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

by R. K. Narayan

  ‘It is because Mahatmaji is your best friend. He wants this struggle to be conducted on perfectly non-violent lines.’

  ‘Of course that is also a point. Well, it was nice meeting you,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘Goodbye.’

  Sriram went down the pathway, overhung with coffee shrubs, hedge plants, bamboo clusters, and pepper vine winding over everything else, with very dark green grass covering the ditches at the side. He felt so tired that he wondered why he did not lay himself down on the velvet turf and sleep, but he had other things to do. He had unremitting duties to perform.

  It was the village named Solur three miles away that was his next destination. The place consisted of about fifty houses on a hill slope. Valleys and meadows stretched away below it. It was seven o’clock when Sriram arrived. The village was astir with activity. Men, women and children were enthusiastically gathered under the banyan tree of the village, in bright chattering groups. A gaslight had been hung from the tree, and one or two people were arranging a couple of iron chairs brought in from one of the richer households in the village. The two iron chairs were meant for some distinguished men who were expected. Sriram went to the only shop in the village, purchased a couple of plantains, and washed them down with a bottle of soda-water. He felt refreshed. He asked the shopman, ‘What time does the meeting begin?’

  ‘Very soon, they are bringing someone to entertain us. It is going to be a nice function. Can’t you stay on for it?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Where are you coming from?’

  ‘From far away,’ said Sriram.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the other asked.

  ‘Far away again,’ said Sriram, attempting to be as evasive as possible. The other laughed, treating it as a nice joke. The man supported himself by clutching with one hand a rope dangling from the ceiling. It was a box-like little shop made entirely of old packing cases, with a seat cushioned with gunny-sacks for the proprietor to sit on. Bottles containing aerated water in rainbow colours adorned his top shelf, bunches of green bananas hung down by nails in front of his shop, almost hitting one in the face, and he had several little boxes and shallow tins filled with parched rice, fried gram, peppermints, sugar candy, and so forth. He enjoyed Sriram’s joke so much that he asked, ‘I have some nice biscuits, won’t you try them?’

  ‘Are they English biscuits?’ Sriram asked.

  ‘The best English biscuits.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I got them through a friend in the army. They are supplied only to the army now. Purely English biscuits which you cannot get for miles around. In these days, no one else can get them.’

  ‘Have you no sense of shame?’ Sriram asked.

  ‘Why, why, what is the matter?’ the other said, taken aback, and then said, ‘Hey, give me the money for what you took and get out of here. You are a fellow in khadi, are you? Oh! Oh! I didn’t notice. And so you think you can do what you like, talk as you like, and behave like a rowdy.’

  ‘You may say anything about me, but don’t talk ill of this dress. It is – it is – too sacred to be spoken about in that way.’

  The shopman felt cowed by his manner and said, ‘All right, sir, please leave us alone and go your way. I don’t want you lecturing here. Your bill is two annas and six pies … two bananas one anna each, and soda six pies …’

  ‘Here it is,’ Sriram said, taking out of his tiny purse two small coins and a six-pie piece and passing them to him.

  ‘You see,’ the other said, softening, ‘this is not the season for bananas and so they are not as cheap as they might be.’

  ‘I am not questioning your price, but I want you to understand that you should not be selling foreign stuff. You should not sell English biscuits.’

  ‘All right, sir, hereafter I will be careful, after I dispose of the present stock.’

  ‘If you have any pride as an Indian you will throw the entire stock in the gutter and won’t let even a crow peck at it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the shopman, not liking the little circle of watchful people who were gathering. At the end of the street the lecture platform was being set up with groups of people standing around watching. The villagers were very happy, some lively business was going on there as well starting here. The shopman saw an old enemy of his who liked to see him in trouble standing on the edge of the crowd with a grin on his face. As if to satisfy him, the gods had brought this man in khadi here, a born trouble-maker. He appealed to Sriram, ‘Now sir, please go away a little. I must close the shop.’

  ‘You may close the shop if you like but I want you to destroy those biscuits,’ said Sriram firmly.

