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

by R. K. Narayan

  In a short while a tender voice called: ‘Appa, Appa,’ and the printer looked at the door and said: ‘Come here, darling, what do you want?’ A child, a girl of about four, came through, climbed on to his knee, approached his right ear and whispered into it. ‘All right, bring the stuff down. Let us see how you are all going to serve this uncle,’ pointing at Srinivas. The child went in with a smile, and came back with a tumbler of water and set it on the stool; it was followed by another child bringing another tumbler. The second child was slightly older. She complained: ‘Look at Radhu; she will not let me carry anything.’ The printer patted their backs and said: ‘Hush! You must not fight. All of you try and bring one each.’ He turned to Srinivas and said: ‘Would you like to wash your hands?’ Srinivas picked up the tumbler, went to the veranda steps and washed his hands, drying them on his handkerchief

  Now he found a sort of procession entering – a procession formed by four children, all daughters, ranging from nine to three, each carrying a plate or tumbler of something and setting it on a table and vying with each other in service. The small table was littered with plates. The printer dragged it into position before Srinivas and said: ‘Well, honour me, sir –’

  ‘What a worry for your wife, doing all this,’ Srinivas said apologetically.

  ‘She has got to do it in any case, sir. We’ve five children at home, and they constantly nag her – so this is no extra bother. Please don’t worry yourself on that score.’

  After the tiffin and coffee the printer cleared the table himself and came out bearing on his arm a small child under two years, who had not till then appeared. Srinivas, by a look at the child, understood that it must be the one the artist would not draw. ‘Is this your last child?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I hope it is,’ the printer said, and added: ‘I’m very fond of this fellow, being my first son. I wanted that artist to draw a picture of him. I don’t know, he is somehow delaying and won’t show me anything –’

  ‘Artists are difficult to deal with. They can’t do a thing unless the right time comes for it.’

  ‘I thought it would be so nice to hang up a sketch of this boy on the wall …’ Srinivas wondered for a brief second if he could tell him the truth, but dismissed the idea. ‘Well, we will have some entertainment now,’ he said. He called: ‘Radhu!’ and the young child came up. He said: ‘Come on, darling, this uncle wants to see you dance. Call your sisters.’ She looked happy at the prospect of a demonstration and called immediately: ‘Sister! Chelli –’ and a number of other names till all the four gathered. She said: ‘Father wants us to dance.’ The eldest looked shy and grumbled, at which their father said: ‘Come on, come on, don’t be shy – fetch that harmonium.’ A harmonium was presently placed on his lap. He pressed its bellow and the keys. The children assembled on a mat and asked: ‘What shall we do, Father?’ darting eager glances at their visitor. He thought it over and said: ‘Well, anything you like, that thing about Krishna –’ He pressed a couple of keys to indicate the tune. The eldest said with a wry face: ‘Oh, that! We will do something else, Father.’

  ‘All right, as you please. Sing that –’ He suggested another song. Another child said, ‘Oh, Father, we will do the Krishna one, Father.’

  ‘All right.’ And the printer pressed the keys of the harmonium accordingly. There were protests and counter-protests, and they stood arguing till the printer lost his temper and cried arbitrarily: ‘Will you do that Krishna song or not?’ And that settled it. His fingers ran over the harmonium keys. Presently his voice accompanied the tune with a song – a song of God Krishna and the cowherds: all of them at their boyish pranks, all of them the incarnation of a celestial group, engaging themselves in a divine game. The children sang and went round each other, and the words and the tune created a pasture land with cows grazing under a bright sun, the cowherds watching from a tree branch and Krishna conjuring up a new vision for them with his magic flute. It seemed to Srinivas a profound enchantment provided by the father and the daughters. And their mother watched it unobtrusively from behind the door with great pride.

