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

by R. K. Narayan

  A peon came up to say, ‘The Manager is free.’

  ‘All right, I’ll be coming,’ said Margayya. He liked to give an impression that he was in no hurry to run into the Manager’s room at his call. He looked through some papers in his pocket, folded and put them back, and sauntered into the Manager’s room.

  The Manager was a very curt, business-like gentleman who had recently been transferred to this branch. ‘Sit down, please, what can I do for you?’ he asked. He was a man soured by constant contact with people who came to ask for overdrafts or loans on insufficient security. The moment he heard a footstep approaching, he first prepared himself to repel any demand. So, according to his custom, he put himself behind a forbidding exterior for a moment, and assumed a monosyllabic attitude.

  ‘I wish to open an account,’ said Margayya. The Manager could not take it in easily at first. He still had his suspicions. This man might be anybody; might have come to open an account or to open the safe … This hostility affected Margayya too. He said at once, ‘You don’t seem to want a new client … If that is so …’ He pretended to rise.

  ‘Sit down please,’ said the other. ‘We have instructions not to admit too many new accounts, but I should like to know –’

  ‘You would like to know whether I am a bankrupt or what. All right, I am not anxious to have an account here. I want it here because it is quite near to my own business place.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘You will know it presently.’

  ‘Really? What business?’

  Margayya would not answer this question. The more the other pressed for an answer, the more he resisted. ‘Let me tell you this: it is a very specialized business: my clients are chiefly peasants from the villages. I have a great deal to do with their harvests and advances and so forth.’ To further inquiries by the Manager Margayya refused to give an answer: ‘I cannot give any details of my business at the moment to you or to anyone. No one will be able to get these things out of me. But let me tell you: I have come here only to deposit my money and use it, not to take money out of you … I can quite see what is at the back of y our mind. Now tell me whether you would care to have my account here or not …’ Now he was taking out his trump, namely, the cheque given to him by Lai. ‘If you don’t want me here, give me cash for it; but if you think I am good enough for you, start an account with this.’

  ‘Have you an account anywhere else?’

  ‘I don’t answer that question,’ said Margayya out of sheer financial pugnacity; he could have told him that he had quite a sizeable account in Commerce Bank in Race Course Road.

  The Bank Manager felt that here was a man who knew his mind and felt a regard for him. ‘Of course I will open your account here,’ he said with sudden warmth. ‘What does a bank exist for unless to serve its clients?’

  ‘Quite right,’ Margayya said. ‘I quite appreciate,’ he said patronizingly, ‘your precaution as a banker. Only a business man can appreciate it in another business man.’

  He had a feeling that he had after all found the right place for himself in life – the right destination, the right destination being IO Market Road. It was a block of four shops, each about twelve feet square, with a narrow corridor running in front which was thrown in as a sort of grace to the tenants. The other three were taken by a tailor whose single machine went on rattling all day and night over the din of clients who came to demand their overdue clothes, and next to it was a board announcing itself as the Tourist Bureau, having a number of small chairs and a few benches, and a fourth shop was a doctor’s, who claimed to have practised under a great seer in the Himalayas and to be able to cure any disease with rare herbs. Margayya was pleased with this spot. It was a combination which seemed to him ideal. On the very first day he came there he felt that these were just the men with whom he could live: ‘They are not people who are likely to interfere with my work. Moreover, it is likely that people who come to the tailor or the doctor or the tourist bureau are just the people who have some surplus cash and who are likely to be interested in my business too.’

  It was Dr Pal who put him into this setting. Dr Pal sought him out one day at his house just as he was bullying his son over his lessons. He walked in saying, ‘I didn’t know your house exactly, but just took a chance and came over. I was just sauntering down the road wondering whom to ask when I heard your voice.’

  Margayya had a slate in his hand and there was a frown on his face and tears in his son’s eyes. He got over his confusion and affected a smile: ‘Oh, Doctor, Doctor, what have you been doing with yourself?’

  The doctor looked at Balu and said, ‘You have evidently been trying to teach this young man. Don’t you know that for parents to teach their off-spring is prohibited in all civilized countries?’ He then said to the boy, as if taking charge of him immediately, ‘Now run off, little man.’ He turned ceremoniously to Margayya and added, ‘Of course with your permission.’ Balu did not wait for any further concession; he swept aside his books and ran out of sight as if a bear were behind him.

  Margayya’s mind had still not come to rest. He kept looking after his son and mumbled, ‘You have no idea how indifferent and dull present-day boys are.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t tell me that … Remember correctly: do you think you gave an easy time to your father or the teachers? Just think over it honestly.’

  It was not a line which Margayya was prepared to pursue. He brushed aside the topic, remembering suddenly that he had not been sufficiently hospitable. He burst into sudden activity, and began to fuss elaborately over his visitor. He jumped to his feet, clutched the other’s hand, and said, ‘Oh, oh, Doctor, what a pleasure to meet you after all these years! Where have you been all the time? What have you been doing with yourself? What is the meaning of cutting off old friends as you did?’ He unrolled a new mat, and apologized, ‘You know I have no sofa or chair to offer –’

  ‘Well, I didn’t come to be put on to a sofa.’

