The White Tiger

This is India, not America. There's always a way out here

A rich man’s body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. Ours are different. My father’s spine was a knotted rope, the kind that women use in villages to pull water from wells; the clavicle curved around his neck in high relief, like a dog’s collar; cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist, reaching down below his hip‍

reached into my pockets, searched for a rupee coin, checked to make sure it wasn’t a two-rupee coin, and rolled it towards the bucket.

The coop is guarded from the inside.

Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters, or entrepreneurs.

Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love – or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?

Try it: leave a black bag with a million dollars in a Mumbai taxi. The taxi driver will call the police and return the money by the day’s end. I guarantee it. (Whether the police will give it to you or not is another story, sir!)

In that case, will anyone miss her…?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. You know how those people in the Darkness are: they have eight, nine, ten children – sometimes they don’t know the names of their own children. Her parents –

Even as I was walking inside the mall, I was sure someone would say, Hey! That man is a paid driver! What’s he doing in here? There were guards in grey uniforms on every floor – all of them seemed to be watching me. It was my first taste of the fugitive’s life.

Free people don’t know the value of freedom, that’s the problem.