Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (31 page)

‘Do you perform
Poojas
for his sake?’

‘Yes, every Friday. It is the
Pooja
that enabled young Markandeya to win over
Yama
, the God of Death.’

‘Oh!’ Margayya exclaimed, interested but not willing to show his ignorance.

‘Every child knows that story.’

‘Yes, of course, of course,’ Margayya said non-committally. He felt he ought to say something more and added: ‘Those people,’ indicating over his shoulder a vast throng of wise ancestors, ‘those people knew what was good for us.’

‘Not the people you mean, but those who were there even before them,’ corrected the priest in a debating spirit.

‘All right,’ Margayya agreed meekly.

The priest asked him further on: ‘What do you gather from the story of Markandeya?’

Margayya blinked, and felt like a schoolboy. He said ceremoniously: ‘How can I say? It’s for a learned person like you to enlighten us on these matters.’

‘All right. What was Markandeya?’ asked the man persistently.

Margayya began to feel desperate. He feared that the other might not rest till he had exposed his ignorance. He felt he ought to put a stop to it at once, and said: ‘It’s a long time since I heard that story. My grandmother used to tell it. I should like to hear it again.’

‘Ask then. If you don’t know a thing, there is no shame in asking and learning about it,’ moralized the priest. He then
narrated the story of Markandeya, the boy devotee of God Shiva, destined to die the moment he completed his sixteenth year. When the moment came, the emissaries of
Yama
(the God of Death) arrived in order to bind and carry off his life, but he was performing the
Pooja
– and the dark emissaries could not approach him at all! Markandeya remained sixteen to all eternity, and thus defeated death. ‘That particular
Pooja
had that efficacy – and it’s that very
Pooja
I am performing on behalf of the child, who is much better for it.’

‘Will the child live?’ asked Margayya, his interest completely roused.

‘How can I say? It’s our duty to perform a
Pooja;
the result cannot be our concern. It’s
Karma.’

‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Margayya, somewhat baffled.

They now reached the little temple at the end of Vinayak Mudali Street. There under a cracked dome was an inner shrine containing an image of Hanuman, the God of Power, the son of Wind. According to tradition this God had pressed one foot on the very spot where the shrine now stood, sprang across space and ocean and landed in Lanka (Ceylon), there to destroy Ravana, a king with ten heads and twenty hands, who was oppressing mankind and had abducted Rama’s wife Sita.

The priest was part and parcel of the temple. There was a small wooden shack within its narrow corridors, where he ate his food and slept. He looked after the shrine, polished and oiled the tall bronze lamps and worshipped here.

Margayya hesitated at the entrance. It seemed already very late. ‘I’ll go now,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you come in and see the God, having come so far?’ asked the priest. Margayya hesitated. He was afraid to ignore the priest’s suggestion. He feared that that might displease God. As he hesitated, the priest drove home the point: ‘You stopped me there at the park to say something. You have been with me ever since and you have not spoken anything about it.’ Margayya felt caught. He found himself behaving more and more like a schoolboy. He remembered his old teacher, back there in his village, an old man with a white rim around his black pupils that gave him the look of a cat peering in the dark, whose hands
shook when he gripped the cane, but who nevertheless put it to sound use, especially on Margayya’s back, particularly when he behaved as he behaved now, blinking when he ought to be opening his lips and letting the words out. Later in life Margayya remedied it by not allowing any pause in his speech, but the disease recurred now and then. This was such a moment. He wanted to talk to the priest and seek his advice, but he felt reluctant to utter the first word. As he stood there at the portals of the temple he feared for a second the old whacking from a cane. But the priest only said: ‘Come in.’

‘Isn’t it late?’

‘For what?’

Margayya once again blinked. He mutely followed the priest into the shrine. The main portion of the image went up into the shadows, partly illuminated by a flickering oil-lamp. The priest briskly swept into a basket some broken coconut, plantains, and coins, left on the doorstep by devotees. He held up a plantain and a piece of coconut for Margayya. ‘Probably you are hungry. Eat these. I will give you a tumbler of milk.’ He went into his shack and came out bearing a tumbler of milk.

