Free White Teeth by Zadie Smith Page A

Balti pot that sat on a plinth outside the staff toilets and into which all tips were pooled and then split at the end of the night. For the younger, flashy, good-looking waiters like Shiva, this was a great injustice. Shiva was the only Hindu on the staff—this stood as tribute to his waitering skills, which had triumphed over religious differences. Shiva could make a four-quid tip in an evening if the blubberous white divorcée in the corner was lonely enough and he batted his long lashes at her effectively. He could also make his money out of the turtlenecked directors and producers (the Palace sat in the center of London’s theaterland, and these were still the days of the Royal Court, of pretty boys and kitchen-sink drama) who flattered the boy, watched his ass wiggle provocatively to the bar and back, and swore that if anyone ever adapted
A Passage to India
for the stage he could have whichever role tickled his fancy. For Shiva, then, the Piss-Pot system was simply daylight robbery and an insult to his unchallenged waitering abilities. But for men like Samad, in his late forties, and for the even older, like the white-haired Muhammed (Ardashir’s great-uncle), who was eighty if he was a day, who had deep pathways dug into the sides of his mouth where he had smiled when he was young, for men like this the Piss-Pot could not be complained about. It made more sense to join the collective than pocket fifteen pence and risk being caught (and docked a week’s tips).
    â€œYou’re all on my back!” Shiva would snarl, when he had to relinquish five pounds at the end of the night and drop it into the pot. “You all live off my back! Somebody get these losers off my back! That was my fiver and now it’s going to be split sixty-five-fucking-million ways as a handout to these losers! What is this: communism?”
    And the rest would avoid his glare and busy themselves quietly with other things, until one evening, one fifteen-pence evening, Samad said, “Shut up, boy,” quietly, almost under his breath.
    â€œYou!” Shiva swung round to where Samad stood, crushing a great tub of lentils for tomorrow’s dal. “You’re the worst of them! You’re the worst fucking waiter I’ve ever seen! You couldn’t get a tip if you mugged the bastards! I hear you trying to talk to the customer about biology this, politics that—just serve the food, you idiot—you’re a waiter, for fuck’s sake, you’re not Michael Parkinson.
‘Did I hear you say Delhi’
”—Shiva put his apron over his arm and began posturing around the kitchen (he was a pitiful mimic)—“ ‘I was there myself, you know, Delhi University, it was most fascinating, yes—and I fought in the war, for England, yes—yes, yes, charming, charming.’ ” Round and round the kitchen he went, bending his head and rubbing his hands over and over like Uriah Heep, bowing and genuflecting to the head cook, to the old man arranging great hunks of meat in the walk-in freezer, to the young boy scrubbing the underside of the oven. “Samad,
Samad . . .
” he said with what seemed infinite pity, then stopped abruptly, pulled the apron off and wrapped it round his waist. “You are such a sad little man.”
    Muhammed looked up from his pot-scrubbing and shook his head again and again. To no one in particular he said, “These young people—what kind of talk? What kind of talk? What happened to respect? What kind of talk is this?”
    â€œAnd you can fuck off too,” said Shiva, brandishing a ladle in his direction, “you old fool. You’re not my father.”
    â€œSecond cousin of your mother’s uncle,” a voice muttered from the back.
    â€œBollocks,” said Shiva. “Bollocks to that.”
    He grabbed the mop and was heading off for the toilets, when he stopped by Samad and placed the handle inches from Samad’s