  ‘That is right. I don’t like furniture, the type of furniture which does not suit us; we are made to sit erect with our feet dangling –’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Dr Pal, ‘if the prevalence of nervous disorders in the present day might be due to the furniture which has become popular. In ancient days our ancestors squatted on the floor, stretched themselves as much as they liked and lived to be wise old men.’

  Margayya could not understand whether the man was joking with him or was in earnest. He called his wife and said, ‘Get two cups of coffee ready immediately. My old friend has come.’ While waiting for coffee he said, ‘Now tell me what you have been doing with yourself, Doctor. Where have you been hiding all these days?’

  The doctor said, ‘I had gone for a little training in Tourism.’

  Margayya was bewildered. This man was specializing in obscure and rare activities. ‘What is Tourism?’ he asked.

  ‘It is a branch of social activity,’ the doctor said. ‘The basic idea is that all people on earth should be familiar with all parts of the earth.’

  ‘Is it possible?’

  ‘It is not, and that is why there must be a specialist in Tourism in every town and city.’

  ‘What is Tourism?’ Margayya asked innocently once again.

  The doctor viewed him with pity and said, ‘I will explain to you all about it by and by one day when we meet in my office … Now tell me about yourself.

  ‘No, you tell me about yourself first,’ Margayya said, with a vague desire to avoid the theme of himself for the moment. There was at the back of his mind a faint fear lest the doctor should ask him to render the accounts of Domestic Harmony. He wondered if the man had hunted him down for this and he wished to be on his guard. He had hardly made up his mind as to what he should say if he broached the subject, when, as if reading his thoughts, Pal said, ‘I came here some time ago, but didn’t like to meet you lest you should think I had come after my book.’

  Margayya sniggered and said somewhat pointlessly, ‘Oh, isn’
t it quite a long time since we met?’

  ‘Yes, ages since. I have been away for a long time. You know I am no longer on that paper. I gave it up. It did not seem to me serious enough work. I always feel that we must do something that contributes to the sum and substance of human experience. Otherwise all our jobs seem to be just futile.’

  ‘I also am about to start a new business.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about it from the town bank manager,’ said Pal.

  The man seemed to know everything that was going on everywhere, thought Margayya with a certain amount of admiration. Margayya’s wife brought two tumblers of coffee to the door of the kitchen and made some noise with the vessels in order to attract Margayya’s attention. Margayya said from where he sat, ‘You can come in, it is my friend Dr Pal. I have spoken to you about him.’

  She was at once seized with fear whether the man was there in order to discuss another book on the same lines as the previous one. She withdrew a little, and Margayya went over and took the coffee from her hands and carried it to the front room.

  The conversation languished while Dr Pal was relishing the coffee, and then he said, ‘I heard from the bank manager that you are starting a new business. I just came to tell you that if you want a nice place on Market Road, there is one vacant in our block. There is some demand for it.’

  They went to 10 Market Road. Margayya liked the building when he saw it. A man who made a lot of money selling blankets had bought up the vacant site next to the Municipal Dispensary and built these rooms. At the moment, the house was of one storey. Eventually he proposed to add a first floor and a second floor. The man himself had his own shop in one of the back lanes of the Market, a very small shop stacked with rough blankets. He was a strong dark man with a circular sandal paste mark on his forehead. He sat there all day chasing the flies. ‘Flies come here, God knows why,’ Margayya reflected when he went to meet him with Dr Pal. They had to stand outside the shop and talk to him as he peeped out of his blanket stacks. At the sight of Pal the other man brought his palms together and saluted. He had evidently great reverence for learned people.

  ‘How are you, sir?’ Dr Pal inquired genially. ‘This is one of my greatest friends,’ he told Margayya in an aside, and added, ‘You cannot imagine how much he has helped me in my most difficult times.’

  ‘Tut, tut,’ said the other from the depth of his woollen stacks. ‘This is not the place for you to start all that … Don’t. Now who is this person you have brought with you?’

  ‘He is a friend of mine who wants to be your tenant. He is opening his business in a couple of days. Am I right?’ he asked, turning to Margayya. With a sheet of paper Margayya fanned off the flies that were alighting on his nose. The man in the shop announced apologetically, ‘Oh, too many flies here –’

  ‘What have flies to do here?’ Margayya asked, unable to restrain his question any more.

  The other replied, ‘They have nothing to interest them here, but behind this shop there is a jaggery godown. There is a gap in the roof through which flies pass up and down. It is a great nuisance, and I have written to the municipality to get the jaggery shop moved somewhere else … but you know what our municipalities are!’

  ‘He is himself a municipal councillor for this ward,’ Dr Pal added, ‘and yet he finds so much difficulty in getting anything done. He had such trouble to get that vacant plot for himself –’

  ‘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.’