  ‘What biscuits?’ asked the shopman alarmed. ‘Please leave me alone, sir.’

  ‘You have English biscuits, you said.’

  ‘I have no English biscuits, where should I get them? Even in the black market they are not available.’

  ‘If they are not English biscuits, so much the better. My esteem for you goes up, but may I have a look at one of them?’

  ‘I have no biscuits at all,’ pleaded the shopman. The crowd guffawed. Somebody shouted to someone else, ‘Hey, here is Ranga in the soup, come on.’

  ‘You have got them in that box,’ Sriram said, pointing to one of the tin boxes. The shopman immediately lifted its lid and displayed its contents, white flour, luckily for him.

  ‘But did you not say that you had biscuits a moment ago?’

  ‘Who? I? I was merely joking. I am a poor shopkeeper, how could I afford to pay black market rates for biscuits and keep them for sale?’

  ‘He has got them inside, sir. Let him show us the inside of his shop,’ said one of the wags.

  ‘Shut up and go your way,’ shouted the shopman.

  The situation was getting more complicated every moment.

  ‘I am very sorry to note that you are a liar, in addition to being a seller of foreign black market stuff. I am prepared to lay my life at your threshold, if it will only make you truthful and patriotic. I will not leave this place until I see you empty all your stock in that drain, and give me an undertaking that you will never utter a falsehood again in your life. I am going to stay here till I drop dead at your door.’

  ‘You are picking an unnecessary fight with me,’ wailed the man.

  ‘I am only fighting the evil in you, it is a non-violent fight.’

  A woman came to buy half an anna’s worth of salt. Sriram interposed and said, ‘Please don’t buy anything here.’ When the woman tried to get past him he threw himself before her on the muddy ground: ‘You can walk over me if you like, but I will not allow you to buy anything in his shop.’

  The shopman looked miserable. What an evil day! What evil face did he open his eyes on when he awoke that morning! He pleaded, ‘Sir, I will do anything you say, please don’t create trouble for me.’

  Sriram said: ‘You are completely mistaking me, my friend. It’s not my intention to create trouble for you. I only wish to help you.’

  The woman who came to buy salt said: ‘The sauce on the oven will evaporate if I wait for your argument to finish,’ and, looking at the figure lying prone on the ground, she pleaded: ‘May I buy my salt at the other shop over there, sir?’

  Sriram with his head down could not help laughing. He said: ‘Why should you not buy your salt wherever you like?’

  She didn’t understand his point of view and explained: ‘I buy salt once a month, sir. After all, we are poor people. We cannot afford luxuries in life. Salt used to cost –’

  Sriram, still on his belly, raised his head and said, ‘It’s for people like you that Mahatma Gandhi has been fighting. Do you know that he will not rest till the Salt Tax is repealed?’

  ‘Why, sir?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘For every pinch of salt you consume, you have to pay a tax to the English Government. That’s why you have to pay so much for salt.’

  Someone interposed to explain: ‘And when the ta
x goes, you will get so much salt for an anna,’ he indicated a large quantity with his hands.

  The woman was properly impressed and said, opening her eyes wide: ‘It used to be so cheap,’ and added, throwing a hostile glance at the shopman standing on his toes, supporting himself by the dangling rope, with tears in his eyes, ‘Our shopmen are putting up the prices of everything nowadays. They have become very avaricious,’ a sentiment with which most people were in agreement. A general murmur of approval went round the gathering.

  The shopman standing on his toes said, ‘What can we do, we sell the salt at the price the government have fixed.’

  ‘You might support those of us who are fighting the government on these questions,’ said Sriram, ‘if you cannot do anything else. Do you remember Mahatma’s march to Dandi Beach in 1930? He walked three hundred miles across the country, in order to boil the salt-water on the beach of Dandi and help anyone to boil salt-water and make his own salt.’

  The shopman was the very picture of misery. He said in an undertone, ‘I’ll do anything you want me to do, please get up and go away. Your clothes are getting so dirty lying in the dirt.’

  ‘Don’t bother about my clothes. I can look after them; I can wash them.’

  ‘But this mud is clayey, sir, it is not easily removed,’ said the shopman.

