Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (26 page)

‘I don’t know why you are so cynical,’ she said and left him and went away to the front room. He followed her, feeling that
he might as well watch the scene. Ravi’s mother looked up at him from time to time with grateful eyes. The magician was reciting something monotonously in a stentorian voice, and his pauses were punctuated rhythmically by the cymbals and the rattle-drum. Her eyes were shut, and Ravi sat oblivious of his surroundings: a few margosa leaves were scattered on him. The chants and rhythmic beats went on and on and produced a kind of hypnosis in everyone assembled there, and Srinivas saw Ravi gradually shaking his head and swaying. He found the atmosphere oppressive and unbearable – the gong and the drum-beat, the pungent, piercing smell of the incense, its smoke hanging in the air, and the camphor-flare illumination. Srinivas suddenly said to himself: ‘I might be in the twentieth century B.C. for all it matters, or 4000 B.C.’ In that half-dim hall a sweep of history passed in front of his eyes. His scenario-writing habit suddenly asserted itself. His little home, the hall and all the folk there, Anderson Lane and, in fact, Malgudi itself dimmed and dissolved on the screen. There was a blankness for a while, and then there faded in an uninhabited country; the Mempi jungle extended everywhere. The present Market Road was an avenue of wild trees, a narrow footpath winding its way through the long grass. Presently appeared on this path Sri Rama, the hero of Ramayana. He was a perfect man, this incarnation of Vishnu. Over his shoulder was slung his famous bow which none could even lift. He was followed by his devoted brother Laxman and Hanuman, the monkey-god. Rama was on his way to Lanka (Ceylon) to battle with evil there, in the shape of Ravana who abducted Sita. The enemy was a perfection of evil with all its apparent strength and invincibility. Rama had to redeem righteousness. He was on his way to a holy war, which would wipe out wrong and establish on earth truth, beauty and goodness. He rested on a sandy stretch in a grove, and looked about for a little water for making a paste for his forehead-marking. There was no water. He pulled an arrow from his quiver and scratched a line on the sand, and water instantly appeared. Thus was born the river Sarayu.

The river flowed on. On its banks sprang up the thatched roofs of a hamlet – a pastoral community who grazed their cattle in the
jungles and brought them back home before nightfall and securely shut themselves and their animals in from prowling tigers and jackals. The jungle, with its sky-touching trees, gradually receded further and further, and cornfields appeared in its place. The waving tufts of rice, standing to a man’s height, swayed in the air and stretched away as far as the eye could see.

When the Buddha came this way, preaching his gospel of compassion, centuries later, he passed along the main street of a prosperous village. Men, women and children gathered around him. He saw a woman weeping. She had recently lost her child and seemed disconsolate. He told her he would give her consolation if she could bring him a handful of mustard from any house where death was unknown. She went from door to door and turned away from every one of them. Amongst all those hundreds of houses she could not find one where death was a stranger. She understood the lesson … A little crumbling masonry and a couple of stone pillars, beyond Lawley Extension, now marked the spot where the Buddha had held his congregation …

The great Shankara appeared during the next millennium. He saw on the river-bank a cobra spreading its hood and shielding a spawning frog from the rigour of the midday sun. He remarked: ‘Here the extremes meet. The cobra, which is the natural enemy of the frog, gives it succour. This is where I must build my temple.’ He installed the goddess there and preached his gospel of
Vedanta:
the identity and oneness of God and his creatures.

And then the Christian missionary with his Bible. In his wake the merchant and the soldier – people who paved the way for Edward Shilling and his Engladia Bank.

Dynasties rose and fell. Palaces and mansions appeared and disappeared. The entire country went down under the fire and sword of the invader, and was washed clean when Sarayu overflowed its bounds. But it always had its rebirth and growth. And throughout the centuries, Srinivas felt, this group was always there: Ravi with his madness, his well-wishers with their panaceas and their apparatus of cure. Half the madness was his own doing, his lack of self-knowledge, his treachery to his own instincts as an artist, which had made him a battle-ground.
Sooner or later he shook off his madness and realized his true identity – though not in one birth, at least in a series of them. ‘What did it amount to?’ Srinivas asked himself as the historical picture faded out. ‘Who am I to bother about Ravi’s madness or sanity? What madness to think I am his keeper?’ This notion seemed to him so ridiculous that he let out a laugh.

The others in the small room looked at him startled. His wife came near him and peered into his face anxiously and asked: ‘Why did you laugh?”

‘Did I?’ he asked. ‘I recollected some joke, that’s all. Don’t bother about me.’