Margayya squatted on the floor, leaning against the high rugged wall of the corridor. The town had fallen asleep. Vinayak Mudali Street was at the very end of the town, and no one moved about at this hour. Even the street dogs, which created such a furore every night, seemed to have fallen asleep. A couple of coconut trees waved against the stars in the sky. The only noise in the world now seemed to be the crunching of coconut between Margayya’s jaws. It was like the sound of wooden wheels running over a sandy bed. Margayya felt abashed, and tried to eat noiselessly. At this a bit of coconut went the wrong way, and he was seized with a fit of coughing, which racked his whole frame. He panted and gasped as he tried to explain: ‘It … It … It …’ The priest seemed to watch with amusement, and he felt indignant. ‘What right has this man to keep me here at this hour and amuse himself at my expense?’

The priest said: ‘Drink that milk, it will make you all right.’

‘He asks me to drink milk as if I were a baby. Next, I think, he will force it between my lips.’ He suddenly grew very assertive
and said resolutely: ‘I don’t like milk … I have never liked it.’ He pushed away the tumbler resolutely.

The priest said: ‘Don’t push away a tumbler of milk with the back of your hand.’ Margayya was no longer going to be treated and lectured like a schoolboy. He said: ‘I know. But who doesn’t?’

‘And yet,’ said the priest with amused contempt, ‘you push away milk with the back of your hand as if it were a tumbler of ditch water.’

‘No, no,’ said Margayya semi-apologetically. ‘I didn’t push it with the back of my hand. I just tried to put away the tumbler so that you might take it.’

Ignoring this explanation and looking away, far away, the priest said: ‘Milk is one of the forms of Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. When you reject it or treat it indifferently, it means you reject her. She is a Goddess who always stays on the tip of her toes all the time, ever ready to turn and run away. There are ways of wooing and keeping her. When she graces a house with her presence, the master of the house becomes distinguished, famous and wealthy.’ Margayya reverently touched the tumbler and very respectfully drank the milk, taking care not to spill even a drop.

‘That is better,’ said the old man. ‘There was once upon a time –’ He narrated from Mahabharata the story of Kubera, the wealthiest man in creation, who undertook a long arduous penance as atonement for spilling a drop of milk on the floor of his palace. When the story ended and a pause ensued, Margayya felt he could no longer keep back his request. He felt somewhat shy as he said: ‘I want to acquire wealth. Can you show me a way? I will do anything you suggest.’

‘Anything?’ asked the first emphatically. Margayya suddenly grew nervous and discreet. ‘Of course, anything reasonable.’ Perhaps the man would tell him to walk upside down or some such thing. ‘You know what I mean,’ Margayya added pathetically.

‘No, I don’t know what you mean,’ said the old man point blank. ‘Wealth does not come the way of people who adopt half-hearted measures. It comes only to those who pray for it single-mindedly with no other thought.’

Margayya began to tremble slightly at this statement. ‘Perhaps he is a sorcerer, or a black magician or an alchemist.’ He threw a frightened look at him and then at the shack in which he usually dwelt. ‘Perhaps he has hidden human bodies in that shack, and extracts from the corpses some black ointment, with which he acquires extraordinary powers.’

Margayya wanted to get up and run away. In the starlight the man looked eerie; his hollow voice reverberating through the silent night. Margayya’s mind was seized with fears. ‘Perhaps he will ask me to cut off my son’s head.’ He imagined Balu being drugged and taken into the shack. ‘It’s midnight or probably dawn. Let me go home.’

He got up abruptly. The old man did not stop him. He merely said: ‘Yes, go home. It is very late. Probably your wife will be anxious.’ Margayya felt tremendously relieved that after all he was permitted to leave. He got up, prostrated before the God’s image, scrambled to his feet hurriedly, lest the other, sitting immobile where he had left him, should call him back. He hurried off through the silent street. Far off a night constable’s whistle was heard. ‘I hope he will not take me for a thief.’ He was wearing his wedding
dhoti
, carrying his account papers under his arm; the whole thing struck him at this hour as being extremely ridiculous.

He stood before his door unable to make up his mind to knock. It might rouse his wife or his son. But unless his wife was roused … And how could he explain his late coming? ‘Something has happened to me – everything seems to be going wrong. That Ami Doss has perhaps cast a spell: can’t be sure what everybody is up to – The world seemed to be a very risky place to live in, peopled by creatures with dark powers. As he stood there undecided, his wife threw back the bolt and let him in. She hadn’t put out the kerosene lamp. She looked at him sourly and asked: ‘What have you been doing so late?’ Once inside his home all his old assertiveness returned. He was the master in his house, with nobody to question him. He ignored her and quickly went into the smaller room to undress and change. He washed himself briskly at the well. His son was sleeping near the doorway of
the smaller room on a rush mat. He threw a loving look at him, with a feeling that but for a quick decision on his part the little fellow might be in that shack put to no end of tortures. His wife was very sleepy as she waited for him in the kitchen. He found that she had spread out two leaves. ‘What? You have not had your dinner yet!’ he said, feeling pleased that she had waited for him.

