The Guide

by R. K. Narayan

  The other merely replied, “No different from what it used to be.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “What does it matter?” the other said. “I only try to do my best and do it sincerely.”

  “Otherwise, what’s the use of doing anything at all?” asked Raju. He was marking time. He was not very clear-headed yet after the deep sleep, and the problem of boys’ education was not uppermost in his mind at the moment. He said tentatively, “After all, one’s duty—”

  “I do my utmost,” said the other defensively, not wishing to give way. After these parleys, which lasted for half an hour, the village master himself clarified the position. “It seems you suggested that the boys should be assembled here and taught at nights.”

  “Oh! eh!” Raju said. “Yes, I did, of course, but it’s a matter in which the decision should be purely yours. After all, self-help is the best help; I may be here today and gone tomorrow. It’s up to you to arrange it. I meant that if you want a place—you can have it.” He swept his arm about with the air of one conferring a gift on a whole community.

  The teacher looked thoughtful for a moment and began, “I’m not sure, however—”

  But Raju suddenly became argumentative and definite. He said with a lot of authority, “I like to see young boys become literate and intelligent.” He added with fervor because it sounded nice, “It’s our duty to make everyone happy and wise.”

  This overwhelming altruism was too much for the teacher. “I’ll do anything,” he said, “under your guidance.” Raju admitted the position with, “I’m but an instrument accepting guidance myself.”

  The result was that the teacher went back to the village a changed man. Next day he was back at the pillared hall with a dozen children of the village. They had their foreheads smeared with sacred ash, and their slates creaked in the silent night, while the teacher lectured to them, and Raju, seated on his platform, looked on benignly. The teacher was apologetic about the numbers: he could muster only about a dozen boys. “They are afraid of crossing the river in the dark; they have heard of a crocodile hereabouts.”

  “What can a crocodile do to you if your mind is clear and your conscience is untroubled?” Raju said grandly. It was a wonderful sentiment to express. He was surprised at the amount of wisdom welling from the depths of his being. He said to the teacher, “Don’t be dispirited that there are only a dozen. If you do your work sincerely by a dozen, it’ll be equivalent, really, to serving a hundred times that number.”

  The teacher suggested, “Do not mistake me, but will you speak to these boys whenever you can?” This gave Raju a chance to air his views on life and eternity before the boys. He spoke to them on godliness, cleanliness, spoke on Ramayana, the characters in the epics; he addressed them on all kinds of things. He was hypnotized by his own voice; he felt himself growing in stature as he saw the upturned faces of the children shining in the half-light when he spoke. No one was more impressed with the grandeur of the whole thing than Raju himself.

  My father died during the rainy part of that year. His end was sudden. He had been selling and talking to his cronies in his hut shop till late at night; then he counted the cash, came into the house, consumed his rice and buttermilk, laid himself down to sleep, and never woke again.

  My mother adjusted herself to the status of a widow. My father left her enough to live on comfortably. I gave her as much of my time as possible. With her consent, I closed down my father’s shop and set up at the railway station. It was then that I began to develop new lines. I stocked old magazines and newspapers, and bought and sold schoolbooks. Of course my customers were not many, but the train brought in more and more school-going population, and the 10:30 local was full of young men going off to Albert Mission College, which had just been started at Malgudi. I liked to talk to people. I liked to hear people talk. I liked customers who would not open their mouths merely to put a plantain in, and would say something on any subject except the state of crops, price of commodities, and litigation. I am afraid, after my father’s death, his old friends wilted away and disappeared one by one, chiefly for want of an audience.

  Students gathered at my shop while they waited for the trains. Gradually books appeared where there were coconuts before. People dumped old books and stolen books and all kinds of printed stuff on me. I bargained hard, showed indifference while buying and solicitude while selling. Strictly speaking, it was an irregular thing to do. But the stationmaster was a friendly man who not only obtained unlimited credit for anything he and his children took from my shop, but also enjoyed the privilege of drawing his reading material from the stack growing in front of my shop.

