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Setting
Chapter 8: The Seventh Night
Explanation and Analysis—Blood on My Hands:
After Balram escapes to Bangalore, situational irony often highlights his sudden reversal of fate. As CEO of “White Tiger Drivers,” Balram returns to cars, but this time turns his status as a driver on its head. When Mohammad Asif accidentally kills the bike rider, he arrives at the scene and defends his driver from the deceased’s brother:
‘Look here, son,’ I said, ‘I am the owner of this vehicle. Your fight is with me, not with this driver. He was following my orders, to drive as fast as he could. The blood is on my hands, not his. These girls need to go home. Come with me to the police station—I offer myself as your ransom. Let them go.'
Balram’s admission may be ironic in multiple senses. His open confession that “the blood is on my hands” perhaps applies better to the crime he did commit than the one he did not. Balram accepts the blame for Asif’s incident in a veiled attempt to atone for his far graver act of murder; it is as though, in the muddle of the double deaths, Balram tries cleaning his hands of both.
Still more ironically, Asif’s car accident is a direct reprise of Pinky Madam’s manslaughter episode: in both instances, the drivers had killed someone when Balram was not at the wheel. Yet Balram’s own response this second time makes a night-and-day difference. In an act of generous valor, he voluntarily steps in for Asif and shoulders the blame. Where he was previously forced to sign a written confession, he now willingly escorts himself and the bike rider’s brother to the police station.
Both ironies underscore the fundamentally broken scales of justice. Balram’s escape from his murder is a humiliating tale of law enforcement’s failure to properly track down criminals. His own theatrics of visiting the police station and filing the claims show how perversely the justice system accommodates the rich and powerful. To be wealthy, he suggests, is to be innocent. Laden with deep pockets, he barely bats an eye before turning himself in. He pays for “justice” and reveals its own poverty.
Balram himself recognizes all of this. The charades go as planned: he pretends to call out the policemen and the assistant commissioner, who then turns the blame onto the bike rider’s brother. The assistant commissioner was “scum,” he admits. “But he was my scum.” Once the poor bike rider’s brother but now the Mongoose, Balram holds the puppet strings; he toys with them.
Related Themes:
