Srinivas could not help remarking: ‘I cannot imagine how she could’ve become suddenly so unacceptable.’
‘Well, I didn’t much mind her physical condition. It was her temperament that disgusted me. She was quarrelsome, nagging. In all my years of married life I have never been nagged so much before. She demanded to be taken back to the town that very night and wouldn’t leave me in peace! Imagine! It was at that moment that I decided to stick to your advice. Next afternoon I arranged for her descent. At Koppal I put her into the train and bade her goodbye. She went towards Madras, and I came away here, and I thank God for the relief He smiled weakly and looked at Srinivas. Srinivas sat biting a corner of his lips, his eyes were on the caption on his pad. ‘Cosmic …’ A corner of his mind seized it and struggled with it. ‘Cosmic! Cosmic what …What other title, I must find it before tomorrow, this time …’ He looked up. Sampath watched his face to study his reaction to the story. Srinivas observed that Sampath’s face did not register the satisfaction and relief that his words expressed. He looked downcast. He knew that Sampath was only waiting for a remark from him. He revolved the whole episode in his mind and declared: ‘Sampath, what you say seems too good to be true.’
Sampath covered his eyes with his palm and shook with laughter. He muttered: ‘My editor knows me too well; nothing short of absolute truth will pass with him.’
‘Won’t you tell me exactly what happened?’ Srinivas asked. He added: ‘Don’t, if you don’t like to talk about it.’
‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to talk about it, sir, the only thing left for me now.’ He paused, looked about; the press was running inside. ‘The press seems to be working; I can tell from its sound it is a good one. Is it Simkins’ double cylinder?’
‘Perhaps it is. How do you know?’
‘By mere sound. I am a printer, when all is said and done. Do you agree?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘This is purely a temporary arrangement, I hope. When my plant is ready I cannot allow The Banner to come from any other press. It’s my responsibility, sir.’ Srinivas muttered something noncommittally and asked: ‘How near are you to your rotary?’ Sampath stretched himself out across the table and whispered: ‘Come out, let us sit down somewhere and talk. I don’t like to speak about anything in a fellow printer’s establishment.’ Srinivas threw a desperate look at the paper on his table. He put it away resolutely. He got up. When they came out Srinivas hesitated on the last step, looked up and down and asked: ‘Where is the car you used to ride in?’
‘I suppose carburettor trouble, like me,’ Sampath said, tapping his heart.
‘Shall we walk?’ Srinivas asked.
‘It’s good exercise, isn’t it?’ Sampath said.
They walked along in silence down the Market Road. Traffic flowed past them. Dusk was about them. A few lights twinkled here and there. They walked on in silence.
Srinivas said: ‘When did you come? You have not told me that.’
‘There is a great deal more I haven’t told you,’ he said. Conversation once again became difficult; Srinivas allowed the silence to envelop them completely. He felt mystified by Sampath’s talk and actions. When they had gone a couple of furlongs he asked Sampath: ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Anywhere you like; where we can talk quietly.’
‘Shall we go to Anand Bhavan restaurant, to that special room upstairs?’ asked Srinivas, recollecting their first meeting-place. Sampath said: ‘Yes, a good idea,’ paused for a second and then said: ‘No, sir, not now. I wouldn’t like to go there now; say somewhere else; why not to the river?’ Srinivas gasped with surprise. ‘I didn’t know you cared for the river,’ he said. ‘One has got to like all sorts of things now,’ Sampath said, and ran across to a wayside shop to buy a packet of cigarettes.
At the river he stood on the sand and looked about as if searching for a seat in a theatre hall. Clumps of people were sitting on the sands. ‘I don’t like to be seen by anyone,’ he said. Beyond the other bank, half a mile off, they saw the glare of the studio lights. He blinked at them for a moment and said: ‘They seem to be very busy there.’ Srinivas led him along, and they sat down in a quiet nook, where there was no one. Darkness had gathered about them. The river flowed on into the night. Sampath remained silent for a moment, drawing circles on the sand. Srinivas left him alone and listened to the murmur of the river and the distant, muffled roar of the town. Sampath said: ‘I told you a lie, and you found it out. How I wish it had happened as I said! Then it would have left me without regrets. Could you guess what percentage of it was true?’
‘Yes, up to your reaching the bungalow on the hill-top,’ said Srinivas.
‘Well, sir, you can grant me even a little more. That bungalow was as I said, and her terror was real as she saw the flashing eyes of panthers on the other side of the glass at night; but oh, how sweet she was! I could see her trembling with fright, but she said not a word. She sat up all night trying to brave it. Few women there are in the world who could have helped screaming, under those conditions. You know she was not in the best condition of nerves, but all the same, what self-possession she showed! She sat speaking of some books she had read in her younger days.’ He paused to take out a cigarette and lit it. He blew the smoke into the dark sky. ‘She stood it for three or four days, and then suggested that we might return. I was also glad to get back. As you might know, we should have gone up to a registrar before leaving for Mempi, but she always made some excuse or other and put it off. Finally we decided that we were to go through the formality on coming back here. That was our understanding. We got down from the hills, and we were to catch our train at Koppal at five a.m. next day. It is the most unearthly station you can imagine, with jungles on all sides and a disused railway compartment serving as the station-master’s office. We stayed cooped up in that little office all night. The station-master allowed us to stay up there. We sat on a couple of stools and tried to talk through the night. The bus had put us down at Koppal at six in the evening and we had nearly twelve hours before us for the train. We ate our food and then sat up, intending to talk all night till the arrival of the train. But really there was so little to talk about. Having done nothing but that for five days continuously, I think both of us had exhausted all available subjects. And a passing thought occurred to me that we might have to spend the rest of our lives in silence after we were married. This problem was unexpectedly simplified for me. I must have fallen asleep on my stool. When the train arrived and I woke up, her chair was empty. The train halts there only for four minutes or so, and we had to hurry up.
‘The station-master said: “She left by the eleven down. I gave her a ticket for Madras.”
‘“When?”
‘“At twenty-three hours.”
‘I gnashed my teeth. “What time is that in earthly language?”
‘“Eleven at night.”
‘“What nonsense!” I raved at him.
‘“But the lady gave me to understand that you were going to different places,” he said.
‘I shook my fists in his face and said: “Don’t you see that a husband and wife have got to go together?”
‘“Not always, not necessarily,” he said, and went on to attend to his business. The train halted there for only four minutes.
‘One had to hurry up. “Can I go to Madras?” I asked.
‘“No train towards Madras till …”
‘I was appalled at the prospect of spending half a day more there. I felt like knocking down the station-master. “You should not have allowed her to go.”
‘“We cannot refuse tickets to bona-fide passengers.” He quoted a railway Act.
‘“Oh! Great one, what shall I do now?” I asked. I must have looked ridiculous.
‘“Only a minute more, sir, please make up your mind. I cannot delay the train for anybody’s sake.”
‘I discovered meanwhile a note she had left. It was scrawled on a brown railway sheet. “I am sick of this ki
nd of life and marriage frightens me. I want to go and look after my son, who is growing up with strangers. Please leave me alone, and don’t look for me. I want to change my ways of living. You will not find me. If I find you pursuing me, I will shave off my hair and fling away my jewellery and wear a white sari. You and people like you will run away at the sight of me. I am, after all, a widow and can shave my head and disfigure myself, if I like. If it is the only way out I will do it. I had different ideas of a film life.” Well, sir, that was her letter …’
Sampath pulled out his kerchief and dabbed his eyes and blew his nose. ‘I went to Madras, Trichy, Coimbatore, Mangalore, Bombay and a dozen other places, and tired myself out searching for her… It has all turned out to be a great mess.’
‘What is to happen to the film?’ Srinivas asked.
‘It must be dropped. We’ve been abandoned by both Shiva and Parvathi. And only Kama, the God of Love, is left in the studio.’
‘And he, too, will have to remain invisible for the rest of the story,’ Srinivas added.
