Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma

by R. K. Narayan

  The intellectual portion of the work was now over, signified by the passing of the editor down the stairs; after which he stepped into the press to attend to the dispatch of copies. The printer lent him a hand in this task. Five hundred copies of The Banner were all over the floor of the printer’s office. They squatted down and gummed, labelled and stamped the copies with feverish speed, and loaded them on the back of a very young printer’s devil, who ran with his burden to the post office at the railway station, where it could always be posted without late fee till 8 p.m.

  This brought him up against the R.M.S. It took him time to understand what R.M.S. meant. But he had to grow familiar with it. He received a letter in his mail-bag one day saying: ‘You are requested to see the undersigned during the working hours on any day convenient to you.’ He was writing his editorial on the new housing policy for Malgudi. Plenty of labour from other districts had been brought in because the district board and the municipality had launched a feverish scheme of road development and tank building, and three or four cotton mills had suddenly sprung into existence. Overnight, as it were, Malgudi passed from a semi-agricultural town to a semi-industrial town, with a sudden influx of population of all sorts. The labour gangs, brought in from other districts, spread themselves out in the open spaces. Babies sleeping in hammocks made of odd pieces of cloth, looped over tree branches, women cooking food on the roadside, men sleeping on pavements – these became a common sight in all parts of Malgudi. The place was beginning to look more and more like a gipsy camp.

  Srinivas made it his mission to attack the conditions in the town in every issue. The municipality feared that they were being made the laughing-stock of the whole country, and decided to take note of the editorials appearing in The Banner. And they revived an old plan, which they had shelved years ago, of subsidizing the development of a new town on the eastern outskirts. It was gratifying to the editor of The Banner to see the effect of his words! He felt that after all something he was saying had got home. He had the pleasure of reflecting on these lines when he received a note from the municipality: ‘The president would like to meet the editor at any time convenient to him on any working day.’ He opened the next and read that the R.M.S. would like to meet him. ‘God! How many people must I go and meet? When have I the time?’ On working days and other days he had to sit in the garret and manufacture ‘copy’; if there was the slightest delay the smoothness of life was affected. That life went on smoothly was indicated by the purring of the treadle below. All went well as long as that sound lasted. The moment it paused he knew he would hear the printer’s voice calling from the bottom of the staircase: ‘Editor! Matter!’ He worked under a continuous nightmare of not being able to meet his printer’s demand. That meant continuous work, night and day, all through the week, and even on a Sunday. He seldom approved of what he wrote and would rewrite and tear up and rewrite, but it was always the printer’s call that decided the final shape.

  ‘When I’m so hard-pressed for time I can’t be bothered in this way,’ he remarked to himself, and tossed away the two letters to a farther corner of his table, where they lost their individualities in a great wilderness of paper. He had learnt to deal with the bulk of his correspondence in this way. ‘Till I can afford to have a secretary and an assistant editor and a personal representative, an accountant, office boy, and above all, a typewriter – all correspondence must wait,’ he said to his papers. Every post brought him a great many letters. He flung away unopened everything that came to him in long envelopes. He shoved it away, out of sight, under the table. He knew what the long envelope contained: unsolicited contributions, poems, essays, sketches. It was surprising how many people volunteered to write, without any other incentive than just seeing themselves in print. And then an equal number of letters demanding to be told what had happened to their contributions; and why there was no reply, even though postage was enclosed. ‘It is not enough, my friend,’ Srinivas said to them mentally, ‘I must have a fair compensation for looking at your handiwork; that is why I don’t open the envelope. Any time you are free you can come and collect it from under my table.’

  And then there were letters from readers, marriage invitations from unknown people, sample packets of ink powder and other things for favour of an opinion, and copies of Government and municipal notifications on thin manifold paper. The last provided him with a miscellany of unwanted information: ‘Note that from the 13th to 15th the railway level-crossing will be closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.,’ said one note.

