Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (42 page)

‘I applied for it like any other citizen. Being a municipal councillor doesn’t mean that I should forgo the ordinary rights and privileges of a citizen.’

The conversation went on with the sun beating down on their heads, and a feeling of still greater warmth was given by the sight of the heavy dark blankets all round. Margayya felt somewhat
irritated that he was being made to stand in the sun all the time. He suddenly told himself, ‘I am a business man with all my time fully booked, why should I stand here in the sun and listen to this fellow’s irrelevancies?’ He told his friend somewhat sharply, ‘Shall we get on with the business?’

Dr Pal looked at him surprised for a moment and asked the blanket merchant, ‘Will you give the vacant shop to this gentleman?’

‘Of course!’ the other said. ‘If you want it … Give it to him if you choose.’ Dr Pal turned to Margayya and said, ‘Take it.’ Margayya was unused to such brisk and straightforward transactions. He had always a notion that to get anything done one had to go in a round-about manner and arrive at the point without the knowledge of the other party. Margayya rose to the occasion and asked, ‘What is the rent?’

‘Seventy-five rupees,’ said the other briefly.

‘Seventy-five! Rather high isn’t it?’ Margayya asked, hoping against hope there would be a reduction from this stern and business-like man.

‘Yes, if it were any other place … but here the spot has market value. You can take it if you like. But if you are looking for a cheaper place – ‘said the blanket man.

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ said Margayya finishing his sentence for him. ‘I am taking it definitely from tomorrow.’ It pleased him very much to be able to speak up confidently in this manner. If it had been those horrible past days, he would have collapsed at the knees on hearing the amount of the rent.

Dr Pal said to the blanket-seller: ‘This man is one of my oldest friends. I like him very much, you know.’

‘Yes, I know, I know,’ said the other. ‘I could guess so, otherwise you would not have brought him here. Here is the key.’ He held out a brass key for Dr Pal to take.

He asked Margayya, ‘What may be your line of business?’

‘Well… sort of banking,’ Margayya said without conviction, fearing at the word bank these people would at once visualize shining counters and all the gaudy ornamentation.

‘It’d be more simple to call it moneylending,’ said the other from within the blankets.

‘It is not merely lending,’ Margayya essayed to explain. ‘It is not so cheap as that; I also try to help people about money whenever they are in difficulties.’ Margayya started on his oration. ‘Money is …’ He paused and turning to Dr Pal, asked, ‘You have not told me your friend’s name.’ It was more to put the other in his place.

‘Oh, we call him Guru Raj,’ Dr Pal said.

Margayya began his sentence again. ‘Guru Raj, money is the greatest factor in life and the most ill-used. People don’t know how to tend it, how to manure it, how to water it, how to make it grow, and when to pluck its flowers and when to pluck its fruits. What most people now do is to try and eat the plant itself –’

The other roared with laughter. ‘I say, you seem to be a very great thinker. How well you speak, how well you have understood all these matters! You are indeed a rare man. Where have you been carrying on your business all these days?’

‘Mine is the sort of business that searches me out. I didn’t have to move out of my house at all. But you see, it gives me no rest with so many people always coming in –’

‘You must never allow your business transactions to invade your home, that will simply shatter the home-life,’ said Guru Raj.

‘I have a son studying in high school,’ said Margayya. He liked the feel of the word. Studying in High School. He felt very proud of Balu for the moment, but at the same time he felt a tinge of pity at heart. He had been too severe with him during the day.

‘Oh, if children are studying it will simply ruin their time to have visitors at all hours,’ the other said.

After more such polite and agreeable talk, he said, ‘All right, sir, I wish you all success. May God help you. You may please to go now. I cannot offer you a seat in this wretched shop. It is my fate to sit here amidst the flies, and why should I bother you with them too? And it is not proper to make you stand … I will come and listen to your talk in your own shop, some day.’