  My bookselling business was an unexpected offshoot of my search for old wrapping paper. When people bought something I hated to see them carry it off in their hands. I liked to wrap it up nicely, as well as I could, but as long as my father was in control he said, “If anyone brings a piece of paper, he is welcome to wrap up anything; but I can’t do it for him. Profit being what it is, we can’t afford to spend it on wrapping paper. If a man buys oil, let him bring a pot to carry it in. Do we provide him with that?” While he practiced this philosophy it was impossible for anyone to find even a scrap of paper in our shop. After his death I adopted a new policy. I made it known far and wide that I was looking for old paper and books, and soon gathered a big dump. In my off-hours I sat sorting it out. During the interval between trains, when the platform became quiet, there was nothing more pleasing than picking up a bundle of assorted books and lounging in my seat and reading, occasionally breaking off to watch through the doorway the immense tamarind tree in the field. I read stuff that interested me, bored me, baffled me, and dozed off in my seat. I read stuff that pricked up a noble thought, a philosophy that appealed, I gazed on pictures of old temples and ruins and new buildings and battleships, and soldiers, and pretty girls around whom my thoughts lingered. I learned much from scrap.

  “Excellent, excellent,” Raju said. “I wanted to suggest it myself. I’m glad you have thought of it. There is no harm. In fact, you may also benefit by keeping your ears open. Keep your ears open and mouth shut, that’ll take you far,” he said, hitting upon a brilliant aphorism.

  A circle formed around him. They sat there looking on. The children sat there looking on. The master sat there looking on. The pillared hall was bright with the lanterns the villagers had brought with them. It looked like a place where a great assembly was about to begin. Raju felt like an actor who had come on the stage, and, while the audience waited, had no lines to utter or gestures to make. He said to the master, “I think you may take the children away to their corner for their usual lessons; take one of the lamps with you.”

  Even as he said it he could not help thinking how he was issuing an order about the boys who were not his, to the teacher who need not obey him, pointing to a lamp which again was not his. The teacher started to obey him, but the boys lingered on. He said, “You must read your lessons first and then I will come and speak to you. Now I will first speak to your elders—what I say to them will not interest you.” And the children got up and went away with the teacher to a farther corner of the pillared hall.

  Velan ventured to suggest, “Give us a discourse, sir.” And as Raju listened without showing any emotion, but looking as if he were in deep contemplation, Velan added, “So that we may have the benefit of your wisdom.” The others murmured a general approval.

  Raju felt cornered. “I have to play the part expected of me; there is no escape.” He racked his head secretly, wondering where to start. Could he speak about tourists’ attractions in Malgudi, or should it be moral lessons? How once upon a time there was a so and so, so good or bad that when he came to do such and such a thing he felt so utterly lost that he prayed, and so on and so forth? He felt bored. The only subject on which he could speak with any authority now seemed to be jail life and its benefits, especially for one mistaken for a saint. They waited respectfully for his inspiration. “Oh, fool
s,” he felt like crying out. “Why don’t you leave me alone? If you bring me food, leave it there and leave me in peace, thank you.”

  After a long, brooding silence, he brought out the following words: “All things have to wait their hour.” Velan and his friends who were in the front row looked worried for a moment; they were deferential, no doubt, but they did not quite realize what he was driving at. After a further pause, he added grandiosely, “I will speak to you when another day comes.”

  Someone asked, “Why another day, sir?”

  “Because it is so,” said Raju mysteriously. “While you wait for the children to finish their lessons, I’d advise you to pass the hour brooding over all your speech and actions from morning till now.”

  “What speech and actions?” someone asked, genuinely puzzled by the advice.

  “Your own,” said Raju. “Recollect and reflect upon every word you have uttered since daybreak—”

  “I don’t remember exactly. . .”

  “Well, that is why I say reflect, recollect. When you don’t remember your own words properly, how are you going to remember other people’s words?” This quip amused his audience. There were bursts of subdued laughter. When the laughter subsided Raju said, “I want you all to think independently, of your own accord, and not allow yourselves to be led about by the nose as if you were cattle.”