  Srinivas was somehow a little saddened by the performance; there was something pathetic in the attempt to do anything in this drab, ill-fitting background. He felt tears very nearly coming to his eyes. Two more song and dance acts followed in the same strain. Srinivas felt an oppression in his chest, and began to wish that the performance would stop; the printer pumping the harmonium on his lap, the bundles of unwashed clothes pushed into a corner, and the children themselves clad uniformly in some cheap grey skirt and shirts and looking none too bright – it all seemed too sad for words. There was another song, describing the divine dance of Shiva: the printer’s voice was at its loudest, and the thin voice of the children joined in a chorus. Just at this moment someone appeared in the doorway and said: ‘Master says he can’t sleep. Wants you to stop the music’ An immediate silence fell upon the gathering. The printer looked confused for a moment and then said: ‘H’m – seal up your master’s doors and windows if he wants to sleep – don’t come here for it. I’m not selling sleep here.’ The servant turned and went away. Srinivas felt uncomfortable, wondering whether he were witnessing a very embarrassing scene. The printer turned to Srinivas: ‘My landlord! Because he has given me this house he thinks he can order us about!’ He laughed as if to cover the situation. He told the children: ‘All right, you finish this dance, darlings.’ He resumed his harmonium and singing, and the children followed it once again as if nothing had happened. It went on for another fifteen minutes, and then he put away the harmonium. ‘Well, children, now go. Don’t go and drink water now, immediately.’ Srinivas felt some compliment was due to them and said: ‘Who taught them all this?’

  ‘Myself – I don’t believe in leaving the children to professional hands.’

  Srinivas addressed the children generally: ‘You all do it wonderfully well. You must all do it again for me another day.’ The children giggled and ran away, out of sight, and the printer’s wife withdrew from behind the door. The printer put away the harmonium and sat back a little, sunk in thought. The children’s voices could be heard nearly at the end of the street: they had all run out to play. The wife returned to the kitchen, and the evening sun threw a shaft of light through the bamboo-trellis, chequering the opposite wall. A deep silence fell upon the company. Srinivas took the envelope out of his pocket and gave it to the printer, who glanced through it and said: ‘It’s my duty to see that The Banner is out again. Please wait. I will see that the journal is set up on a lino machine and printed off a rotary and dispatched in truck-loads every week. For this we need a lot of money. Don’t you doubt it for a moment. I am going to make a lot of money, if it is only to move on to the main building and get that man down here to live as my tenant. And if ever I catch him playing the harmonium here, I will – I will –’ He revelled in visions of revenge for a moment, and then said: ‘A friend of mine is starting a film company and I’m joining him. Don’t look so stunned: we shall be well on our way to the rotary when my first film is completed.’

  ‘Film? Film?’ Srinivas gasped. ‘I never knew that you were connected with any film –

  ‘I’ve always been interested in films. Isn’t it the fifth largest industry in our country? How can I or anyone be indifferent to it? Come along, let us go, and see the studio.’

  ‘Which studio? Where is it?’

  ‘Beyond the river. They have taken five acres on lease.’

  His fur cap and scarf and a coat hanging on a peg were in a moment transferred on to his person. They started out. Sampath stopped a bus on the trunk road. The bus conductor appeared very deferential at the sight of him and found places for him and Srinivas. As the bus moved, Sampath asked the conductor: ‘What sort of collection have you had today?’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ he said, leaning forward.

  ‘Tell your master that I travelled in his bus today.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sampath turned to Srinivas and said: ‘This is almost our ow
n service, you know.’

  ‘You have printed for them?’ Srinivas asked.

  ‘Tons of stuff – every form in their office.’

  ‘What will they do now?’

  ‘They will wait till my rotary is ready.’

  ‘Why, sir?’ the conductor asked, ‘Is your press not working now?’

  ‘Old machines: they are worn out,’ he said easily.

  The bus stopped at the stand beyond Market Square. They got down. Sampath waved his arm. An old Chevrolet came up, with its engine roaring above the road traffic and its exhaust throwing off a smoke-screen. They took their seats. The driver asked: ‘Studio, sir?’ The car turned down Ellaman Street, ground along uneven sandy roads, and then forded the river at Nallapa’s mango grove. People were relaxing on the sands, children played about, the evening sun threw slanting rays on the water. A few bullock-wagons and villagers were crowding at the crossing; the bulb-horn of the taxi rasped out angrily, the driver swore at the pedestrians till they scattered, and then the wheels of the taxi splashed up the water and drenched them. Srinivas peeped out and wished that his friend would put him down there and go forward. He was seized with a longing to sit down on the edge of the river, dip his feet in it, and listen to its rumble in the fading evening light. But the Chevrolet carried him relentlessly on till, half a mile off, it reached a gateway made of two coconut tree-trunks, across which hung the sign ‘Sunrise Pictures’. They got out of the car. Sampath swept his arms in a circle and said: ‘All this is ours.’ He indicated a vast expanse of space enclosed with a fencing of brambles. Groups of people were working here and there; sheets of corrugated iron lay on a pile; some hammering was going on.

