Page 203-276

The divorcement between Ashok and Pinky Madam proceeds. She won’t get money from them, because otherwise they would tell the police about the accident that one night.

The Mongoose gets to Delhi again in order to support Ashok at his work, but he also tells Ashok that he has to marry again. It would be a shame for the family, if he’d stay unmarried.

They bribe the minister again and Ashok leaves. Balram thinks several times about stealing one of those bags with money Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose always get to bribe the politicians. He even thinks about killing Mr. Ashok to get the money. He goes to the red-light district to get rid of those bad thoughts. He watches for a girl and without a reason he starts trouble with a paan-seller. He runs away and gets to the book market in Old Delhi. He stays there for the evening checking out books. While he takes a walk after that he sees a buffalo pulling a cart through the streets. He gets bad conscience from that.

The next day Balram wants to make a confession to Mr. Ashok about his thoughts and that he is ashamed by himself, but Mr. Ashok doesn’t listen and gets it wrong, like Balram wants to marry and needs some money for this.

Next day in the morning Balram walks around and gets to the slums. Several man squat there in a row and defecate. He walks around there and when he gets back to Buckingham Tower a boy is waiting for him with a letter. It is Dharam his cousin. The letter he has is from Kusum. She tells Balram to send some money, to take care of the boy, make him become a driver and that she is preparing his wedding. If Balram doesn’t get to Laxmanargh, Kusum will send the girl to Delhi. Balram gets angry and hits the boy right into the face.

Vitiligo-Lips wants 500 Rupees from Balram for not telling Mr. Ashok the truth about where he was the night they drove to the prostitute.

His wish to kill Mr. Ashok gains.

The opposition wins the election and Mr. Ashok has to bribe the new minister. He didn’t bibe him before, because he was sure that the government stays the same. Balram has to drive the ministers’ assistances around. They empty a bottle of Johnnie Walker. As Balram turns home, he smashes the bottle so it gets some spikes, because he wants to use it for killing Mr. Ashok. He puts it into the glove compartment and goes sleeping.

The next day Balram takes Dharam to the zoo. There is a white tiger in that zoo and when Balram stands in front of the cage he faints. After some time he regains consciousness.

After the zoo Balram tells Dharam to write a letter to Kusum. In that letter he tells her that he can’t live in a cage for the rest of his life.

Balram takes Mr. Ashok to several banks again, where he collects 700.00 Rupees. He wants to go to Sheraton, but at half of their way Balram stops and says that something isn’t right with one tire. He has placed the bottle on the ground and tells Mr. Ashok to get out of the car. Balram takes the bottle in his hand and as Ashok takes a look at the tire Balram rams the bottle into his head. First thing he does after hiding the dead body is driving to the train station. He thinks about Dharam and his fate if he’d leave without him and decides to get him.

They go to Bangalore. Balram buys a Toyota Qualis and wants to start a company. He thinks it would be a good idea to offer his services to call center, because their employees have to work late in the night and no bus is driving at that time of the day. Balram calls a company but the woman tells him that there are already companies like his ones. To solve this problem Balram goes to the local police Department and spends some money. The police discovers that most of the drivers of the company have no driving license. So now the way is clear for Balrams start up. After some time he has 16 drivers and 26 vehicles. His business gained its worth up to 10.5 million rupees.

He tells about one accident that happens. A driver had killed a boy on a bicycle by hitting him with the car. He calls the police and goes to the place it happened. The brother of that boy has witnessed the accident and is at a rage at the moment. Balram and the brother go to the police department, but Balram has to expect no punishment, because he pays the police regularly.

Although there is no need to him, he finds out the address of the family and gives them some money and offers a job in his company to their remaining son.

Back at his apartment he thinks about his decisions ad whether they were right, because his family probably had to die because of his doings. He is worried what Dharam will do when he is grown up.

When he is driving around in the city of Bangalore he is excited and tells that he is part of everything that is happening in India. He tells that he would do everything like he has done it, because it is worth to know what it is like to be free and rich.

