Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (8 page)

The moment he stepped past the threshold of his home he had to face an annoyed inquiry: ‘Do you forget that you have a home?’

‘What is the matter?’ he asked, going on to his coat-stand, removing his coat or upper-cloth, and putting it on the hook. He found his son already asleep on a mat in the front room while his wife sat in a corner reading some obscure novel. It was unnecessary for him to ask ‘What is the matter?’ He knew that it must be the same set of causes over and over again: first and foremost his
late-coming; secondly, his lack of interest in home-management; thirdly, his apparent neglect of his child; fourthly, insufficient money; and so on and so on – stretching on to infinity. He didn’t receive a reply, and he preferred not to press his question further, for he saw outlined against the opposite window the bank clerk’s mother, doubtless waiting to follow the progress of the exchanges between them. He passed on to the dining-room, where a couple of leaves were spread out ready. ‘Why can’t you sit down and eat when you are hungry,’ he said, ‘instead of sitting up like this for me?’

‘I certainly can’t do that,’ she retorted, put away her novel, and rose without a smile, carrying the lamp in her hand. The leaf spread under the window was for him. He sat down before it; his fingers were ink-stained and cramped.

‘Please wash your fingers,’ she implored, ‘that ink may be poison.’

‘I’ve tried. I should have to scrub off my skin. That stain won’t go. I seem to be born with it,’ he said, feeling pleased with the idiom. The lamp was placed in the middle doorway so that there should be light both in the front room, where the child was sleeping, and in the kitchen. She served him rice, remarking apologetically: ‘Don’t blame me if you find the dinner bare. I couldn’t get even the simplest vegetable.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You know I don’t bother about these things.’

‘But it does no good to be swallowing bare rice morning and night. I don’t know what has happened to all the vegetable-sellers. I can’t find anyone to go up to the street-end and get it. I tried to persuade Ramu to go and buy three pies’ worth of coriander leaves, but he came back without them.’

‘He is such a child,’ Srinivas said, throwing a look at the sleeping form in the shadowy hall. His wife was argumentative about it: ‘But who else is there to go, if he can’t?’

‘Why don’t you go out and do the shopping yourself? It will give you such a nice outing, too!’ Srinivas said.

She looked up at him, puzzled whether to take his remark literally or as a joke. And finally she said: ‘I don’t know – but if someone escorts me I could go and do the shopping; it would be the best thing to do.’

Srinivas had just cleared his table of a bundle of proofs. He had finished writing his editorial and some of the miscellaneous contributions and letters to the editor. He cracked his aching fingers, leaned back in his chair, got up and paced a few steps up and down, and then stood in the doorway, looking at the lane. He was surprised to see his neighbour, the bank clerk, walking down the lane. He called out his name: ‘Ravi! Ravi!’ The other looked up and hesitated. Srinivas said: ‘Come up and see
The Banner.’
The other came up, looking timidly around. He asked: ‘Am I not disturbing you?’

‘Not now,’ Srinivas replied. ‘I’m fairly free. What brought you here? Have you no office?’ The other seemed reluctant to notice so many questions. He merely pursed his lips, drew up the pincushion, and started pulling out the pins and rearranging them. Srinivas observed him for a while and asked: ‘How is your boss?’

‘Bad as ever,’ he replied. ‘Today I wanted an hour off, and how he shouted when he heard it. My ear-drums are still trembling.’

‘He let you off?’

‘Oh, yes. He exhausted himself so much that he banged the table and said “Damn it. You are persistent. But don’t do it again”, and so I’m here.’ He laughed. ‘It is his usual way of blessing any idea that I conceive. I’ve grown used to it.’

‘Rarely do people come up this way,’ Srinivas said testingly.

