down to G.B. Road.

This, Mr. Premier, is the famous "red-light district" (as they say in English) of Delhi.

An hour here would clear all the evil thoughts out of my head. When you retain semen in your lower body, it leads to evil movements in the fluids of your upper body. In the Darkness we know this to be a fact.

It was just five o'clock and still light, but the women were waiting for me, as they wait for all men, at all times of the day.

Now, I've been to these streets before-as I've confessed to you-but this time was different. I heard them above me-the women-jeering and taunting from the grilled windows of the brothels-but this time I couldn't bear to look up at them.

A paan-maker sat on a wooden stall outside the gaudy blue door of a brothel, using a knife to spread spices on moist leaves that he had picked out of a bowl of water, which is the first step in the preparation of paan; in the small square space below his stall sat another man, boiling milk in a vessel over the hissing blue flame of a gas stove.

"What's the matter with you? Look at the women."

The pimp, a small man with a big nose covered in red warts, had caught me by the wrist.

"You look like you can afford a foreign girl. Take a Nepali girl. Aren't they beauties? Look up at them, son!"

He took my chin-maybe he thought I was a shy virgin, out on my first expedition here-and forced me to look up.

The Nepalis up there, behind the barred window, were really good-looking: very light-skinned and with those Chinese eyes that just drive us Indian men mad. I shook the pimp's hand off my face.