  Someone in the crowd cried, ‘What do you care? He will probably give it to a good dhobi.’

  ‘If you can’t find a dhobi, you can give it to our dhobi Shama, he will remove any stain. Even Europeans in those estates above call him for washing their clothes, sir.’

  Someone else nudged him and murmured, ‘Don’t mention Europeans now; he doesn’t like them.’

  It seemed to Sriram that the people here liked to see him lying there on the ground, and were doing everything to keep him down. When this struck him, he raised himself on his hands and sat up. There was a smear of mud on his nose and forehead and sand on his hair. A little boy, wearing a short vest and a pair of trousers twice his size, came running, clutching tightly a six-pie coin in his hand. He shouted: ‘Give me good snuff for my grandfather, three pies, and coconut bharfi for three.’ He dashed past Sriram to the shop and held out his coin. The shopman snatched the coin from his hand in the twinkling of an eye. Sriram touched the feet of the young boy and importuned him: ‘Don’t buy anything in this shop.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Sriram started to explain, ‘You see, our country – ‘when two or three people in the crowd pulled the young boy by the scruff, saying, ‘Why do you ask questions? Why don’t you just do what you are asked to do?’ They tried to pull him away, but he clung to a short wooden railing and cried: ‘He has taken my money. My money, my money.’

  People shouted angrily at the shopman, ‘Give the boy his money.’

  The shopman cried: ‘How can I? This is a Friday, and would it not be inauspicious to give back a coin? I’ll be ruined for the rest of my life. I am prepared to give him what he wants for the coin, even a little more if he wants; but no, I can’t give back the cash. Have pity on me, friends. I am a man with seven children.’

  The little boy cried: ‘My grandfather will beat me if I don’t take him the snuff. His box is empty. He is waiting for me.’

  ‘Go and buy in that other shop,’ someone said.

  The boy answered, ‘He’ll throw it away if it is from any other shop.’

  The shopman added with untimely pride, ‘He has been my customer for the last ten years. He can’t get this snuff from any other place. I challenge anyone.’

  The boy clung to the railing and cried, ‘I must have the snuff, otherwise –’

  Someone from the crowd pounced upon him muttering imprecations and tore him away from the railing. The boy set up a howl. The crowd guffawed. The shopman wrung his hands in despair. Sriram sat in the dust like a statue, solemnly gazing at the ground before him. Someone pacified the boy, murmuring in his ears, ‘Come and fetch your snuff after that fellow leaves.’

  ‘When will he go?’ whispered the boy.

  ‘He will go away soon. He is not a man of this place,’ another whispered.

  ‘But my grandfather’s snuff-box must be filled at once.’

  ‘I’ll come and speak to your grandfather, don’t worry.’

  Sriram sat listening to everything, but he said nothing, without moving.

  The crowd by the shop gradually melted away as the gathering at the other end started to form. A second lantern was being taken up the tree. The crowd looked up and said, ‘Ramu is climbing the tree with the lantern.’ They pointed at a youth wearing a striped banian over his bare body and khaki shorts. His mother watching from below cried, ‘Hey, Ramu, don’t go up the tree, someone pull that boy down, he’s always climbing trees.’

  ‘Why do you bother, what if boys do climb trees?’ asked someone. A quarrel started, the mother retorting, ‘You wouldn’t talk like that if you had a son always endangering himself

  The boy shouted from the tree-top, ‘If you are going to quarrel, I will jump down and make you all scream.’ The crowd enjoyed the situation. For a moment the shopman lost sight of his own troubles, gazed at the tree-top, and remarked, ‘That’s a terrible boy, always worrying his mother with his desperate antics. She knows no peace with him about.’

  ‘Well, he looks old enough to look after himself,’ said Sriram.

  ‘Yes, but he has been spoilt by his mother, he is always climbing trees, or swimming or teasing people, a rowdy,’ said the shopman.

  ‘You people trouble him too much. He will not bother anyone if he is left alone,’ said Sriram. ‘Everyone is advising and worrying him.’