‘I shall have to become invisible, too. Otherwise, Sohan Lal and Somu have enough reason to put me in prison,’ Sampath said. He remained in thought for a moment and added, almost with a sigh: ‘Well, I may probably try and save myself if I can interest them in a new story.’ Now Srinivas suddenly saw that this might prove to be the nucleus of a whole series of fresh troubles. He roused himself and said: ‘I think it is time to get up. Tomorrow is press day.’
They walked back in silence. At Market Square, Srinivas realized that they must part. He wanted to ask where Sampath’s family was, what he had done with them, what he was going to do with himself, and so on. But he checked himself. It seemed to him a great, unnecessary strain, sifting grain from chaff in all that he might say. He might probably have his family about him. He might have abandoned them; he might, after all, still have Shanti with him and be planning further adventures, or he might disappear or still dangle a new carrot for Somu and Co. to pursue. But whatever it was, he felt that he was once again in danger of getting involved with him if he asked him too many questions. He saw Sampath hesitating in the square. Bare humanity made him say: ‘Will you come home with me and dine?’
‘Thanks. I’m going to the railway station. I’ll manage there.’ Srinivas forbore to ask ‘Why railway station?’ He told himself: ‘He may meet someone, or go away somewhere or have a dozen other reasons, but I’ve nothing to do with any of them.’ So he merely said: ‘All right then. Goodbye,’ and passed on resolutely. While turning down Anderson Lane he looked back for a second and saw far off the glow of a cigarette end in the square where he had left Sampath; it was like a ruby set in the night. He raised his hand, flourished a final farewell, and set his face homeward.
THE FINANCIAL EXPERT
PART ONE
From time immemorial people seemed to have been calling him ‘Margayya’. No one knew, except his father and mother, who were only dimly recollected by a few cronies in his ancestral village, that he had been named after the enchanting god Krishna. Everyone called him Margayya and thought that he had been called so at his naming ceremony. He himself must have forgotten his original name: he had gradually got into the habit of signing his name ‘Margayya’ even in legal documents. And what did it mean? It was purely derivative: ‘Marga’ meant ‘The Way’ and ‘Ayya’ was an honorific suffix: taken together it denoted one who showed the way. He showed the way out to those in financial trouble. And in all those villages that lay within a hundred-mile radius of Malgudi, was there anyone who could honestly declare that he was not in financial difficulties? The emergence of Margayya was an unexpected and incalculable offshoot of a co-operator’s zeal. This statement will be better understood if we watch him in his setting a little more closely.
One of the proudest buildings in Malgudi was the Central Cooperative Land Mortgage Bank, which was built in the year 1914 and named after a famous Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Sir – –, who had been knighted for his devotion to Cooperation after he had, in fact, lost his voice explaining co-operative principles to peasants in the village at one end and to the officials in charge of the files at the Secretariat end. It was said that he died while serving on a Rural Indebtedness Sub-committee. After his death it was discovered that he had left all his savings for the construction of the bank. He now watched, from within a teak frame suspended on the central landing, all the comings and goings, and he was said to be responsible for occasional poltergeist phenomena, the rattling of paperweights, flying ledgers, and sounds like the brisk opening of folios, the banging of fists on a table, and so on – evidenced by successive night watchmen. This could be easily understood, for the ghost of the Registrar had many reasons to feel sad and frustrated. All the principles of cooperation for which he had sacrificed his life were dissolving under his eyes, if he could look beyond the portals of the bank itself, right across the little stretch of lawn under the banyan tree, in whose shade Margayya sat and transacted his business. There was always a semi-circle of peasants sitting round him, and by their attitude and expression one might easily guess that they were suppliants. Margayya, though very much their junior (he was just forty-two), commanded the respect of those who sat before him. He was to them a wizard who enabled them to draw unlimited loans from the co-operative bank. If the purpose of the co-operative movement was the promotion of thrift and the elimination of middlemen, those two were just the objects that were defeated here under the banyan tree: Margayya didn’t believe in advocating thrift: his living depended upon helping people to take loans from the bank opposite and from each other.
His tin box, a grey, discoloured, knobby affair, which was small enough to be carried under his arm, contained practically his entire equipment: a bottle of ink, a pen and a blotter, a small register whose pages carried an assortment of names and figures, and above all – the most important item – loan application forms of the co-operative bank. These last named were his greatest asset in life, and half his time was occupied in acquiring them. He had his own agency at work to provide him with these forms. When a customer came, the very first question Margayya asked was, ‘Have you secured the application form?’
