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

by R. K. Narayan

  ‘MY DARLING, – Who keeps slipping away like this! I might as well be in gaol. But in gaol or out of it – there is only one thought in my mind, that’s you. I have been thinking of you night and day, and not all the gaol regulations could prevent me from thinking of you. And today I came out of the prison and my good friend Jagadish (he is a very fine man, let me say) told me about you. The prison bars kept me away from you so long, and now all the miles between here and there, but that is of no consequence. This distance is no distance for me. May I come and join you, because I will gasp and die like a stranded fish unless I see you and talk to you? Give me your answer in the quickest time possible.’

  Jagadish got so lost in writing the letter that he forgot how long he was taking, and Sriram began dozing in his seat and snoring gently. Jagadish looked at him and hesitated for a moment. He put the letter under a paperweight and wrote a covering note: ‘If approved, this letter may be signed and sent first thing in the morning, though preferably it should be copied in your own hand.’ He got up and shut the front door of the shop. He switched off the light, and went into his living apartments, softly closing the door behind him.

  Ten days of anxious, desperate waiting, and then Sriram received a letter:

  ‘Happy to hear from you. Come to Delhi. Birla House at New Delhi, if you can. Our programme is unsettled. We are going to Bihar with Bapu, where there is trouble. There is much to tell you. We shall be in Delhi on 14th January. After that come any time you like. We shall be happy to meet you.

  BHARATI.’

  The Grand Trunk Express in the end arrived at New Delhi station. Sriram struggled to reach a window in order to have the first glimpse of Bharati. The men near the window would not let him near it. It was no use speaking to them: they seemed to live in a different world. He spoke Tamil and English, and they understood Hindi, Hindustani, Urdu or whatever it might be. He could now realize the significance of Bharati’s insistence that he should learn Hindi. Just to please her he had looked through readers and primers, but that took him nowhere. He had been isolated for the last thirty-six hours. He had sat brooding, gaol life had trained him to keep his own company. His greatest trial had been when two men appeared suddenly from somewhere when the train was in motion, and scrutinized all the people in the compartment; when they came to him, they stopped in front of him and asked him a question. He could catch only the words ‘Mister’ and ‘Hindu’ with a lot of other things thrown in. They were rowdy-looking men. He said something in his broken Hindi, and Tamil and English, which seemed to make no impression on them. They came menacingly close to him, peering at his face; Sriram was getting ready to fight in self-defence. He sprang up and demanded in the language that came uppermost, ‘What do you mean, all of you staring at me like this?’ As he rose, one of the two pulled his ear-lobe for a close scrutiny, saw the puncture in it made in childhood, and let go, muttering, ‘Hindu’. They lost interest and moved off. After they were gone, a great tension relaxed in the compartment. Someone started explaining, and after a good deal of effort in a variety of languages, Sriram understood that the intruders were men looking for Muslims in the compartment: if Muslims were found they would be thrown out of the moving train: an echo of the fighting going on in other parts of the country. Sriram lapsed into silence for the rest of the journey.

  It was a most uncomfortable journey: he was crushed, could not find the space even to stretch his length or swing his arm: people came crowding in and sat on him. Sometimes he could not even extricate his legs. When he felt sleepy, he leaned his head back on the window or on the shoulder of a total stranger. When he felt hungry, he called to someone selling tea outside, and drank it. He could not get coffee. The people here seemed strange men who could swallow the very sweet jilebi and wash it down with bitter tea the very first thing in the day: this only confirmed his feeling that he was in a strange, fantastic world. He yearned for coffee, his favourite, like a true South Indian, but coffee could not be had here. He had to content himself by dreaming of it as he used to do in gaol. In fact this seemed only an extension of prison life: this life in a crowded, congested compartment, with a lot of strangers. He felt more uncomfortable here than he had felt in the prison. There at least he could say something or hear something from others’ lips, but here the human voice conveyed nothing but jabber. The compartment was full of people who smoked beedis and filled the air with it, spat on the floor without a second thought, and the closet was nearly always inaccessible. He managed by jumping out of the train when the train halted and rushing back to the train when it whistled.