  They moved through the lot and reached a brick hutment with a thatched roof. A man emerged from it. He let out a cry of joy on seeing Sampath: ‘I was not sure if you were coming at all.’ The orange rays of the setting sun from beyond the bramble fencing touched him and transfigured for a second even that rotund, elderly man, in whose ears sparkled two big diamonds, and whose cheeks came down in slight folds. He was bald and practically without eyebrows, and his spectacle frames gleamed on his brow.

  ‘This is our editor,’ began Sampath, and Srinivas added: ‘I’ve met him before at your press. Is he not Mr Somu – the district board president?’

  ‘Yes; I relinquished my office six months ago. It is too hard a life for a conscientious man.’

  ‘How is that bridge over Sarayu?’ asked Srinivas.

  ‘Oh, that!’ The other shook his head gloomily. ‘Somehow the function never came off Srinivas looked at the printer questioningly. The printer read his thought at once and hastened to correct it: ‘Not due to me. I printed his speech and delivered the copies in time.’

  ‘Oh, what a waste the whole thing proved to be! I must somehow clear off all that printed stuff; gathering too much dust in a corner of the house,’ said Mr Somu and added: ‘Why keep standing here? Come in, come in.’ He took them in. They sat round a table on iron chairs. Sampath said by way of an opening: ‘The editor wanted to see the studio.’

  ‘I never knew that there was a studio here,’ added Srinivas.

  ‘There is no encouragement for the arts in our country, Mr Editor. Everything is an uphill task in our land. Do you know with what difficulty I acquired these five acres? It was possible only because I was on the district board. I’ve always wanted to serve Art and provide our people with healthy and wholesome entertainment.’ And Srinivas felt that Mr Somu could really still keep his bridge speech, which might serve, with very slight modifications, for the opening of the studio. ‘I’m sparing no pains to erect a first-class studio on these grounds.’

  ‘He has an expert on the task, who is charging about a thousand rupees a month.’

  ‘Come on, let us go round and see –’

  They rambled over the ground, and Mr Somu pointed out various places which were still embryonic, the makeup department, stage one and two, processing and editing, projection room and so forth.

  ‘When do you expect to have it ready?’

  ‘Very soon. The moment our equipment is landed at Bombay. Well, I am entirely depending upon our friend Sampath to help me through all this business, sir. I want to serve people in my own humble way.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In Kabir Lane the old stove-enamelled blue board had been taken down. In its place hung the inscription ‘Sunrise Pictures (Registered Offices)’. Over Sampath’s door shone the brass inscription ‘Director of Productions’. The director was usually to be found upstairs in Srinivas’s garret. Somu was also to be found there several hours a day. Sampath had planted a few more chairs in Srinivas’s office, because, as he said, it was virtually the conference room of Sunrise Pictures.

  A young man in shirt-sleeves, clad in white drill trousers, of unknown province or even nationality, whose visiting card bore the inscription ‘De Mello of Hollywood’ was the brain behind the studio organization. He called himself C.E. (chief executive), and labelled all the others a variety of executives. He was paid a salary of one thousand rupees a month, and Somu had so much regard for him that he constantly chuckled to himself that he had got him cheap. Sampath, too, felt overawed by the other’s technical knowledge, and left him alone, as he roamed over the five acres, from morning to night, supervising and ordering people about, clutching in one hand a green cigarette tin. In addition to raising the studio structure and creating its departments, De Mello established a new phraseology for the benefit of this community. ‘Conference’ was one such. No two persons met, nowadays, except in a conference. No talk was possible unless it were a discussion. There were story conferences and treatment discussions, and there were costume conferences and allied discussions. Lesser persons would probably call them by simpler names, but it seemed clear that in the world of films an esoteric idiom of its own was indispensable for its dignity and development. Kabir Lane now resounded with the new jargon. They sat around Srinivas’s table, and long stretches of silence ensued, as they remained stock still with their faces in their palms, gazing sadly at paperweights and pin-cushions. One might have thought that they were enveloped in an inescapable gloom, but if one took the trouble to clarify the situation by going three miles across the river and asking De Mello he would have explained: ‘The bosses are in a story conference.’