Ravi pushed away the pin-cushion, picked up a paperweight, and tried to make it stand on its top before answering: ‘You doubtless wish to know why I’m here. I came to look for someone I lost sight of ages ago, as it seems.’ Srinivas smiled and didn’t wish to press the question further. He scented some complexity. Meanwhile Ravi picked up a pencil, snatched a piece of paper, and after plying the pencil for a few minutes,
pushed the paper across. ‘Well, this is the person,’ he said. It was a perfect pencil sketch of a girl of about nineteen: the pencil outline was thin and firm, etched finely like an image in the mind. A couple of flowers in her hair, a light caught by a gem on her earring, and a spot of light caught by the pupil of her eye. Srinivas became breathless at the sight of it. ‘I say – this is –’ He sought and fumbled for a correct expression, but could get nothing more than: ‘This is wonderful. I never knew you could draw so well.’

‘Drawing’s not required in a bank,’ Ravi replied. He picked up the picture, gazed at it, tore off an edge and rolled it away.

‘Don’t tear it,’ Srinivas cried, snatching it back. He gazed at it. ‘I almost feel like returning the smile on her lips!’ he exclaimed.

‘That’s her expression,’ Ravi said enthusiastically. ‘She always smiled very slightly, but you know – what a power it had!’

‘Who is she?’

‘Why go into all that now?’ Ravi said with a sigh. ‘It was some years ago. I saw her one evening coming out of Iswara’s temple –’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I was very religious then. For months I went there without noticing anything, but that day I saw her, suddenly, as in a vision; she stood framed on the threshold of the temple; there were just six stars in the sky, and the grey tower rose among them. She had a flower in her hair, and a silver tray balanced ever so elegantly on her palm – so tall and slender. I don’t know how to describe – I saw her just as I was about to go into the temple – I stood arrested on the spot.’

The boy brought in coffee. Srinivas pushed a cup across to the other. They sipped their coffee in silence, while the treadle groaned below and a hawker’s voice rang along the street. Ravi asked: ‘Would you like me to continue my story?’

‘Yes, yes, certainly.’

‘I used to meet her regularly after that at the temple. I started to make an oil portrait of her at home at the end of each day. It is an unfinished picture now, because I suddenly lost sight of her.’

‘Oh, you didn’t know where she lived?’

‘Yes, I knew. They were in Car Street.’

‘Did you visit them?’

‘Oh, no; they would have thrown me out. Her father was a severe-looking man. I used to hurry off whenever I saw him standing at his gate; but I passed that way several times every day.’

‘What was her name?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t know, I couldn’t ask.’

‘You were friends?’

‘I don’t know. We were friends in the sense that she was used to seeing me at the temple, and once she gave me a piece of coconut offered to the gods. Oh! How I treasured it! But how long can a piece of coconut keep?’

‘Was she married?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Oh, what excitement it was for me, following her back home every day at a distance of about ten yards. Not a word passed between us, but I was there every day at the temple, and she looked for me, I think. And at her gate she just turned her head slightly and passed in; and I ran straight off to my house and worked on the picture, though it was so difficult without sufficient light.’

‘I never knew you were an artist,’ Srinivas declared.

‘I’m not. I’m only a bank clerk. In those days it was different. I was a student in college. My father was in good health and was a flourishing lawyer. Nobody bothered about what I did in those days – all the family responsibility came on me rather suddenly, you know, when my father was stricken with paralysis.’

‘What happened to the picture you were working on?’

‘Nothing. I had to drop it. She disappeared one day; and with that the picture ended, and I put away my paint-box for ever. The picture is still there at the bottom of a lumber box.’

‘What happened to the girl?’

‘I missed her one evening at the temple, and then I waited there till late in the evening; I still remember what a fool I must have looked to passers-by. I waited there till about eight p.m. and went up to Car Street. Their house was dark. I later learnt that they had left the town. I lost all trace of them for years. Just today as I sat at my table I saw through the window someone looking like her father going by in a car and at once I left the office to find out if they were back here. I have been all over the
town this afternoon, looking here and there. You know this is the first sketch I’ve done after that day.’ He added, half humorously: ‘Now that you have that sketch you will keep it with you and keep your eyes open. If ever you see her you must –’

‘Oh, yes, certainly, I will tell you.’