I was terrified of the situation in the slums of Delhi. In our western World, it is almost not imaginable to squat in one row and start defecating, because everybody has a toilet in his decent home or at least if you aren’t that well situated you can use a public toilet. But in those slums it seems to be quiet usual. This fact can make you angry and sad at the same time. I think that such things are way below the human dignity in any modern society with a democratic political system. Another thing that I found out is, that the government of Delhi has decided to hide those slums behind bamboo bars, so the visitors and athletes don’t see what is going on there.

That shows us how desperate the situation in those slums is. It seems like the government can’t help everybody at the moment. They have rehabilitated areas around the Commonwealth Games village, by building 9000 new houses, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Government hides Slums
Article on slums in Delhi

Page 191-203

At the pages 191-203 Balram tells how he starts getting corrput and how he pays 7000 Rupees for gettin beaten up.
It starts when Mr. Ashok is outside doing some walking with the other masters around the complex. The servants are standing at the corners holding their waterbottles and towels.
The blonde girl from the Ukraine doesn'tgo out of Balrams mind and so he asks Vitiligo-Lips to get him a girl like that. Vitiligo-Lips tells Balram that he needs at least 6500 Rupees for that. Balram asks how he could make some extra cash by cheating his master. Vitiligo-Lips tells him things like driving other people around when he is sure his master doesn't need the car at the moment, to siphon petrol from the masters car and sell it or even take the car to a corrupt mechanic, who takes way too much money and give the driver a cut of that amount. Balram starts doing those things, because he needs the money for the girl.
As he has enough money for the girl he tells it Vitiligo-Lips and they drive to the hotel the girl is at. Balram pays 6800 Rupees, because he is a servant.
They go upstairs to the girls room. Balram is quiet disappointed, because he had imagened, that the girl would be prettier. But nevertheless he had already paid and his twenty minutes are running. As he touches her he shrieks and slaps her, because her hair is dyed. The manager who took the money from Balram enters the room. Balram smashes his chin against the door turns around to the girl, because she is screaming and then gets beaten up and kicked out of the hotel. Vitiligo-Lips has already left and so Balram takes the bus for getting home.
Mr. Ashok is sitting on Balrams bed when he arrives. First thing he says to Balram is that he knows where he was and what he where doing there, because Vitiligo-Lips has told him. Balram gets nervous until he notices that Vitiligo-Lips has lied to Mr. Ashok and just told him Balram would be at the temple offering prayers for Mr. Ashoks health. Mr. Ashok tells Balram that he feels pitty for him and that Balram gets a new room to sleep in and that he can go to hospital to get his red marks he has on his palms and behind his ears treatened.
Mr. Ashok tells him that he is sick of the life he leads and that he would like to bea simple men, but he hasn't got the courache for doing that. They go eating together at Balrams the place Balram is used to eat.

Workout

I were wondering why the masters are doing their workout outside of the hotel. They are running around the complex, which might look quiet funny. If you have the money for a servant you can afford a hotel with a fitness center in it as well. For example the Park Plaza in Dehli has rooms from 8,999.00 - 9,999.00 Rupees per day.                                                     Park Plaza Hotel

Gurgaon-Where to find...

Article about Prostitutes in Delhi

Page 146-189

Introductivly Balram tells Mr. Jiabo things  about the Indian culture, like that the most of Indias citicens are servants and just a few are masters, but the servants wouldn't change that even if they could. He says that they are living in some kind of a rooster coop. But if they try to get out of there, their masters would kill them or destroy their family. Balram says that only a perverted person may do things like that.

Back in the former part of the story Balram is scared of going to jail, because of the incident with the child. He thinks about running away or tellingthe truth about the incident. but then the Stork comes to Delhi. As Balram takes notice of that he is really excited and hopes that he gets rescued by the Stork. It happens like that and the Sork tells Balram thathis help isn't needed anymore, because there was nobody who witnessed the accident with the child. That is a great relief for Balram. The Stork and the Mongoose stay for another four days and then go back to Dhanbad. The same day at night Balram takes Pinky Madam to the airport and goes back to the USA without saying good bye to Mr. Ashok.