Now they had stopped their recitations and drum-beats. Ravi, with half-shut eyes, was swaying. The exorcist picked up his cane and thwacked it sharply over Ravi’s back and asked at the same time: ‘Now will you go or not?’ Ravi smarted a little under the blow, and rolled his eyes, and the thwacking was renewed with vigour. The question was addressed to the evil spirit possessing him. Ravi winced under the repeated blows. Srinivas felt an impulse to cry out: ‘Stop it! It is absurd and cruel.’ But he found himself incapable of any effort. The recent vision had given him a view in which it seemed to him all the same whether they thwacked Ravi with a cane or whether they left him alone, whether he was mad or sane – all that seemed unimportant and not worth bothering about. The whole of eternity stretched ahead of one; there was plenty of time to shake off all follies. Madness or sanity, suffering or happiness seemed all the same … It didn’t make the slightest difference in the long run – in the rush of eternity nothing mattered. It was no more important or remembered than an attack of malaria in the lifetime of a centenarian. Whether one was mad or sane or right or wrong didn’t make the slightest difference: it was like bothering about a leaf floating on a rushing torrent – whether it was floating on its right side or wrong side.

He got up abruptly and left the room. He went into the street and stood there uncertainly, looking up and down. There was a momentary haziness in his mind as to what period he was existing in – existence seeming so persistent and inescapable. Later Ravi’s mother came out to say: ‘Shall I take Ravi to the temple at
Sailam? It is a day’s journey from here. The exorcist says that if Ravi is kept there at its portals for a week, he will be quite well. There are hundreds of people living there.’

‘By all means,’ said Srinivas, and added with conviction: ‘He is bound to get well again. Even madness passes. Only existence asserts itself.’

‘Your wife has promised to look after Ravi’s father’s needs.’ It was with difficulty that he could repress the remark: ‘It’s all the same whether he is looked after or not. What if he perishes?’

‘What can we do? We have to trouble you. He is so unreasonable and difficult to manage. We are sorry to put the burden on you, but for the sake of that boy –’

‘We don’t mind the trouble in the least. We will look after the old gentleman.’

Later Srinivas’s wife told him: ‘I’ve given them twenty rupees of house-keeping money. You must replace the amount. Poor folk!’

‘Of course, of course. I will replace it and more. Go ahead and do what you like.’ His wife felt baffled by his elated manner.

Srinivas engaged a carriage to take Ravi and his mother to the railway station next evening. The old lady had rolled up a couple of carpets and pillows and tied them with a hemp rope. She had stuffed a few items of clothing into a tin trunk. She had a basket in which she carried a pot of water and a few plantains. The old gentleman was in an utter mental confusion. If he could have got up and moved about he would have prevented the trip. He kept on shouting at them, ‘Why should she go? With whose permission is she leaving the town and travelling? What brazenness has come over our women!’ The old lady finished an early dinner. The numerous children gathered around and pestered her for this and that, and all of them set up a howl, demanding to be taken along to the railway. She carried with them the two youngest; she had oiled and parted their hair, washed their faces, and thrust them into new clothes. They were bubbling over with joy. The other children threw murderous looks at them and shouted imprecations. The old man shouted above it all: ‘Why should she go, leaving these children to cry? Is there no one to whom
she will listen?’ He cried: ‘Mr Editor, oh, Mr Editor!’ He had spurned Srinivas all these days, but turned to him now out of desperation. He called so insistently that Srinivas could not help responding. He went up to the doorway and stood there and asked: ‘What is it, sir?’

‘Oh, you are there! Come nearer! Come and sit down here. Take a seat; you are a learned man…’

‘I’m quite comfortable here, what is it?’ Srinivas asked.

‘Please tell her to stop. She is going away. She is disobeying me.’

‘She will be back in ten or fifteen days, don’t worry.’

‘You need not tell me that. She must not go.’

‘She is not going for her pleasure. She is going –’

‘Yes, I know. For that brigand’s sake. Why should she go? He is not our son. No man who has been in prison can be our son. Why should she trouble about him? If she is my wife let her give him up. What has she to do with him?’

‘Don’t lose your head, sir. Be calm.’

‘Who are you to tell me about my head? You have ruined that rascal son of mine by dragging him into your associations, and you are ruining my wife and family. You are out to blight our family.’

‘Don’t mind what he says,’ said the lady, wringing her hands in despair. But her face was bright with the anticipation of a journey.

‘Not at all,’ Srinivas said. ‘He will get his food all right.’