Ravi’s eye lit up with joy at the mention of this possibility. He leaned over the table and gripped my arm and said: ‘You will tell me, won’t you? You will save me. I promise I will draw hundreds of sketches; only tell me that she is here – that you have seen her –’

After that Ravi began to drop in at the office now and then, just to ask for news. It was Srinivas’s greatest dread lest anyone should disturb him on a Friday – the day on which the journal emerged in its final shape. Srinivas was in a state of acute tension on that day, and he dreaded hearing any footsteps on the creaking wooden staircase. But Ravi seemed to choose just those days. Directly his office closed he came there, crossed the threshold, grinning a little nervously. Srinivas looked up with a very brief lifeless smile and returned to the papers on his table, as Ravi seated himself on a stool at the other end of the room. He felt annoyed at this interruption, and he wanted to say aloud: ‘Why do you pester me, of all days, today?’ But, as a matter of self-discipline, he tried to smother even the thought. Some corner of his mind said: ‘Don’t be such an uncivilized brute. He is suffering silently. It is your duty, as a fellow being, to give him asylum.’ And he looked up at him and murmured: ‘Office over?’ ‘Yes,’ the other said, and he timidly added: ‘How is the sketch?’ Srinivas put away the pen and looked at him with a smile and then took out of a drawer a cardboard file, in which he carefully preserved the sketch. He brought it out and gazed at it, and that transformed the entire situation. The light emanating from the eyes of the portrait touched with an exaltation the artist sitting before him and gave him a new stature. He was no longer a petty, hag-ridden bank clerk, or an unwelcome, thoughtless visitor, but a personality, a creative artist, fit to take rank among the celestials.

Srinivas knew what silent suffering was going on within that shabby frame. He knew that an inspiration had gone out of his life. He had no doubt a home, mother, and brothers and sisters,
but all that signified nothing. His heart was not there, any more than it was in the bank. Srinivas felt pity for him and murmured as if apologizing to him: ‘You see, this is a day of pressure and so –’ And the other replied: ‘Yes, yes, I shall be very quiet. Don’t disturb yourself; I just came to know how you were faring,’ which was false, since Srinivas very well knew that he came there only in the hope of news about his lost love; and Srinivas knew that that was the meaning of the question: ‘How is the sketch?’ though he pretended to treat it at its face value, and handed the other the sketch and returned to his duties. For a long hour or more Ravi sat there, gazing at the pencil sketch in the fading evening light, as Srinivas grew more and more sunk in his papers and work.

When the final proof had gone Srinivas got up, saying: ‘I’m going down to the press.’ Ravi handed him back the sketch. Srinivas locked it up in his drawer again, and they went downstairs. The printer looked at him with an irrepressible curiosity. Srinivas explained: ‘A friend of mine, my neighbour.’ And the printer ostentatiously said: ‘Come in, please, come in, you are welcome.’ There on the floor were heaped copies of
The Banner
waiting to be folded and posted. The editor sat down, along with the printer and his urchin, to accomplish this task. The treadle continued to grind away more copies, the printer shouting from where he was: ‘Boys, go on slowly – watch the ink.’

And this made Srinivas wonder, as he again and again wondered, how many people might be slaving at the task of turning out
The Banner
beyond that purple screen. For he never could pluck up enough courage to peer into that sanctum, since he always heard the printer declare with considerable emphasis: ‘That is the one point on which I’m always very strict – the best of my friends and relations have not seen inside there. For instance, you have never seen my machine-room, sir, and how much I appreciate your respecting my principles: I’ve pointed out your example to hundreds of my customers.’ A statement which made Srinivas keep away from that room more than ever. He remembered that at Chidambaram temple there was a grand secret, beyond the semi-dark holy of holies, beyond the twinkling lights of the inner shrine. He had always wondered what it might be; but
those who attempted to probe it too deliberately lost their sight, if not their lives. There was a symbolism in it: it seemed to be expressive of existence itself; and Srinivas saw no reason why he should grudge the printer his mysterious existences and mazes beyond the purple curtain.