As Mr. Ashok notices that, he makes Balram responsible for that and almost kills him in his madness. Mr. Ashok gets depressed and Balram suffers with him although he almost has been killed him. After one week the Mongoose comes to support Mr.Ashok.

In that time Balram gets a letter from Kusum. She writes that Kishan, Balrams brother, has married and that she doesn't want to force Balram to get married as well. Balram thiks she wants to blackmail him, to send some money, because he doesn't do that. If Kusum tells the Stork that Balram isn't sending money every month Balram, probably would get fired.
One day Balram takes Mr. Ashok to the shopping mall and after that to a hotel. He comes with a girl out of that hotel. Balram thinks it is a whore. They want to go to PVR Saket, a business complex with lots of shops and a cinema. There is one big market in it where Mr.Ashok goes with his chaperonage. Balram goes to a smaller market. There is a giant pile of books. Balram is interested in that, but all of the books and magazines are in English. He talks to the men who sales the books until he has to drive Mr. Ashok and his girl home. They are pretty drunk and go straight up to his appartment.
Balram dresses as Maharaja again and drives through the streets with music and A/C system turned on.
The next morning Balram hears nothing from Mr. Ashok and so he goes up and rings at the appartments door, but nobody opens. He eavesdrops a conversation between Mr. Ashok and the girl from last night. Balram recognizes that the girl is Mr. Ashoks old lover and not a pick-up. They talk about thingsout of the past.
after a phonecall from Dhanbad, Ashok tells her that he has to go to meet a cabinet minister. She leaves on her own. Mr. Ashok collects money from four different cash machines. After he has delivered the bribe to the minister a fat man, who is the ministers side-kick, comes out with Mr. Ashok and forces him to spend the evening together. The fat man tells Ashok that he has seen how a judge got beaten up in his own court by lawyers, because they didn't liked the order he had given. That makes him think that a civil war is coming up to India. They keep talking and during that the fat man forces Ashok to try a whore he knows, which is from Ukraine. They do it at a hotel and then Balram drives him home, but goes back to the hotel afer that, because he wants to see the Ukrainian girl walking out the hotel. Nothing happens, except that a policeman takes notice of Balram. When he comes up to him, Balram starts the car and drives home.

Servants in India

What I found interesting in that part of the book was that there are so many servants in India. I would have estimated th number of servants up to maybe 30-40%, but it reads in the book that if you are an Indian you areeither a servant or a master. Furthermore it reads, that 99.9% of all the citicens are servants. Ireally wouldn't have expected that. That means that there is a huge gap between rich and poor.

I think that is a fact which shows how democratic India really is, because in a democracy it isn't like that almost everybody has to suffer and some few have a real nice life because of that. What they have in India seems to me more like slavery.

nytimes-delhi
Murder by a servant

Page 128-145

At page 128-145 Balram enters a shoppingmall for the first time, Pinky Madams birthday is celebrated and a innocent child has to die and a innocent driver is supposed to go to jail for that.

It begins with the morning after he has bought his new clothes.

He drives Pinky Madam to the shoppingmall. When she has entered the mall, Balram changes clothes and gets in there too. He is excited. After a short while he goes back to the Honda and changes back. He meets Vitiligo-Lips out on the parking lot. One of the other drivers has got a new one way cell phone from his master. They talk about that.

Pinky Madam keeps getting angry, if the traffic doesn't work as she wishes and so she and Mr. Ashok keep fighting with eachother.