  And what story emerged from it? None for several days. The talk went round and round in circles and yet there was no story. A few heavy books appeared on the table from time to time. Srinivas suddenly found himself up to his ears in the affair. Sampath piloted him into it so deftly that before he knew where he was he found himself involved in its problems, and what is more, began to feel it his duty to tackle them. It took him time to realize his place in the scheme. When he did realize it his imagination caught fire. He felt that he was acquiring a novel medium of expression. Ideas were to march straight on from him in all their pristine strength, without the intervention of language: ideas, walking, talking and passing into people’s minds as images like a drug entering the system through the hypodermic needle. He realized that he need not regret the absence of The Banner. He felt so excited by this discovery that he found himself unable to go on with the conference one afternoon. He suddenly rose in his seat, declaring: ‘I’ve got to do some calm thinking. I will go home now.’ He went straight home, through the blazing afternoon. At Anderson Lane he saw his wife sitting in front of Ravi’s block, along with his mother and sister. A cry of surprise escaped her at the sight of him. She left their company abruptly.

  ‘What is the matter?’ she asked eagerly, following him into their house and closing the main door. He turned on her with amusement and said: ‘What should be the matter when a man returns to his own house?’ She muttered: ‘Shall I make coffee for you? I have just finished mine.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother about all that; I’ve had coffee. Get me a pillow and mat. I’m going to rest.’

  ‘Why! Are you ill?’ she asked apprehensively, and she pulled a pillow
out of the rolls of bedding piled in a corner. The beds fell out of their order and unrolled on the floor untidily. She felt abashed, muttered ‘careless fool’, and engaged herself in rolling them up and rearranging them, while Srinivas took off his upper-cloth and shirt and banyan and went to the bathroom. In the little bathroom a shaft of light fell through a glass tile on the copper tub under the tap and sent out a multi-coloured reflection from its surface. He paused to admire it for a moment, plunged his hands into the tub, splashed cold water all over his face and shoulders. As he came out of the bathroom he hoped that his wife would have spread out the mat for him. But he found her still rolling up the beds.

  ‘Where is my mat?’ he cried. ‘I have no time to lose, dearest. I must sleep immediately.’

  ‘Why have you splashed all that water on yourself like an elephant at the river-edge?’

  ‘I found my head boiling – that’s why I have to do a lot of fresh thinking now.’ He paused before the mirror to wipe his head with a towel and comb back his hair. After that he turned hopefully, but still found her busy with the beds. He cried impatiently: ‘Oh, leave that alone and give me a mat.’ She shot him a swift look and said: ‘The mat is there. If you can’t wait till I put all this back … I hate the sight of untidy beds.’ She went on with her work. Srinivas picked up a mat and spread it in a corner, snatched a pillow and lay down reflecting: ‘How near a catastrophe I have been.’ He looked on his wife’s face, which was slightly flushed with anger. He felt he had come perilously near ruining the day. He knew her nature. She could put up with a great deal, except imperiousness or an authoritarian tone in others. When she was young a music master, who once tried to be severe with her for some reason, found that he had lost a pupil for ever. She just flung away her music notebook, sprang out of the room and bade farewell to music. Everybody at her house respected her sensitiveness, and even Srinivas’s mother was very cautious in talking to her. Srinivas had, on the whole, a fairly even life with her, without much friction, but the one or two minor occasions when he had seemed to give her orders turned out to be memorable occasions. His domestic life seemed to have nearly come to an end each time, and it needed a lot of readjustment on his part later. He respected her sensitiveness. He told himself now: ‘Well, I shot the shaft which has hurt her and brought all that blood to her face.’ He rebuked himself for the slightly authoritative tone he had adopted in demanding the mat. ‘It’s the original violence which has started a cycle – violence which goes on in undying waves once started, either in retaliation or as an original starting-ground – the despair of Gandhi –’ He suddenly saw Gandhi’s plea for non-violence with a new significance, as one of the paths of attaining harmony in life: non-violence in all matters, little or big, personal or national, it seemed to produce an unagitated, undisturbed calm, both in a personality and in society. His wife was still at the beds. He felt it his duty to make it up with her. He asked: ‘When does Ramu return from school?’