  There were murmurs of polite disagreement over this advice. Velan asked, “How can we do that, sir? We dig the land and mind the cattle—so far so good, but how can we think philosophies? Not our line, master. It is not possible. It is wise persons like your good self who should think for us.”

  “And why do you ask us to recollect all that we have said since daybreak?”

  Raju himself was not certain why he had advised that, and so he added, “If you do it you will know why.” The essence of sainthood seemed to lie in one’s ability to utter mystifying statements. “Until you try, how can you know what you can or cannot do?” he asked. He was dragging those innocent men deeper and deeper into the bog of unclear thoughts.

  “I can’t remember what I said a few moments ago; so many other things come into one’s head,” wailed one of his victims.

  “Precisely. That is what I wish to see you get over,” said Raju. “Until you do it, you will not know the pleasure of it.” He picked out three men from the gathering. “When you come to me tomorrow or another day, you must each repeat to me at least six words that you have been speaking since the morning. I am asking you to remember only six words,” he said pleadingly as a man who was making a great concession, “not six hundred.”

  “Six hundred! Is there anyone who can remember six hundred, sir?” asked someone with wonder.

  “Well, I can,” said Raju. And he got the appreciative clicking of tongues, which he expected as his legitimate due. Soon the children were there, a great boon to Raju, who rose from his seat as if to say, “That is all for the day,” and walked toward the river, the others following. “These children must be feeling sleepy. Take them safely home, and come again.”

  Raju soon realized that his spiritual status would be enhanced if he grew a beard and long hair to fall on his nape. A clean-shaven, close-haired saint was an anomaly. He bore the various stages of his make-up with fortitude, not minding the prickly phase he had to pass through before a well-authenticated beard could cover his face and come down his chest. By the time he arrived at the stage of stroking his beard thoughtfully, his prestige had grown beyond his wildest dreams. His life had lost its personal limitations; his gatherings had become so large that they overflowed into the outer corridors and people sat right up to the river’s edge.

  With the exception of Velan and a few others, Raju never bothered to remember faces or names or even to know to whom he was talking. He seemed to belong to the world now. His influence was unlimited. He not only chanted holy verses and discoursed on philosophy, he even came to the stage of prescribing medicine; children who would not sleep peacefully at night were brought to him by their mothers; he pressed their bellies and prescribed a herb, adding, “If he still gets no relief, bring him again to me.” It was believed that when he stroked the head of a child, the child improved in various ways. Of course, people brought him their disputes and quarrels over the division of ancestral property. He had to set apart several hours of his afternoon for these activities. He could hardly afford a private life now. Came a stage when he had to be up early and rush through all his own personal routine before his visitors should arrive. It was a strain. He sighed a deep sigh of relief and turned to be himself, eat like an ordinary human being, shout and sleep like a normal man, after the voices on the river had ceased for the night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I came to be called Railway Raju. Perfect strangers, having heard of my name, began to ask for me when their train arrived at the Malgudi railway station. It is written on the brow of some that they shall not be left alone. I am one such, I think. Although I never looked for acquaintances, they somehow came looking for me. Men who had just arrived always stopped at my shop for a soda or cigarettes and to go through the book stack, and almost always they asked, “How far is . . . ?” or “Which way does one go to reach . . . ?” or “Are there many historical spots here?” or “I heard that your River Sarayu has its source somewhere on those hills and that it is a beauty spot.” This sort of inquiry soon led me to think that I had not given sufficient thought to the subject. I never said, “I don’t know.” Not in my nature, I suppose. If I had the inclination to say “I don’t know what you are talking about,” my life would have taken a different turn. Instead, I said, “Oh, yes, a fascinating place. Haven’t you seen it? You must find the time to visit it, otherwise your whole trip here would be a waste.” I am sorry I said it, an utter piece of falsehood. It was not because I wanted to utter a falsehood, but only because I wanted to be pleasant.