On Pinky Madams birthday Balram takes them to Connaught Place. When they come back they are drunk and want to go home. While Balram is driving, they are petting eachother and Mr. Ashok strokes Pinky Madams tigh. Mr. Ashok catches Balram at watching them. He says to Pinky Madam they would have to stop, because they aren't alone. Pinky Madam gets grumpy after she hears that. She stares ou of the window and decides that she wants to drive the car. Balram stops and she gets behind the steering wheel. She tells Balram he should walk the rest of the way, but then comes back. They are racing through red lights with top speed. A child walks over the street and gets hit by their car. They aren't sure from the first moment whether it was a child or a dog or something else, but when Balram cleans the car the same night, he finds some evidence for that it was  a child. The next evening the Mongoose is back in Delhi with a lawyer. They want Balram to sign a decleration, that he was driving the car and nobody else was with him.

I were impressed, when I read that a servant would go to jail for his master, even if he is innocent. I mean in my eyes it already is stupid to do something illegal, just because your master, employer etc. has told you so. But it is even more stupid to go to jail for something you haven't done. I think he has to be very loyal if he really does so. I would probably go crayz, if somebody forces me to something like that.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100618/ldh1.htm

Page 118-128

At page 118-128 the Mongoose goes back to Dhanbad, Balram drinks some Whiskey for the first time and Pinky Madam gets mad because his bad behaviour.

So the Mongoose goes back to Dhanbad and Balram appreciates that, because Mr. Ashok as strict with him as the Mongoose always is. But what he dislikes is, that Pinky Madams skirts get even shorter as they were, when the Mongoose was with them. He does so, because now he always gets an errection, when he is driving them somewhere.
When Balram gets his wages from Mr. Ashok, he asks what Balram does with the money. Balram lies to him and says, that he sends most of it home. He buys his first liquor whith the money he has just got.
The next morning he takes his time to get up to his masters. He has headaches and looks ill, because of the Whiskey he had last night. Pinky Madam wants him to make some tea and while he is doing that he scratches his groin. Pinky Madam notices that and starts shouting at him how disgusting she thinks he is and kicks him out.
In the evening Balram has to take them to the mall. While ha is waiting for them he chats with the other drivers. The vitiligo-lips one is there as well. Again he offers Balram to get some illegal stuff fo Balrams master, but Balram refuses that again.
Balram tells you how hard the free time is, a servant has while he has to wait for his master. Many drivers get adicted to alcohol, because they don't know what to do with all that time. But Balram uses his time to think and so he hasn't a problem with it. He changes the worst part of his work o the best.
One night Balram goes to the local market and buys a T-Shirt, black shoes and toothpaste for himself. He brushes his teeth for the first time and wonders why his father hadn't told him to do so. He spits the toothpaste into the sink and wishes he could spit out his past as easily as that toothpaste.


I think it is remarkable that the local market in guagon is still opend at night. You don't have that in most of the western countries. The Saharamall where Pinky Madam and Mr. Ashok like to go in the book has opend from 08:00am - 12:00pm everyday. The Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin for example usually has opend 9.30am - 20.00pm only monday - saturday. But I don't think that is a problem in India, because the employees don't get much money for it and if they'd say no there are many more people how would like to work there.

http://www.gurgaonshoppingmalls.com/sahara-mall-gurgaon.php

Page 107-117

From page 107 - 117 Balram tells how the Mr. Ashok, Pinky Madam and the mongoose move to a gigantic apartment complex. It is called Buckingham Towers and the apartment they are supposed to live in is just as big as the kitchen in Dhanbad was. Balram lives in the basement of that building in the so called servants quarter. There they have to sleep with several servants in one room, but Balram doesn't wants to. The servant with the disease called Vitiligo had told the other servants that Balram is totally clueless and so they are teasing him all the time. So Balram decides to move in a barely small room in which fits just a bed and a mosquito net. At one morning while Balram cleans the car the brothers want to go to the Congress Party headquarters. He takes them there and while doing so he describes the rush hour in New Delhi. He says it'd take ten years out of a men's life, if he breathes the poluted air everyday. As they arrive, the two brothers get into the building and come back after two hours. Than they drive to the Presidents house.  Again Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose enter the building and are coming back after some time. They are in a bad mood and don't talk to eachother. After some time Mr. Ashok complaints about the political system in india and calls it "a fucking joke", because they had to bribe the minister.