  At ten-thirty or eleven on some day or other the train came to New Delhi. ‘Nav Dheheli,’ people in the compartment cried and bustled about. He tried to run to the window or door to catch a glimpse of Bharati. She had written promising to meet him at the station. He felt ashamed of his appearance: he combed back his hair with his fingers: it was dishevelled and standing on end. He knew he was grimy, grisly, and unsightly. He wished he could tidy himself up before Bharati set eyes on him after all these years. He caught a glimpse of her through a number of heads and shoulders jammed at the window, and, in his anxiety he pushed and bumped into people rudely, and the train moved past before coming to a halt. He saw her standing, gazing earnestly at the window. For a brief second he caught a glimpse of her figure, and his heart sank. He wished he could improve his appearance before facing her. He wished he could skulk away with the crowd and see her later. He had great misgivings as to what she might think of him if she saw him in his present state. But even in that desperate state, he knew, by his experience in the train itself, that he could never ask his way again and go in search of her. She might be lost to him for ever.

  When he got down from the train, carrying a roll of bedding and a trunk, Bharati’s searching eye picked him out in the crowd. She waved her arms and came running to him. She gripped his hands and said, ‘Oh, how good to see you again!’ and in that tone of spontaneous affection Sriram lost himself, forgot his own appearance and griminess, and acquired self-confidence. He looked her up and down, and cried, ‘You look like a North Indian, yourself. You look like a Punjabi. I hope you understand our language.’

  She took charge of him immediately. She picked up his bedding and said, ‘You carry your trunk.’ He snatched the bedding from her hand, and took the load on his own shoulder. She said, ‘Don’t be silly. You haven’t four arms, remember.’ And she snatched back the bed from his hands. Sriram lost his bewilderment. The proximity of Bharati gave him a sense of homeliness. It was as if he were back in Malgudi with her. He didn’t notice the strange surroundings, the strange avenues, and buildings, the too broad roads, the exotic men and women, and the strange shops they were passing. He had not time to notice anything. His attention was concentrated on Bharati. She looked darker, and more tired, but her tresses were as black as ever. She looked tired, as if she had undernourished herself. He could not get over the novelty of meeting her again. He was always on the point of disbelieving what he saw and felt. Perhaps, he was going through a fantastic dream. Perhaps he was dead. Or dreaming from his confinement. For the first time these many months and years he had a free and happy mind, a mind without friction and sorrow of any kind. No hankering for a future or regret for a past. This was the first time in his life that he was completely at peace with himself, satisfied profoundly with existence itself. The very fact that one was breathing, feeling, and seeing, seemed sufficient matter for satisfaction now. She kept looking at him, and asked, ‘When did they release you?’

  He gave a summary of his gaol existence and a resume of all that had happened to him since she saw him last. The tonga ran smoothly. The extreme sympathy with which she listened to his story pleased him greatly. It gave it a touch of importance. As he spoke, he was impressed with his own doings. He was on the point of asking himself: ‘Am I the one who has done all this or is it someone else?’ He was filled with a sense of extreme heroism. ‘I never thought I could put up with all this sort of tr
ouble. I was very keen that the man in the street – ‘he began, and puffed with his own importance. The listener, Bharati, gave his whole life a new meaning and a new dimension. When they arrived at a colony of huts somewhere in New Delhi, he was completely satisfied with all the things he had done in his life.

  ‘This is my present headquarters,’ Bharati explained. She had taken him to her own hut. ‘Yes, this is my home.’ There was a spinning wheel in one corner, and her clothes hung on a rope tied across the doorway.

  ‘After all, she is going to be my wife, that’s why she doesn’t mind my staying with her,’ he reflected.

  She said, ‘You will have your “room” ready in about an hour, till then you may rest here. There is another block, where you may wash yourself. Make yourself comfortable.’ As she was speaking a group of children came running in crying, ‘Moi, Moi – ‘and they said something that Sriram could not make out. They came and surrounded Bharati and dragged her by her hand. She stopped and said something to them in their own language. They left her and went away.

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Sriram with a touch of jealousy.

  ‘Children, that’s all we know about them,’ she said.

  ‘Where do they belong?’