  Naturally, they next asked me the way. I said, “If you just go that way down to the Market Square and ask one of those taxi-drivers . . .” This was not a very satisfactory direction. Soon a man wanted me to show him the way to the Market Square and the taxi. There was a young son of the porter doing points-signaling duty whenever a train was about to arrive, who had no specified work to do at other times. I asked the young fellow to mind the shop while I helped the traveler to find a taxi.

  At the market fountain stood the old shark Gaffur, looking for a victim. He made a specialty of collecting all the derelict vehicles in the country and rigging them up; he breathed new life into them and ran them on the mountain roads and into the forests. His usual seat was on the parapet of the fountain, while his car basked on the roadside beside the gutter. “Gaffur,” I called out. “Here is a very good gentleman, a friend of mine. He wants to see . . . You must take him out and bring him back safely—that is why I have brought him to you personally, although this is not an hour when I should be away from my shop.” We haggled over the prices; I allowed the customer to mention his figure and always tried to beat Gaffur down to it. When he demurred at the sight of the vehicle, I took up Gaffur’s brief and explained, “Gaffur is no fool to have this kind of car. He searched far and wide to find this particular model; this is the only car which can go up to all those places where in some parts there are no roads at all, but Gaffur will take you there and bring you back in time for dinner tonight. Can’t you, Gaffur?”

  “Well,” he drawled, “it is seventy miles each way; it is one o’clock now. If we leave at once and if there are no punctures on the way . . .” But I hustled him so much that Gaffur never really completed his sentence. When they returned it could not exactly be called dinnertime, unless you stretched it to include midnight, but Gaffur did bring him back intact, honked his car to wake me up, took his cash, and departed. The next train for the man would be at eight on the following morning. He had to stretch himself under the awning on the platform of my shop and spend the night thus. If he felt hungry, I opened my store and sold him fruits and such things.

>   Travelers are an enthusiastic lot. They do not mind any inconvenience as long as they have something to see. Why anyone should want to forgo food and comfort and jolt a hundred-odd miles to see some place, I could never understand, but it was not my business to ask for reasons; just as I did not mind what people ate or smoked in my shop, my business being only to provide the supply and nothing more. It seemed to me silly to go a hundred miles to see the source of Sarayu when it had taken the trouble to tumble down the mountain and come to our door. I had not even heard of its source till that moment; but the man who had gone was all praise for the spot. He said, “I am only sorry I did not bring my wife and mother to see the place.” Later in life I found that everyone who saw an interesting spot always regretted that he hadn’t come with his wife or daughter, and spoke as if he had cheated someone out of a nice thing in life. Later, when I had become a full-blown tourist guide, I often succeeded in inducing a sort of melancholia in my customer by remarking, “This is something that should be enjoyed by the whole family,” and the man would swear that he would be back with his entire brood in the coming season.

  The man who had gone to the source of the river spoke all night about it: how there was a small shrine on the peak right at the basin. “It must be the source of Sarayu mentioned in the mythological stories of goddess Parvathi jumping into the fire; the carving on one of the pillars of the shrine actually shows the goddess plunging into the fire and water arising from the spot,” et cetera. Sometimes someone with a scholarly turn of mind would come and make a few additions to the facts, such as that the dome of the shrine must have been built in the third century before Christ or that the style of drapery indicated the third century after Christ. But it was all the same to me, and the age I ascribed to any particular place depended upon my mood at that hour and the type of person I was escorting. If he was the academic type I was careful to avoid all mention of facts and figures and to confine myself to general descriptions, letting the man himself do the talking. You may be sure he enjoyed the opportunity. On the other hand, if an innocent man happened to be at hand, I let myself go freely. I pointed out to him something as the greatest, the highest, the only one in the world. I gave statistics out of my head. I mentioned a relic as belonging to the thirteenth century before Christ or the thirteenth century after Christ, according to the mood of the hour. If I felt fatigued or bored with the person I was conducting, I sometimes knocked the whole glamour out by saying, “Must be something built within the last twenty years and allowed to go to rack and ruin. There are scores of such spots all over the place.” But it was years before I could arrive at that stage of confidence and nonchalance.