  ‘Well, I note it for what it is worth; what next?’ Srinivas asked. The municipality sent him statements of average rainfall and maximum and minimum temperatures; somebody sent him calendars, someone else the information that a grandchild was born to him. ‘Why do they think all this concerns me?’ he at first asked, rather terrified. But gradually he grew hardened and learnt to put them away. Most of his correspondence was snuffed out in this manner; but not the R.M.S. and the municipal chairman.

  Very soon he had another letter from the R.M.S. ‘Your kind attention is drawn to our previous letter, dated … and an early reply is solicited.’

  ‘Don’t imagine I’m a member of your red-tape clan,’ he said, putting away the letter once again. The municipal chairman also wrote again, but he had changed his subject matter. ‘I have pleasure in enclosing copy of our Malgudi extension scheme, for favour of your perusal … You will doubtless see that the question engaged our attention even as far back as 1930. The question had to be shelved owing to practical difficulties …’ And so the letter continued.

  He glanced through the scheme. It visualized a garden city at the eastern end of the town, with its own market, business premises, cinema, schools and perfect houses. Somebody had evidently been dreaming about the town. He went through it feeling happy that The Banner had roused the municipal conscience to the extent of making it pull something off a shelf. He studied the pamphlet carefully, and it provided him matter for an article under the heading: ‘Visions on the Shelf.

  The R.M.S. turned out to be more aggressive in their subsequent correspondence. ‘Our repeated efforts to contact you have borne no fruit. Please take note that by posting your journal in a mass at the last clearing time you are causing great dislocation and blocking the R.M.S. work. It would facilitate R.M.S. work if the dispatch were distributed throughout the day, if possible throughout the week.’ Reading this, Srinivas was aghast at their ignorance. Did they imagine that the bundles were ready all through the week?

  He could not resist writing an immediate reply: ‘Sir, Friday 8 o’clock is our posting time at present. If we acted up to your suggestion it would result in something like the following: at 12 midday we should be posting the fourth page, at 1 p.m. the sixth page, at 5 p.m. ninth and tenth, 7 p.m. eleventh and at 8 p.m. twelfth page. Since our readers would doubtless have a great objection to receiving the journal piecemeal we are forced to post the journal in its entirety at 8 p.m. Posting the journal on the other days is not practicable, since no part of it is ready on those days.’ To which he received the reply: ‘It would be considered a favour if you will kindly meet the undersigned on any day during working hours.’ This brought the question back to the starting-point, and he did what he did with the first letter – obliterated it, and the R.M.S. continued to suffer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He hurt his thumb while pinning up a set of proofs. He put away the paper to suck the drop of blood that appeared on his thumb, and sat back. He cracked his fingers: they felt cramped, the tips of his fingers were discoloured with the printers’ ink transferred from rugged proof sheets. His joints ached. He realized that he had been sitting hunched up for several hours correcting proofs. He rose to his feet, picking up the proofs, folded them and heaved them downstairs with the shout: ‘Proofs’ directed towards the printer. He paused for a moment at the northern window, looking at a patch of blue sky, and turned away. He paced up and down. He was searching for the right word. He had been writing a series: �
��Life’s Background’. The entire middle page had been occupied with it for some numbers. He had tried to summarize, in terms of modern living, some of the messages he had imbibed from the Upanishads on the conduct of life, a restatement of subjective value in relation to a social outlook. This statement was very necessary for his questioning mind; for while he thundered against municipal or social shortcomings a voice went on asking: ‘Life and the world and all this is passing – why bother about anything? The perfect and the imperfect are all the same. Why really bother?’ He had to find an answer to the question. And that he did in this series. He felt that this was a rather heavy theme for a weekly reading public, and he was doing his best to word it in an easy manner, in terms of actual experience. It was no easy task. And that entire Thursday he spent in thinking of it, pacing up and down, pricking himself with the pin through absent-mindedness; he roamed his little attic, round and round like a sleep-walker, paused at the farthest window to listen to the rumble of Sarayu. It seemed ages since he had gone to the river. He resolved to remedy this lapse very soon. When he came to the window he could hear the uproar emanating from the tenements below – he always spent a few minutes listening to the medley of voices. He wished he could open the window and take a look at the strife below, just to see what exactly was troubling them, but the owners of the tenements had their legal injunction against it. His mind dwelt for a brief moment on landlords.