  ‘Here at the moment,’ she said, and added, ‘They are refugee children, we don’t know anything more about them. I will be back in about an hour. Make yourself comfortable.’ And she went out.

  She was gone a long while. By the time she returned he had explored his surroundings. He had discovered the bathroom and the tap, and washed and tidied himself. He went back to her hut and spent a long time combing back his hair and studying himself in the mirror in order to decide whether he was worthy of Bharati. Bharati’s kindness had restored his confidence in himself. He had never hoped that she would treat him with such warmth and kindness. The years that had separated them did not seem to make the slightest difference. It was as if they had separated only an hour ago: all the moments of loneliness and hankering and boredom that had made life a hell for him within the last few years were gone as if they had not existed.

  He saw one of her saris hanging up, a white one with yellow spots. It was of course made of khadi, hand-spun; the rope sank under its weight. He pulled it down to take it in his hands and gauge its weight, reflecting, ‘She ought to wear finery, poor girl. I will give her everything.’ He took it in his hand and weighed it; ‘It seems to weigh twenty pounds.’ He stretched it and held it before his eyes. ‘It’s like a metal sheet. She must feel stuffy under it. I can’t see any light through it.’ He rolled it up and pressed it to his breast. It had a faint aroma of sandalwood which pleased him. ‘It has the fragrance of her own body,’ he reflected, closing his eyes. As he sat there the door opened and Bharati stood before him.

  ‘What are you doing with my sari?’ she asked in surprise. ‘One would think that you were trying to wear it,’ she said with a laugh. Sriram reddened, and put it hastily away.

  ‘It does not try to ward me off,’ he said, ‘when I take it to my heart.’

  ‘Hush!’ she cried. ‘Don’t try to be silly. We are all very serious people here, remember. I see you have tidied yourself up. If you have any clothes for washing, give them to me.’

  Sriram handed her a small roll that he had brought back from his bathroom. ‘They are terribly soiled,’ he murmured apologetically.

  She snatched the bundle from his hands and went out. He reflected, ‘She is almost my wife, she is doing what a wife would do, good girl! God bless her. If I tie a thali around her neck somehow, when she is asleep, things will be all right.’

  She returned in a moment saying, ‘Your clothes will come to you in the evening. Here in this camp everyone is expected to wash his or her own clothes and not employ others to do the job, but you are new and I have got a dhobi to wash for you as an exception. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Extremely,’ he said. ‘I am longing for something to eat.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by something,’ she said. ‘You can’t expect all our South Indian stuff. It is months and months since I tasted anything like that. You will have to learn to eat chappati, and vegetable and curd and fruit, and not ask for rice or sambar.’ She led him to a shack where some people were eating and children were sitting with plates before them. There were two platters laid for her and Sriram, side by side. ‘This is how husbands and wives sit together,’ Sriram reflected as he sat beside her and tried to work his way through wheat chappatis. He longed for the taste of the pungent South Indian food and its sauces and vegetables, but he suppressed the thought. Gaol life had trained him to eat anything offered him. ‘I am really still in a gaol,’ he reflected.

  She was extremely busy all through the day. She seemed to have numerous things to do. She was always attending on children, changing one’s dress, combing another’s hair, engaging another group in dance or play, and continuously talking to them; besides this she had a great deal to say to a lot of miscellaneous men and women who came in search of her. Hers was a full-time occupation. She gave the children a wash, fed them, put them to sleep on mats in various sheds, drew their blankets over them, said something to each one of them, and finally came back to her own room, sat down on her cot, and stretched her arms. Sriram followed her about for hours but could not get in a word of his own. He tried to smile at the children, thinking that that might please Bharati, but she hardly noticed his presence when she was with them. It infuriated him. After a time, he turned on his heels, and went back to his hut. It was furnished with a rope cot and a mat and had no door. There was a common bath at the end of the alley which he shared with a number of others. He had felt indignant when he was transferred here. It seemed to dash his hopes to the ground. ‘Did she put me in here in order to get rid of me?’ he reflected. ‘Was it because I picked up her spotted sari? If I had not done so, she would probably have let me sleep in the same room. I have probably destroyed her trust.’ He reflected ruefully. ‘Trust! Who wants her trust! I only want her.’

