My driver for the week had winkled me out of a crowded platform at Gangapur City railway station in Rajasthan and manhandled my heavy suitcase out to his spotless Toyota. I’d liked him immediately. He was stick-thin under his uniform, not very tall, and he had a spivvy little moustache and sideburns and neatly barbered jet-black hair. But it was the smile that first arrested me. It had a shriven, fatalistic quality that made him seem vulnerable yet supremely at peace with himself and the world.
‘I am simple man, sir,’ he told me when I’d tried to fathom his smile with personal questions. ‘I pray and I like my vegetables. And every day, chapati. I love my wife and childrens. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. I don’t take meat. Sometimes I take opium in the evening. Is very good for sex, sir, and for sleeping.’
His name was Babu, which is an affectionate Hindi word, he said, meaning ‘small boy’.
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