It was midday and all the stalls in the market were dull and drowsy. Fruit-sellers were dozing before their heaps. Some loafers were desultorily hanging about. Stray calves were standing idly near a shop in which green plantain leaves were for sale. A seller of
betel leaves held out a bundle saying, ‘Finest betel leaves, sir, flavoured with camphor – ‘applying the usual epithets that betel-sellers employ for recommending their wares. Pal took some, haggled for a moment, and paid the price. He stuffed the bundle of betel leaves into his pocket. He stopped for a minute at the next stall to buy a yard of strung jasmine. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘These are necessary to keep the peace at home, necessary adjuncts for domestic harmony, you know.’

‘Oh!’ Margayya exclaimed, and decided to ignore any special significance he might have put into the words
Domestic Harmony
.

‘You are no longer alone?’ Margayya asked.

‘No.’

‘Are you married?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to be married?’

‘Not yet.’

Margayya was mystified. ‘Where is your house? Are you still in that garden?’

‘No, no. I had to leave it long ago. Someone bought it, and has been farming on a large scale there. He cleared the place of all the weeds and undergrowth, which included me. But he appeared to be a nice man. I have been so far away and so busy. I have a house, I live in an outhouse in Lawley Extension … Someone else is in the main building. You must come to my house some day.’

They reached 10 Market Road, and at once Margayya was enchanted. He had always visualized that he would get some such place. The Malgudi gutter ran below his shop with a mild rumble, and not so mild smell. But Margayya either did not notice or did not mind it, being used to it in his own home. Margayya’s blood was completely the city man’s and revelled in crowds, noise and bustle; the moment he looked out and saw the stream of people and traffic flowing up and down the road, he felt that he was in the right place. A poet would perhaps have felt exasperated by the continuous din, but to Margayya it was like a background music to his own thoughts. There was a row of offices and shops opposite, insurance agencies, local representatives of newspapers, hair-cutting saloons, some film distributors, a
lawyer’s chamber, and a hardware shop, into which hundreds of people were going every day. Margayya calculated that if he could at least filter twenty out of that number for his own purposes, he would be more than well off. In about a year he could pass on to the grade of people who were wealthy and not merely rich. He drew a lot of distinction between the two. A rich man, according to his view, was just one caste below the man of wealth. Riches any hardworking fool could attain by some watchfulness, while acquiring wealth was an extraordinary specialized job. It came to persons who had on them the grace of the Goddess fully and who could use their wits. He was a specialist in money and his mind always ran on lines of scientific inquiry whenever money came in question. He differentiated with great subtlety between money, riches, wealth, and fortune. It was most important people should not mistake one for the other.

Next to the subject of money, the greatest burden on his mind was his son. As he sat in his shop and spoke to his clients, he forgot for the time being the rest of the world, but the moment he was left alone he started thinking of his son: the boy had failed in his matriculation exam, and that embittered him very much. He wondered what he should do with him now. Whenever he thought of it, his heart sank within him. ‘God has blessed me with everything under the sun; I need not bother about anything else in life, but … but …’ He could not tell people, ‘My son is only fifteen and he has already passed into college.’ The son had passed that stage two years ago. Two attempts and yet no good. Margayya had engaged three home tutors, one for every two subjects, and it cost him quite a lot in salaries. He arranged to have him fed specially with nutritive food during his examination periods. He bought a lot of fruits, and compelled his wife to prepare special food, always saying, ‘The poor boy is preparing for his examination. He must have enough stamina to stand the strain.’ He forbade his wife to speak loudly at home. ‘Have you no consideration for the young man who is studying?’

He was in agonies on examination days. He escorted him up to the examination hall in Albert College. Before parting from him at the sounding of the bell he always gave him advice: ‘Don’t get
frightened; write calmly and fearlessly… and don’t come away before it is time,’ but all this was worth nothing because the boy had nothing to write after the first half-hour, which he spent in scrawling fantastic designs on his answer book. He hated the excitement of an examination and was sullenly resentful of the fact that he was being put through a most unnecessary torment. He abruptly rose from his seat and went over to a restaurant near by. His father had left with him a lot of cash in view of the trying times he was going through. He ate all the available things in the restaurant, bought a packet of cigarettes, sought a secluded corner away from the prying eyes of his elders on the bank of the river behind the college, sat down and smoked the entire packet, dozed for a while, and returned home at five in the evening. The moment he was sighted his mother asked, ‘Have you written your examination well?’