‘How could I without knowing what had happened? Hereafter, if you are going to be late –’

‘I must ask your permission, I suppose,’ he said arrogantly.

They consumed their midnight dinner in silence. They went to bed in silence. He lay on the mat beside his son. She went down into her room, and lay on a carpet on which she had already snatched a few hours of sleep before he arrived. Margayya lay in bed unable to shut his eyes. He lay looking at the ceiling, which was dark with smoke; cobwebs dangled from the tiles like tapestry. ‘She ought to clean it and not expect me to have to see such things,’ he said to himself angrily. He got up and blew out the kerosene lamp and lay down. He slept badly, constantly harassed by nightmares composed of the priest, the secretary, and Arul Doss. One recurring dream was of his son stepping into the shack in the temple, with the priest standing behind the door, and all his efforts to keep him back proved futile. The young fellow was constantly tiptoeing away towards the shack. It bothered Margayya so much that he let out a cry:
‘Aiyo! Aiyo!’
which woke up the child, who jumped out of bed with a piercing scream; which in turn roused his mother sleeping in the other room, and she sprang up howling: ‘Oh, what has happened! What has happened!’ It was about half an hour before the dawn. All this commotion awakened Margayya himself. He cried: ‘Who is there? Who is there?’ ‘Someone was moving about.’ ‘Someone made a noise.’ The uproar increased. ‘Where are the matches?’ Margayya demanded suddenly and cursed in the dark. ‘Who asked you to blow out the light?’ his wife said. He sprang up and ran towards the backyard thinking that the intruder must have run in that direction. The little boy cried, ‘Oh, father, father, don’t go … Don’t go …’ His mother clutched him to her bosom. He struggled and wildly kicked for no reason
whatever. The people of the next house woke up and muttered: ‘Something always goes wrong in that house. Even at midnight one has no peace, if they are in the neighbourhood.’

Margayya was sitting before his small box, examining the accounts written in his red book. His son came up to sit on his lap. Margayya said: ‘Go and play, don’t disturb me now,’ and tried to keep him off. ‘This is my play, I won’t go,’ said the child, pushing towards him again resolutely and climbing on his lap. Margayya had to peep over his head in order to look at the register before him; Balu’s hair constantly tickled his nostrils and he felt irritated. He cried: ‘Balu, won’t you leave me alone. I will buy you a nice –’

‘What?’ asked the child.

‘A nice little elephant.’

‘All right, buy it now, come on.’

‘No, no, not now … I’m working now,’ he said, pointing at the small register. Balu shot out his little leg and kicked away the register petulantly, and in the process the ink-well upset beside it and emptied on the page. Then the child stamped his heel on the ink and it splashed over Margayya’s face and spoiled the entire book. Margayya felt maddened at the sight of it. He simply gripped the boy by his shoulder, lifted him as he would lift an unwanted cat, and almost flung him into a corner. Needless to say it made the child cry so loudly that his mother came running out of the kitchen, her eyes streaming with tears owing to the smoke there. ‘What has happened? What has happened?’ she cried, rushing towards the child, who, undaunted, was again making a dash for his father as he stooped over the wreckage trying to retrieve his damaged account-book. ‘Look what he has done,’ he cried excitedly. ‘This monkey!’

‘You
are a monkey!’ cried the boy, hugging his father’s knee as he was blotting the spilled ink.

‘If you don’t leave me, I’ll – I’ll –’ He was too angry. ‘I’ll give you over to the temple priest … He’ll flay your skin.’

‘He will give me plantains,’ corrected the boy. He turned aside and suddenly pounced on the book, grabbed it and dashed off. His father ran after him with war cries. The boy dodged him here and there, going into this corner and darting into that. His tears
had by now dried, he was enjoying the chase, and with hysterical laughter he was running hither and thither clutching the precious red notebook in his hand. It was a small space within which he ran, but somehow Margayya was unable to seize him. Margayya panted with the effort. He cried: ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll flay you.’