‘Food! I will fling it out, if anyone brings the food cooked in another’s house,’ raved the old man. Srinivas looked at the lined face of Ravi’s aged mother. ‘How much must she have stood from him for forty years,’ he reflected and admired her fortitude.

The
jutka
arrived at the door. The lady picked up her baggage and the two children and went to her husband to bid him goodbye. The old man averted his face, put out his arms without a word, and touched the two children. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Srinivas went over to Ravi’s corner in his house and told him: ‘Come along, let us go to the station.’ Ravi looked up at him. That was some improvement. After the thwacking he was showing responses to stimuli. Srinivas helped him up and
led him to the
jutka
and assisted him in. His mother and the children followed. She took an elaborate farewell of Srinivas’s wife, who followed her down the street and, for inexplicable reasons, started crying when the
jutka
began to move. ‘Any farewell or parting will bring tears, I suppose,’ Srinivas reflected as he sat beside the driver and urged him to run fast enough to catch the 8.20 train towards Trichy.

It was late in the evening. Srinivas sat in his office jotting down details of the vision he had had at the exorcist’s performance in his house, and attempted to communicate it to his readers. He jotted down the heading ‘The Leaf on the Torrent’. He didn’t like it. He noted down an alternative title ‘The Cosmic Stage: the willy-nilly actor on the Cosmic Stage’. He thought it over. It didn’t satisfy either. He didn’t like to use the word ‘Cosmic’ if he could help it. The intensity of the experience seemed to be gradually disintegrating now in commonplace expression. He sat brooding, when the printer’s office boy came up and said: ‘There is a gentleman to see you, sir; asks if you can see him.’ Srinivas looked sadly for a moment at the scribbling on his pad and its incomplete characters, wondering how he was going to finalize it for the press next day. The office boy stood before him, awaiting his reply, and suggested: ‘Shall I ask him to go away, sir?’

‘Bring him in,’ said Srinivas, picking up his pen and desperately hoping to jot down something in the short interval that lay before him.

The door opened and there stood Sampath before him. ‘Sampath!’ Srinivas cried. ‘Sampath! Why couldn’t you come straight in?’

‘Oh, I didn’t like to disturb you. This is Thursday, and I know what you should do today.’ He came over and sat in the chair. There was a subdued quality about him. He still wore his silk shirt; but he had an intimidated look in his eyes. ‘Well, how are you?’ asked Srinivas.

Sampath leaned over and whispered: ‘I’m still a monogamist. Don’t worry.’

‘Ah, that’s very good.’

‘Things have happened as you wished.’

‘How did you like the Mempi hills?’

‘Oh, full of tigers and all sorts of beasts, howling all night, and I had a most harrowing time keeping Shanti quiet. She was hysterical throughout and wanted to get away from there the moment we reached the place. Have you been there?’

‘No; some time I hope to.’

‘I hope you will have a better companion and a more reasonable companion to go with; otherwise it is not worth the labour. Do you know how one goes? The train puts you down at Koppal – that’s the last railway link. From there you go twenty miles in a bus and then up in bullock-carts; and then you allow yourself to be carried by porters in a sort of basket slung on bamboo poles; and then you reach the place, practically on foot. And when you have arrived there, what do you expect to see?’

‘Someone to welcome you?’ asked Srinivas.

‘Not a chance, sir … A bleak forest bungalow full of horrible, wide verandas, sir. God knows what fellow ever thought of putting up a building there, and how he managed to gather the materials and men to build, for, do you know, we could not get a single person to bring up a glass of milk or a banana for us. We had carried a hamper and that saved us from starvation. The jungle life comes on you when there is still light, say, at about five o’clock. The birds make a tremendous uproar, the huge trees seem to close in on you, and the jackals start their wails. Ah, those jackals: every time they cried, this lady let out a shriek and trembled all over. She tried to shut herself in, but there was only one room, and that was full of glass shutters, evidently built by someone who wished to watch the arrivals and departures in the jungle at night. She gave me hell that night. I have never been so much bothered by anyone before. We could see in the dark jungle eyes shining. She was a miserable sight, I tell you. She became roaring mad. If you had seen her you would have thought Ravi was sanity itself!’

Srinivas tried to receive this narrative as casually as possible. He felt that there was no need for him to put any question. So much was coming out spontaneously.

‘Every time a tiger roared she had fits, she was sick; it became disgusting to stay with her in the same room. So I went over and stayed in the veranda, not minding the risk. I preferred it to her company.’

Srinivas could not help remarking: ‘I cannot imagine how she could’ve become suddenly so unacceptable.’