He made a wry face and said, ‘Leave me alone.’ He hated to be reminded of the examination. But they would not let him alone. His mother put before him milk, and fruits, and the special edibles she had made to sustain him in his ordeal. He made a wry face and said, ‘Take it away, I cannot eat anything.’ At this she made many sounds of sympathy and said that he must get over the strain by feeding himself properly.

It was at this moment that his father returned home, after closing his office early, and hastening away in a
jutka
. All day as he counted money, his and other people’s, a corner of his mind was busy with the examination. ‘Oh, God, please enlighten my son’s mind so that he may answer and get good marks,’ he secretly prayed. The moment he saw his son he said, ‘I am sure you have done very well my boy. How have you done?’ The boy sat in a corner of the house with a cheerless look on his face. Margayya put it down to extreme strain, and said soothingly, ‘You stayed in the hall throughout?’ That was for him an indication of his son’s performance.

Whatever was the son’s reply, he got the correct answer very soon, in less than eight weeks, when the results came out. At first Margayya raved, ‘Balu has done very well, I know. Someone has been working off a grudge.’ Then he felt like striking his son, but restrained himself for the son was four inches taller as he stood hanging his head with his back to the wall, and Margayya feared
that he might retaliate. So he checked himself; and from a corner the mother watched, silently with resignation and fear, the crisis developing between father and son. She had understood long before that the boy was not interested in his studies and that he attached no value to them, but it was no use telling that to her husband. She pursued what seemed to her the best policy and allowed events to shape themselves. She knew that matters were coming to a conclusion now and she was a helpless witness to a terrific struggle between two positive-minded men, for she no longer had any doubt that the son was a grownup man. She covered her mouth with her fingers, and with her chin on her palms stood there silently watching.

Margayya said, ‘Every little idiot has passed his S.S.L.C. exam. Are you such a complete fool?’

‘Don’t abuse me, father,’ said the boy, whose voice had recently become gruff. It had lost, as his mother noticed, much of the original softness. The more she saw him, the more she was reminded of her own father in his younger days; exactly the same features, the same gruffness, and the same severity. People had been afraid to speak to her father even when he was in the sweetest temper, for his face had a severity without any relation to his mood. She saw the same expression on the boy’s face now. The boy’s look was set and grim. His lips were black with cigarettes which she knew he smoked: he often smelt of them when he came home … But she kept this secret knowledge to herself since she didn’t like to set up her husband against him. She understood that the best way to attain some peace of mind in life was to maintain silence; ultimately, she found that things resolved themselves in the best manner possible or fizzled out. She found that it was only speech which made existence worse every time. Lately, after he had become affluent, she found that her husband showed excessive emphasis, rightly or wrongly, in all matters; she realized that he had come to believe that whatever he did was always right. She did her best not to contradict him: she felt that he strained himself too much in his profession, and that she ought not to add to his burden. So if he sometimes raved over the mismanagement of the household, she just did not try to tell him that it was otherwise. She served him his food silently, and he himself
discovered later what was right and what was wrong and confessed it to her. Now more than in any other matter she practised this principle where their son was concerned. She knew it would be no use telling her husband not to bother the son over his studies, that it would be no use asking him to return home at seven-thirty each day to sit down to his books with his home teachers … he simply would not return home before nine. It was no use shouting at him for it. It only made one’s throat smart and provided a scene for the people next door to witness. She left it all to resolve itself. Once or twice she attempted to tell the son to be more mindful of his father’s wishes and orders, but he told her to shut up. She left him alone. And she left her husband alone. She attained thereby great tranquillity in practical everyday life.