  Awaiting the right sentence for his philosophy, he had spent several hours already; he must complete the article by the evening if he was to avoid serious dislocation in the press. Tomorrow there were other things to do. He suddenly flung out his arm and cried: ‘I have got it, just the right –’ and turned towards his table in a rush. He picked up his pen; the sentence was shaping so very delicately; he felt he had to wait upon it carefully, tenderly, lest it should elude him once again: it was something like the very first moment when a face emerges on the printing paper in the developing tray – something tender and fluid, one had to be very careful if one were not to lose it for ever … He poised his pen as if he were listening to some faint voice and taking dictation. He held his breath, for fear that he might lose the thread, and concentrated all his being on the sentence, when he heard a terrific clatter up the stairs. He gnashed his teeth. ‘The demons are always waiting around to create a disturbance; they are terrified of any mental concentration.’ The printer appeared in the doorway, his face beaming. He came in, extending his hand:

  ‘Congratulations! I bring you jolly news. Your wife and son are waiting downstairs.’

  Srinivas pushed back his chair and rose. ‘What! What!’ He became incoherent. He ran out on the landing and looked down: there he saw his wife and son standing below, with their trunks and luggage piled up on the ground.

  ‘Oh!’ he cried. ‘Oh!’ he repeated louder. ‘Come up! Come up!’ He felt foolish and guilty.

  His wife was struggling hard to keep a cheerful face. She came in and stood uncertainly near the only chair in the room, with his son behind her. She looked weary with the journey; her face was begrimed with railway smoke. With considerable difficulty she essayed a smile. The printer said effusively: ‘Take a seat, madam. You should not keep standing.’ It was evident that she was very tired, and she immediately acted on this advice. She sat down at the table and viewed it with bewilderment.

  ‘Why? Why have you all come so suddenly? Why didn’t you write to me?’

  ‘I wrote four letters and my father wrote two,’ she said quietly. He looked helplessly at the printer. He knew what it meant. He must have put them in the company of unopened letters. The boy said: ‘Grandfather wrote to this address –’ ‘Because we didn’t know any other address,’ his mother finished the sentence. There was a certain strain and artificiality in the air, and the printer turned without a word and went downstairs muttering: ‘I will send the boy to fetch some coffee and tiffin.’

  Now his wife burst into a sob as she asked: ‘What is the matter with you? Why do you neglect us in this way? You have not written for months; what have I done that I should be treated like this?’ Her voice was cracked with sorrow. Srinivas was baffled.

  ‘No, no, look here, you should not have worried. I was very busy these months. Being single-handed and having to do everything myself –’

  ‘But just one postcard. You could at least have told us your address. You treated me as if I were dead and made me the laughing-stock of our entire village. I have had to write to you four times to ask if I may come –’

  The boy said: ‘Grandfather got your address from a copy of the paper.’ The boy spoke as if they had been doing a piece of detective work.

  ‘Oh, I see. But such a lot of letters come here. Sometimes it happens –’ he meandered.

  His wife stopped crying, surveyed the room, and asked: ‘Is this where you live?’

  ‘Oh, no. I have a house. Let us go there.’

  His eye fell on the sheet of paper on the table. He couldn’t afford to leave it now. He asked: ‘How did you find your way here? It must have been difficult.’

  ‘We arrived here at the station at two o’clock, and for over three hours we went about searching for you, and then a student brought us here.’ Her voice shook, and she was on the point of crying once again. She gulped down a sob and said: ‘This little fellow, Ramu, he was like an elder. I never knew he could take charge of me so well.’ She looked proudly at her son. Srinivas cast him a smile and patted his back. He scrutinized his son: he seemed to have grown an inch or two since he saw him last. The coat he wore was too small for him, appearing to stop at his waist, his sleeves stopped four inches beyond the wrist, the collar was frayed: he had neglected his family. He cast a look at his wife: she wore a very inferior discoloured cotton sari, patched here and there. ‘Am I guilty of the charges of neglect?’ he asked himself. ‘Family duties come before any other duty. Is it an absolute law? What if I don’t accept the position? I am sure, if I stick to my deeper conviction, other things like this will adjust themselves.’