Ravi sat in a chair scanning the page of a copy of
The Banner
, while the others were busily packing and gumming. The printer threw him a look once or twice, and then held up a folded paper to him: ‘Mister – I have not the pleasure of knowing your name –’

‘Ravi.’

‘What a fine name. Mr Ravi, will you please apply this gum lightly here, and press it?’ Ravi did as he was told. And the next stage for him was to share the task with the others, and he received no small encouragement from the printer. ‘That’s right. We must all pull together. Why do I do this when my business should be over with the printing of the copies? It is because I treat it as a national duty; it is neither the editor’s nor anybody else’s; it is the country’s, and every man who calls himself a true son of the country should do his bit for it.’ Srinivas felt that this was a flamboyant sentiment. ‘No, no, nothing so grand about it, I assure you. It is just a small weekly paper, that is all. It is not right to call everything a national service.’ The printer brushed him aside with: ‘Modesty has done no good to anyone in this world, as I told a customer only this morning. He started raving over some slight delay in the matter of a visiting card. I told him, “You can offer me a lakh of rupees, but that will not tempt me to do anything other than
Banner
work on
Banner
press day”.’

Srinivas wended his way home through the dark, ill-lit lanes. Ravi followed him silently. ‘Isn’t it very late for you?’ Srinivas asked. ‘It is all the same,’ the other remarked. ‘I really enjoyed being in your office. In fact, I love this whole place.’ He pointed at the soft stabs of feeble, flickering light emanating from door chinks and the windows of humble homes, the only light available here, since the municipal lighting stopped at Market Road. ‘I like this lighting. I feel like doing an entire picture with half-lights and shadows some day; I don’t know when.’

His aged mother waited at the door anxiously. ‘Ravi!’ she exclaimed anxiously. ‘Why are you so late?’ His youngest brother
and sister clung to his arms as he turned into his portion of the house without a word.

With a copy of the latest
Banner
rolled in his hand Srinivas entered his home. His wife sat by the lamplight reading her novel. He held his latest copy to her with the remark: ‘I hope you will find something to interest you at least this week.’ She hastily opened it, ran her eyes through and put it away with: ‘I will read it later,’ and she went in to get his dinner ready. She had accommodated herself to his habits fairly well now, and accepted his hours without much grumbling. But she was an uncompromising critic of his journal. She always glanced through the copy he brought in and said: ‘Why don’t you put in something to interest us?’

‘If you keep on reading it, you will find it interesting,’ he said, and loathed himself for appearing to be so superior. He felt that in all the welter of economic, municipal, social and eternal questions he was threshing out he was making the journal somewhat heavy and that he was putting himself one remove from his public. This was a pathological mood that seized him now and then, whenever he thought of his journal. He was never very happy on the day his journal came out. He ate his dinner silently ruminating over it. His wife stooped over his leaf to serve him. She had fried potato chips in ghee for him and some cucumber soaked in curd; she had spent the day in the excitement of preparing these and was now disappointed to see him take so little notice of them. She watched him for a moment as he mechanically picked up the bits and stuffed them into his mouth. He was thinking: ‘There is some deficiency in
The Banner
. I wish I knew what it was. Something makes it not quite acceptable to the people for whom it is intended. There is a lot of truth in my wife’s complaint.’ She watched him for a moment and asked: ‘Do you remember what you have just been eating?’ He came to himself with a start and smiled uncomfortably. She could not be put off with that. She insisted: ‘Tell me what you have eaten off that corner.’ He looked at the corner of the leaf helplessly and answered: ‘Some fried stuff’ ‘Yes – what vegetable?’ He puckered his brow in an effort to recollect. He knew how much it would hurt his wife. He felt rather pained. ‘I’m sorry, I was thinking of something else. Was it raw plantain?’