On their way back to the apartment there is a fierce jam and it takes real long to get home. During the jam they see an autorickhaw driver who spats three times in a row right next to their car. Thats probably because the heavy poluted air he is breathing all day long.

As they come home and enter the room Pinky Madam just says that she had eaten already. Balram prepares some vegetables for Mr. Ashok and notices by casting a quick look on him that he is on the verge of tears.

Poluted air

I found it terrifying  that airquality is that bad in Delhi. There are heaps ofheaps of cars driving through the city and nobody cares about what happens to the people or the enviroment. But the government started thinking about this issue since they knew that the Commonwealth Games are in Delhi in October 2010, because they worried about the athlets health. To me this seems to be pretty unfair. Everyones health should have the same value, so if the government can change something about the airyuality they should do it right mow and not wait until there are some athlets coming around.

I found out that New Delhi is on rank five of the cities with the dirtiest air and that the level of airpollution is five times higher than the WHO considers as safe for a human being.(Source:http://shanghaiist.com/2006/12/18/beijing_is_dirt.php)

  

http://www.urbanemissions.info/sim-series-35.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/air_pollution.html



Page 94-107

The narration from page 94 - 107 is devided in two major parts. Incipiently he tells about how much he loves candaliers and that he doesn't know why not everybody has one and how he hids himself in Bangalore after the murder on Mr. Ashok. Then the first part starts.

He talks about the traffic system of Delhi. He says that it isn't a system of logic. Also the way they number their houses is no system of logic, because F 378 comes afer A 231 and things like that. He tells you that he doesn't really like the city, because the work as a driver is much harder if you don't know which way to go.

To insult injury the Mongoose always gets angry when Balram looses their way, so Balram is scared of being fired, but Mr. Ashok doesn't trust the people in New Delhi and takes pity with Balram. Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose have problems with the Great Socialist again because their father ,the Stork, wants to take distance from the Great Socialist. That isn't quite in the sense of the Great Socialist and so he wants to make them do what he wants by letting them pay enormous taxes on their business. In order to solve this problem Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose try to get an interview with a minister in New Delhi, but they need a fixer for getting in contact with one.

In the second part Balram talks to another driver while he is waiting in front of a shopping mall in Gurgaon, wich has turned within 10 years from a farmer district to the modernst suburb in New Delhi. There are plenty other servants waiting in front of that mall for their masters, because they aren't allowed to enter the mall. They are gabbing and reading. There is a pretty famous magazin, wich is called Murderer weekly. It is provided by the government and its content are  fictional cases of murders in order to make the servants aware of how cruel it is to kill somebody.

Balram gets to know one of the other drivers. He tells that the other driver also comes from the Darkness, so Balram has something in common with him. But he doesn't like him too much, because the other driver has a disease called Vitiligo and Balram finds it pretty digusting. Vitiligo makes parts of the skin or even the whole skin turn into white. The driver has it on his lips. Balram says that his stomach churns when he sees him. But nevertheless the other driver has some usefull informations for Balram. He tells Balram that he should have a mosquito net while he is waiting for his master in front of clubs in the evening. Thats pretty important because some Mosquitos are infected with a virus and if one of that bites you, you are probably dead. Then he tells him that the police is totally rotten and that you have to bribe them 100 rupees if they catch you without wearing your saftey belt.

Furthermore he tells Balram that he has contacts to the american embassy and could get him alcohol that is free of tax, women or even boys for his master. But Balram rejects that.

Vitiligo

What I found interesting is the disease that the other driver has. It is the same disease which was responsible for Michael Jacksons skin turn into white. It occurs when the cells which are responsible for the pigmentation die or are unable to function. I was quiet shocked when I read, that you can loose the colour of your eyes or the colour of the inside of   your mouth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo