The First Night
For the Desk of:
His Excellency Wen Jiabao
The Premierās Office
Beijing
Capital of the Freedom-loving Nation of China
From the Desk of:
āThe White Tigerā
A Thinking Man
And an Entrepreneur
Living in the worldās center of Technology and Outsourcing
Electronics City Phase 1 (just off Hosur Main Road)
Bangalore, India
Mr. Premier,
Sir.
Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.
My ex-employer the late Mr. Ashokās ex-wife, Pinky Madam, taught me one of these things; and at 11:32 p.m. today, which was about ten minutes ago, when the lady on All India Radio announced, āPremier Jiabao is coming to Bangalore next week,ā I said that thing at once.
In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it. Not that I have anything against great men. In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind. But whenever I see our prime minister and his distinguished sidekicks drive to the airport in black cars and get out and do namastes before you in front of a TV camera and tell you about how moral and saintly India is, I have to say that thing in English.
Now, you are visiting us this week, Your Excellency, arenāt you? All India Radio is usually reliable in these matters.
That was a joke, sir.
Ha!
Thatās why I want to ask you directly if you really are coming to Bangalore. Because if you are, I have something important to tell you. See, the lady on the radio said, āMr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore.ā
My blood froze. If anyone knows the truth about Bangalore, itās me.
Next, the lady announcer said, āMr. Jiabao wants to meet some Indian entrepreneurs and hear the story of their success from their own lips.ā
She explained a little. Apparently, sir, you Chinese are far ahead of us in every respect, except that you donāt have entrepreneurs. And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs. Thousands and thousands of them. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneursāwe entrepreneursāhave set up all these outsourcing companies that virtually run America now.
You hope to learn how to make a few Chinese entrepreneurs, thatās why youāre visiting. That made me feel good. But then it hit me that in keeping with international protocol, the prime minister and foreign minister of my country will meet you at the airport with garlands, small take-home sandalwood statues of Gandhi, and a booklet full of information about Indiaās past, present, and future.
Thatās when I had to say that thing in English, sir. Out loud.
That was at 11:37 p.m. Five minutes ago.
I donāt just swear and curse. Iām a man of action and change. I decided right there and then to start dictating a letter to you.
To begin with, let me tell you of my great admiration for the ancient nation of China.
I read about your history in a book, Exciting Tales of the Exotic East, that I found on the pavement, back in the days when I was trying to get some enlightenment by going through the Sunday secondhand book market in Old Delhi. This book was mostly about pirates and gold in Hong Kong, but it did have some useful background information too: it said that you Chinese are great lovers of freedom and individual liberty. The British tried to make you their servants, but you never let them do it. I admire that, Mr. Premier.
I was a servant once, you see.
Only three nations have never let themselves be ruled by foreigners: China, Afghanistan, and Abyssinia. These are the only three nations I admire.
Out of respect for the love of liberty shown by the Chinese people, and also in the belief that the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse, I offer to tell you, free of charge, the truth about Bangalore.
By telling you my lifeās story.
See, when you come to Bangalore, and stop at a traffic light, some boy will run up to your car and knock on your window, while holding up a bootlegged copy of an American business book, wrapped carefully in cellophane and with a title like:
TEN SECRETS OF BUSINESS SUCCESS!
or
BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR IN SEVEN EASY DAYS!
Donāt waste your money on those American books. Theyāre so yesterday.
I am tomorrow.
In terms of formal education, I may be somewhat lacking. I never finished school, to put it bluntly. Who cares! I havenāt read many books, but Iāve read all the ones that count. I know by heart the works of the four greatest poets of all timeāRumi, Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib, and a fourth fellow whose name I forget. I am a self-taught entrepreneur.
Thatās the best kind there is, trust me.
When you have heard the story of how I got to Bangalore and became one of its most successful (though probably least known) businessmen, you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious twenty-first century of man.
The century, more specifically, of the yellow and the brown man.
You and me.
It is a little before midnight now, Mr. Jiabao. A good time for me to talk.
I stay up the whole night, Your Excellency. And thereās no one else in this 150-square-foot office of mine. Just me and a chandelier above me, although the chandelier has a personality of its own. Itās a huge thing, full of small diamond-shaped glass pieces, just like the ones they used to show in the films of the 1970s. Though itās cool enough at night in Bangalore, Iāve put a midget fanāfive cobwebby bladesāright above the chandelier. See, when it turns, the small blades chop up the chandelierās light and fling it across the room. Just like the strobe light at the best discos in Bangalore.
This is the only 150-square-foot space in Bangalore with its own chandelier! But itās still a hole in the wall, and I sit here the whole night.
The entrepreneurās curse. He has to watch his business all the time.
Now Iām going to turn the midget fan on, so that the chandelierās light spins around the room.
I am relaxed, sir. As I hope you are.
Let us begin.
Before we do that, sir, the phrase in English that I learned from my ex-employer the late Mr. Ashokās ex-wife Pinky Madam is:
What a fucking joke.
Now, I no longer watch Hindi filmsāon principleābut back in the days when I used to, just before the movie got started, either the number 786 would flash against the black screenāthe Muslims think this is a magic number that represents their godāor else you would see the picture of a woman in a white sari with gold sovereigns dripping down to her feet, which is the goddess Lakshmi, of the Hindus.
It is an ancient and venerated custom of people in my country to start a story by praying to a Higher Power.
I guess, Your Excellency, that I too should start off by kissing some godās arse.
Which godās arse, though? There are so many choices.
See, the Muslims have one god.
The Christians have three gods.
And we Hindus have 36,000,000 gods.
Making a grand total of 36,000,004 divine arses for me to choose from.
Now, there are some, and I donāt just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist. Some believe that none of them exist. Thereās just us and an ocean of darkness around us. Iām no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? Itās true that all these gods seem to do awfully little workāmuch like our politiciansāand yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year. Thatās not to say that I donāt respect them, Mr. Premier! Donāt you ever let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull. My country is the kind where it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time.
So: Iām closing my eyes, folding my hands in a reverent namaste, and praying to the gods to shine light on my dark story.
Bear with me, Mr. Jiabao. This could take a while.
How quickly do you think you could kiss 36,000,004 arses?
Done.
My eyes are open again.
11:52 p.m.āand it really is time to start.
A statutory warningāas they say on cigarette packsābefore we begin.
One day, as I was driving my ex-employers Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam in their Honda City car, Mr. Ashok put a hand on my shoulder, and said, āPull over to the side.ā Following this command, he leaned forward so close that I could smell his aftershaveāit was a delicious, fruitlike smell that dayāand said, politely as ever, āBalram, I have a few questions to ask you, all right?ā
āYes, sir,ā I said.
āBalram,ā Mr. Ashok asked, āhow many planets are there in the sky?ā
I gave the answer as best as I could.
āBalram, who was the first prime minister of India?ā
And then: āBalram, what is the difference between a Hindu and a Muslim?ā
And then: āWhat is the name of our continent?ā
Mr. Ashok leaned back and asked Pinky Madam, āDid you hear his answers?ā
āWas he joking?ā she asked, and my heart beat faster, as it did every time she said something.
āNo. Thatās really what he thinks the correct answers are.ā
She giggled when she heard this: but his face, which I saw reflected in my rearview mirror, was serious.
āThe thing is, he probably has . . . what, two, three years of schooling in him? He can read and write, but he doesnāt get what heās read. Heās half-baked. The country is full of people like him, Iāll tell you that. And we entrust our glorious parliamentary democracyāāhe pointed at meāāto characters like these. Thatās the whole tragedy of this country.ā
He sighed.
āAll right, Balram, start the car again.ā
That night, I was lying in bed, inside my mosquito net, thinking about his words. He was right, sirāI didnāt like the way he had spoken about me, but he was right.
āThe Autobiography of a Half-Baked Indian.ā Thatās what I ought to call my lifeās story.
Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and youāll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleepāall these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.
The story of my upbringing is the story of how a half-baked fellow is produced.
But pay attention, Mr. Premier! Fully formed fellows, after twelve years of school and three years of university, wear nice suits, join companies, and take orders from other men for the rest of their lives.
Entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay.
To give you the basic facts about meāorigin, height, weight, known sexual deviations, etc.āthereās no beating that poster. The one the police made of me.
Calling myself Bangaloreās least known success story isnāt entirely true, I confess. About three years ago, when I became, briefly, a person of national importance owing to an act of entrepreneurship, a poster with my face on it found its way to every post office, railway station, and police station in this country. A lot of people saw my face and name back then. I donāt have the original paper copy, but Iāve downloaded an image to my silver Macintosh laptopāI bought it online from a store in Singapore, and it really works like a dreamāand if youāll wait a second, Iāll open the laptop, pull that scanned poster up, and read from it directly . . .
But a word about the original poster. I found it in a train station in Hyderabad, in the period when I was traveling with no luggageāexcept for one very heavy red bagāand coming down from Delhi to Bangalore. I had the original right here in this office, in the drawer of this desk, for a full year. One day...