  Now came a shout from the tree-top: ‘I have fixed the lantern. Who else could have done it?’ The lantern swung in the air and threw moving shadows on the rocky hill slope behind. The crowd jeered and laughed at him. ‘If anyone jeers at me, I’ll cut the rope and throw the lamp on you all,’ he challenged.

  ‘Devil of a boy,’ shouted his mother. It was pointless banter, it seemed to Sriram. He felt angry at the thought of all the aimless, light-hearted folk in this place. The shopman added, ‘There is no peace in this village – those two are always bothering everyone in some way or other.’

  ‘You are no better,’ said Sriram angrily. The country was engaged in a struggle for survival; in a flash there passed before his mind Gandhi, his spinning wheel, the hours he spent in walking, thinking and mortifying himself in various ways, his imprisonment, and all this seemed suddenly pointless, seeing the kind of people for whom it was intended. He suddenly felt unhappy. All his own activity seemed to him meaningless. He might as well return to the cosy isolation of Kabir Street – that would at least make one old soul happy. What did it matter whether the shopman sold British biscuits or Scandinavian ones or Chinese crackers or French butter? It was only a matter of commerce between a conscienceless tradesman and a thick-skinned public. All this sitting in the mud and bothering and fighting was uncalled for. He felt suddenly weary. He asked the shopman, ‘Can you give me a piece of paper and a pen and an envelope? I will pay for it.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the shopman. ‘There is no demand for paper and such things at this shop. People who come here are all simple folk, who want something to eat or drink.’

  ‘And who ask only for English biscuits, I suppose?’ said Sriram cynically.

  ‘Forget it, sir. I’ll never do it again,’ assured the shopman, ‘if you will only get up from that spot and forget me.’

  Sriram felt pleased at the compliment and at the great importance his personality had acquired. It was very gratifying. ‘You are not lying, I hope, about the paper and envelope?’ he asked. ‘Possibly you have only the costliest English paper and ink?’

  ‘No, sir, I swear by the goddess in that temple. I have no stock, and I swear by all that is holy I will hereafter avoid all English goods. I will fling into the gutter any biscuit that I may ever see anywhere. I will kick anyone who asks for an English biscuit. At least in this
village there will be no more English biscuits. Meanwhile, may I go to the school-master and fetch you a sheet of paper and a pen? He is the only one who ever writes anything in this place.’ The shopman added, ‘Please move up a little, I can’t leave the shop open, there are too many thieves about.’

  Sriram said, ‘I’ll look after your shop while you are away,’ and then, in a sinister manner, ‘You know how well I can keep people off He seemed to enjoy it as a joke.

  The shopman thought it best to join in and laughed nervously, preparing to close the doors of the shop. His nerves were taut lest Sriram should suddenly change his mind. He added, in order to safeguard himself against this possibility, ‘You must write your letters, sir, without fail, however busy you may be. I’ll be back in a moment.’ He felt happy when he gave a tug to his brass lock and jumped down. He felt like a free man. This was his first taste of absolute freedom in all his life. ‘I will be back, sir, I will be back, sir,’ he cried, running away jingling his bunch of keys. It was an amusing sight to watch the portly man run.

  Sriram enjoyed it for a while, leaned back on the door of the shop decorated with enamel plates advertising soaps and hair-oil, and composed in his mind the letter he would write when the paper arrived. His eyes were watching the swaying lanterns dangling from the tree branch over the shrine, and the people assembled for the meeting under it. His mind was busy with the letter: ‘Revered Mahatmaji, I don’t know why we should bother about these folk. They don’t seem to deserve anything we may do for them. They sell and eat foreign biscuits. They are all frivolous-minded, always bothering too much about a young scamp who has climbed a tree. I don’t know if he has come down; I don’t care if he falls down; it’ll be a good riddance for all concerned. They will thank us for leaving them alone, rather than for telling them how to win Swaraj. They simply don’t care. At this very moment I find them engrossed in preparing for a Loyalists’ Meeting. What I want to know, my revered Mahatmaji, is – ‘He wondered what it was that he wanted to tell the Mahatmaji. What was really the problem?