  He had switched on the light and was sitting on his bed. The entrance darkened. The low roof of the hut made it stuffy, although it kept the place warm in winter. She came in bearing his clothes which he had given her for washing. Sitting in his hut, Sriram had been seized again with the feeling that he was still cooped up in a cell. ‘My gaol seems to be on my back, all the time,’ he reflected. The fatigue of the journey had begun to affect him, the intense cold air, and the gloomy and novel surroundings depressed him and made him feel unhappy – a gloom and unhappiness without any cause. The brief spurt of happiness he had experienced seemed chimerical.

  Bharati put his clothes on his bed and said, ‘Are you comfortable?’

  ‘Yes and no. I feel happy when you are with me, and miserable when you go away.’ She looked at him, startled. He continued, ‘Won’t you sit down here?’ and he made a space for her. She sat down. He moved close to her, and laid his arm on her shoulder.

  She said, ‘Not yet,’ and gently pushed away his arm. ‘What a strange man!’ she cried. ‘You have not changed at all.’

  He sat away from her and asked, ‘Am I still an untouchable?’

  She said, ‘Bapuji alone can decide.’

  ‘Have you spoken to him about it?’

  ‘Yes, more than once, but he has not given an answer yet.’ She sat with bowed head when she said it, her voice was low. She looked subdued.

  There was an uneasy silence for a while, then he asked, ‘Why? Doesn’t he want us to marry?’

  ‘It may not be that,’ she said. ‘But he really did not have the time to give it a thought, there were other things to do.’

  It was a relief for him to know that Bapuji was not against the notion of their marrying, but it was not enough. He held his breath and listened without speaking. He had a fear that his slightest word might spoil everything. This was an occasion for speech in the most delicate of whispers. Anything more harsh might destroy the whole fabric. He wanted to be on his guard. He wanted to do n
othing that might scare her and take her away from him, nothing that might make fruitless all the thousands of miles he had come. So he refrained from speaking. He wanted to shout at her and demand if it was only for this that she had wanted him to come all that way, he wanted to tell her that he regretted ever having set eyes on her. He wanted to threaten her that he would seize her by force and carry her back to South India.

  ‘More than anything else,’ she said, ‘the thing that pains Mahatmaji now is the suffering of women. So many of them have been ruined, so many of them have lost their honour, their home, their children, and the number of women who are missing cannot be counted. They have been abducted, carried away by ruffians, ravished or killed, or perhaps have even destroyed themselves.’ She appeared to be on the point of breaking down at the thought.

  Sriram felt he must say something in sympathy. ‘Why do these things happen?’ And he felt ashamed of the utter inanity of his question. She didn’t notice his question, but just went on speaking.

  ‘On the 15th of August when the whole country was jubilant, and gathered here to take part in the Independence Day festivities, do you know where Bapu was? In Calcutta where fresh riots had started. Bapu said his place was where people were suffering and not where they were celebrating. He said that if a country cannot give security to women and children, it’s not worth living in. He said it would be worth dying if that would make his philosophy better understood. He walked through villages barefoot on his mission. We followed him. Each day we walked five miles through floods and fields, silently. He walked with bowed head, all through those swamps of East Bengal. We stopped for a day or two in each village, and he spoke to those who had lost their homes, property, wives, and children. He spoke kindly to those who had perpetrated crimes – he wept for them, and they swore never to do such things again. I have seen with my own eyes aggressive rowdy-looking men taking a vow of non-violence and a vow to protect the opposite faction – don’t ask what community they were: what one community did in one part of the country brought suffering on the same community in another part of the country. I have seen what has happened both at Noakhali and Bihar, and then at Delhi. How can one choose? Human beings have done impossible things to other human beings. It’s no use discussing whether this community committed greater horrors or the other one. Bapuji forbade us to refer to anyone in terms of religion as Muslims, Hindu, or Sikh, but just as human beings. He said one day that he sometimes pitied those who committed acts of violence – he advised some women in a village that they should sooner take their lives with their own hands than surrender their honour …’