‘No.’
‘Then go into that building and bring one – try and get one or two spare forms as well.’ It was not always possible to secure more than one form, for the clerks there were very strict and perverse. They had no special reason to decline to give as many forms as were required except the impulse to refuse anything that is persistently asked for. All the same, Margayya managed to gather quite a lot of forms and kept them handy. They were taken out for use on special occasions. Sometimes a villager arrived who did not have a form and who could not succeed in acquiring one by asking for it in the bank. On such occasions Margayya charged a fee for the blank form itself, and then another for filling in the relevant details.
The clerks of the bank had their own methods of worrying the villagers. A villager who wanted to know his account had to ask for it at the counter and invariably the accounts clerk snapped back, ‘Where is your passbook?’ A passbook was a thing the villager could never keep his hand on. If it was not out of sight it was certain to be out of date. This placed the villager fully at the mercy of the clerk, who would say: ‘You will have to wait till I get through all the work I have now on hand. I’m not being paid to look after only your business here.’ And then the peasant would have to hang about for a day or two before getting an answer to his question, which would only be after placating the clerk with an offering in cash or kind.
It was under such circumstances that Margayya’s help proved invaluable. He kept more or less parallel accounts of at least fifty of the members of the bank. What its red-tape obstructed, he cleared up by his own contrivance. He carried most of the figures in his head. He had only to sight a customer (for instance Mallanna of Koppal, as it now happened to be) to say at once: ‘Oh! you have come back for a new loan, I suppose. If you pay seventy-five rupees more, you
can again take three hundred rupees within a week! The bye-law allows a new loan when fifty per cent is paid up.’
‘How can I burden myself with a further loan of three hundred, Margayya? It’s unthinkable.’
Now would begin all the persuasiveness that was Margayya’s stock-in-trade. He asked point blank, ‘What difference is it going to make? Are you not already paying a monthly instalment of seventeen rupees eight annas? Are you or are you not?’
‘Yes … I’m paying. God knows how much I have to –’
‘I don’t want all that,’ Margayya said, cutting him short. ‘I am not concerned with all that – how you pay or what you do. You may perhaps pledge your life or your wife’s saris. It is none of my concern: all that I want to know is whether you are paying an instalment now or not.’
‘Yes, master, I do pay.’
‘You will continue to pay the same thing, that is all. Call me a dog if they ask you for even one anna more. You fool, don’t you see the difference? You pay seventeen rupees eight annas now for nothing, but under my present plan you will pay the same seventeen rupees eight annas but with another three hundred rupees in your purse. Don’t you see the difference?’
‘But what’s the use of three hundred rupees, master?’
‘Oh! I see, you don’t see a use for it. All right, don’t come to me again. I have no use for nincompoops like you. You are the sort of fellow who won’t –’ He elaborated a bawdy joke about him and his capacity, which made the atmosphere under the tree genial all round. The other villagers sitting around laughed. But Margayya assumed a stern look, and pretended to pass on to the next question in hand. He sat poring over some papers, with his spectacles uneasily poised over his nose. Those spectacles were a recent acquisition, the first indication that he was on the wrong side of forty. He resisted them as long as he could – he hated the idea of growing old, but ‘long-sight’ does not wait for approval or welcome. You cannot hoodwink yourself or anyone else too long about it – the strain of holding a piece of paper at arm’s length while reading stretches the nerves of the forearm and invites comments from others. Margayya’s wife laughed aloud one day and asked: ‘Why don’t you buy a pair of glasses like other young men of your age? Otherwise you will sprain your hand.’ He acted upon this advice and obtained a pair of glasses mounted in silver from the V.N. Stores in the Market. He and the proprietor of the shop had been playmates once, and Margayya took the glasses on trial, and forgot to go that way again. He was accosted about it on the road occasionally by the rotund optician, who was snubbed by Margayya: ‘Haven’t you the elementary courtesy to know the time and place for such reminders?’
Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma Page 25