‘Well, I didn’t much mind her physical condition. It was her temperament that disgusted me. She was quarrelsome, nagging. In all my years of married life I have never been nagged so much before. She demanded to be taken back to the town that very night and wouldn’t leave me in peace! Imagine! It was at that moment that I decided to stick to your advice. Next afternoon I arranged for her descent. At Koppal I put her into the train and bade her goodbye. She went towards Madras, and I came away here, and I thank God for the relief He smiled weakly and looked at Srinivas. Srinivas sat biting a corner of his lips, his eyes were on the caption on his pad. ‘Cosmic …’ A corner of his mind seized it and struggled with it. ‘Cosmic! Cosmic what …What other title, I must find it before tomorrow, this time …’ He looked up. Sampath watched his face to study his reaction to the story. Srinivas observed that Sampath’s face did not register the satisfaction and relief that his words expressed. He looked downcast. He knew that Sampath was only waiting for a remark from him. He revolved the whole episode in his mind and declared: ‘Sampath, what you say seems too good to be true.’

Sampath covered his eyes with his palm and shook with laughter. He muttered: ‘My editor knows me too well; nothing short of absolute truth will pass with him.’

‘Won’t you tell me exactly what happened?’ Srinivas asked. He added: ‘Don’t, if you don’t like to talk about it.’

‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to talk about it, sir, the only thing left for me now.’ He paused, looked about; the press was running inside. ‘The press seems to be working; I can tell from its sound it is a good one. Is it Simkins’ double cylinder?’

‘Perhaps it is. How do you know?’

‘By mere sound. I am a printer, when all is said and done. Do you agree?’

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘This is purely a temporary arrangement, I hope. When my plant is ready I cannot allow
The Banner
to come from any other press. It’s my responsibility, sir.’ Srinivas muttered something noncommittally and asked: ‘How near are you to your rotary?’
Sampath stretched himself out across the table and whispered: ‘Come out, let us sit down somewhere and talk. I don’t like to speak about anything in a fellow printer’s establishment.’ Srinivas threw a desperate look at the paper on his table. He put it away resolutely. He got up. When they came out Srinivas hesitated on the last step, looked up and down and asked: ‘Where is the car you used to ride in?’

‘I suppose carburettor trouble, like me,’ Sampath said, tapping his heart.

‘Shall we walk?’ Srinivas asked.

‘It’s good exercise, isn’t it?’ Sampath said.

They walked along in silence down the Market Road. Traffic flowed past them. Dusk was about them. A few lights twinkled here and there. They walked on in silence.

Srinivas said: ‘When did you come? You have not told me that.’

‘There is a great deal more I haven’t told you,’ he said. Conversation once again became difficult; Srinivas allowed the silence to envelop them completely. He felt mystified by Sampath’s talk and actions. When they had gone a couple of furlongs he asked Sampath: ‘Where shall we go?’

‘Anywhere you like; where we can talk quietly.’

‘Shall we go to Anand Bhavan restaurant, to that special room upstairs?’ asked Srinivas, recollecting their first meeting-place. Sampath said: ‘Yes, a good idea,’ paused for a second and then said: ‘No, sir, not now. I wouldn’t like to go there now; say somewhere else; why not to the river?’ Srinivas gasped with surprise. ‘I didn’t know you cared for the river,’ he said. ‘One has got to like all sorts of things now,’ Sampath said, and ran across to a wayside shop to buy a packet of cigarettes.

At the river he stood on the sand and looked about as if searching for a seat in a theatre hall. Clumps of people were sitting on the sands. ‘I don’t like to be seen by anyone,’ he said. Beyond the other bank, half a mile off, they saw the glare of the studio lights. He blinked at them for a moment and said: ‘They seem to be very busy there.’ Srinivas led him along, and they sat down in a quiet nook, where there was no one. Darkness had gathered about them. The river flowed on into the night. Sampath remained silent for a moment, drawing circles on the
sand. Srinivas left him alone and listened to the murmur of the river and the distant, muffled roar of the town. Sampath said: ‘I told you a lie, and you found it out. How I wish it had happened as I said! Then it would have left me without regrets. Could you guess what percentage of it was true?’

‘Yes, up to your reaching the bungalow on the hill-top,’ said Srinivas.