  There was a moment’s silence as he ruminated over this question. His wife had already risen, ready to start out. He muttered: ‘Just a minute,’ gripped his pen, dipped it in ink and wrote: ‘Notes for article for third week. Family life: Did the philosopher mean family life’s all-absorbing nature when he cried for relief from its nightmare? Family preoccupation is no better than occupying oneself solely with one’s body and keeping it in a flourishing condition. Man is condemned to be charged with neglect either here or in the heavens. Let him choose where he would rather face the calumny.’

  He had completed the sentence when the printer came in again, blowing out the remark: ‘I say, Srinivas, you are trying them too much, I fear, keeping them waiting!’ Srinivas put away his pen, explaining apologetically: ‘I had to note down something at once; otherwise I’m in danger of losing it for ever.’ Now a boy entered, bearing plates and cups on a tray. The printer said: ‘Take your seat, madam, have some coffee.’

  ‘No, no,’ she protested. ‘I’m not in need –’ She was shy and inarticulate in the presence of the printer. Ramu watched the scene with dislike and boredom. He kept throwing at the tray hungry side-glances, hoping that his mother’s refusal would not lead to the removal of the tray. Noticing it, the printer said: ‘Come on, young man,’ and handed him a plate; he then rose, saying to Srinivas: ‘Please persuade your wife to take something. She has had a tiring journey.’ He went down the steps. Srinivas held a plate to his wife. ‘Come on –’

  ‘Hotel food! I can’t,’ she said. She was brought up in a very orthodox manner in her little village. ‘And I can’t eat any food without a bathe first. It’d be unthinkable.’ The boy tried to say through his full mouth: ‘Mother has been fasting since yesterday wouldn’t take anything on the way.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Srinivas.

  ‘Should you ask?’ she replied.

  ‘What foolish nonsense is this?’ Srinivas cried. He stood looking at her for a moment as if she we
re an embodiment of knotty problems. He knew what it was: rigorous upbringing, fear of pollution of touch by another caste, orthodox idiocies – all the rigorous compartmenting of human beings. He looked at her with despair. ‘Look here, I don’t like all this. You eat that stuff. What does it matter who has prepared it, as long as it is clean and agreeable? It is from a Brahmin hotel. Even if it isn’t, you have got to eat it, provided it is clean and the sort of thing you eat. We have all been eating it, and I assure you we have neither felt poisoned in this life nor lost a claim for a place in heaven. You could share the same fate with us, I think.’ He pressed a plate into her hand and compelled her to accept it. The boy added: ‘It is quite good, Mother, eat it.’

  Having been used to the spacious courtyards and halls of their village home, his wife stood speechless when she beheld her home at the back of Anderson Lane. The very first question she asked was: ‘How can we live here?’

  ‘Oh, you will get used to it,’ Srinivas replied.

  ‘But what small rooms and partitions!’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. He is a rapacious rascal, our landlord. You are welcome to tackle him whenever you like.’

  ‘But what a locality! Couldn’t you get – ?’

  ‘Yes, it is a horrible locality. But a lot of men, women, and children are living here; we are one of them.’

  Meanwhile they found Ramu missing. Looking about, Srinivas saw him engaged in a deep conversation with a boy of his own age, living in an adjoining block of rooms. They saw Ramu open his friend’s wooden box and dive into it and bring out something. ‘He seems to know already where everything is kept in that house,’ Srinivas said. ‘Ramu, come here,’ he called. His son came up with his friend behind him. ‘This is our house,’ Srinivas told him. Ramu seemed very pleased to hear it. ‘Do you like it?’ Ramu looked about, looked at his friend, and they both giggled. ‘What is your friend’s name?’