‘Well, sir, you can grant me even a little more. That bungalow was as I said, and her terror was real as she saw the flashing eyes of panthers on the other side of the glass at night; but oh, how sweet she was! I could see her trembling with fright, but she said not a word. She sat up all night trying to brave it. Few women there are in the world who could have helped screaming, under those conditions. You know she was not in the best condition of nerves, but all the same, what self-possession she showed! She sat speaking of some books she had read in her younger days.’ He paused to take out a cigarette and lit it. He blew the smoke into the dark sky. ‘She stood it for three or four days, and then suggested that we might return. I was also glad to get back. As you might know, we should have gone up to a registrar before leaving for Mempi, but she always made some excuse or other and put it off. Finally we decided that we were to go through the formality on coming back here. That was our understanding. We got down from the hills, and we were to catch our train at Koppal at five a.m. next day. It is the most unearthly station you can imagine, with jungles on all sides and a disused railway compartment serving as the station-master’s office. We stayed cooped up in that little office all night. The station-master allowed us to stay up there. We sat on a couple of stools and tried to talk through the night. The bus had put us down at Koppal at six in the evening and we had nearly twelve hours before us for the train. We ate our food and then sat up, intending to talk all night till the arrival of the train. But really there was so little to talk about. Having done nothing but that for five days continuously, I think both of us had exhausted all available subjects. And a passing thought occurred to me that we might have to spend the rest of our lives in silence after we were married. This problem was unexpectedly simplified for me. I must have fallen asleep on my stool. When the train arrived and I woke up, her chair was empty.
The train halts there only for four minutes or so, and we had to hurry up.

‘The station-master said: “She left by the eleven down. I gave her a ticket for Madras.”

‘“When?”

‘“At twenty-three hours.”

‘I gnashed my teeth. “What time is that in earthly language?”

‘“Eleven at night.”

‘“What nonsense!” I raved at him.

‘“But the lady gave me to understand that you were going to different places,” he said.

‘I shook my fists in his face and said: “Don’t you see that a husband and wife have got to go together?”

‘“Not always, not necessarily,” he said, and went on to attend to his business. The train halted there for only four minutes.

‘One had to hurry up. “Can I go to Madras?” I asked.

‘“No train towards Madras till …”

‘I was appalled at the prospect of spending half a day more there. I felt like knocking down the station-master. “You should not have allowed her to go.”

‘“We cannot refuse tickets to bona-fide passengers.” He quoted a railway Act.

‘“Oh! Great one, what shall I do now?” I asked. I must have looked ridiculous.

‘“Only a minute more, sir, please make up your mind. I cannot delay the train for anybody’s sake.”

‘I discovered meanwhile a note she had left. It was scrawled on a brown railway sheet. “I am sick of this kind of life and marriage frightens me. I want to go and look after my son, who is growing up with strangers. Please leave me alone, and don’t look for me. I want to change my ways of living. You will not find me. If I find you pursuing me, I will shave off my hair and fling away my jewellery and wear a white
sari
. You and people like you will run away at the sight of me. I am, after all, a widow and can shave my head and disfigure myself, if I like. If it is the only way out I will do it. I had different ideas of a film life.” Well, sir, that was her letter …’

Sampath pulled out his kerchief and dabbed his eyes and blew his nose. ‘I went to Madras, Trichy, Coimbatore, Mangalore,
Bombay and a dozen other places, and tired myself out searching for her… It has all turned out to be a great mess.’

‘What is to happen to the film?’ Srinivas asked.

‘It must be dropped. We’ve been abandoned by both Shiva and Parvathi. And only Kama, the God of Love, is left in the studio.’

‘And he, too, will have to remain invisible for the rest of the story,’ Srinivas added.

‘I shall have to become invisible, too. Otherwise, Sohan Lal and Somu have enough reason to put me in prison,’ Sampath said. He remained in thought for a moment and added, almost with a sigh: ‘Well, I may probably try and save myself if I can interest them in a new story.’ Now Srinivas suddenly saw that this might prove to be the nucleus of a whole series of fresh troubles. He roused himself and said: ‘I think it is time to get up. Tomorrow is press day.’

They walked back in silence. At Market Square, Srinivas realized that they must part. He wanted to ask where Sampath’s family was, what he had done with them, what he was going to do with himself, and so on. But he checked himself. It seemed to him a great, unnecessary strain, sifting grain from chaff in all that he might say. He might probably have his family about him. He might have abandoned them; he might, after all, still have Shanti with him and be planning further adventures, or he might disappear or still dangle a new carrot for Somu and Co. to pursue. But whatever it was, he felt that he was once again in danger of getting involved with him if he asked him too many questions. He saw Sampath hesitating in the square. Bare humanity made him say: ‘Will you come home with me and dine?’