Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (22 page)

‘Certainly,’ she said, not liking to be interrupted in this job she liked so much. She would give her consent to anything at such a moment. ‘Ask him when he is going to give us an independent tap.’ Srinivas returned, opened an
almirah
, took out a tiny wooden box, and out of it six five-rupee notes. He put it into his hand. ‘Do you want a receipt?’ he asked. He pulled out a receipt book, filled it up and gave it to Srinivas. Srinivas said: ‘You have to give us an independent water-tap.’ ‘Haven’t you got one? Surely, surely – of course I must give you one, and’ – he surveyed the walls and the ceiling –’yes, we must do everything that’s convenient for our tenants.’

During the day, as he sat working in the office, another visitor came – a younger person of about thirty-five. ‘You are Mr Srinivas?’ he asked timidly, panting with the effort to climb the staircase. He was a man of slight build, wearing a
khadar jiba
, and his neck stood out like a giraffe’s. Srinivas directed him to a chair. He sat twisting his button and said: ‘I’m a teacher in the corporation high school. I’m your late landlord’s son-in-law. My wife has become the owner of this property. I’ve come for the rent.’

Srinivas showed him the receipt. The visitor was greatly confused on seeing it. ‘What does he mean by coming and snatching away the rent in this way?’ He got up abruptly and said: ‘I can’t understand these tricks! My daughter was his favourite, and he set apart all his property for her, if it was going to be for anyone.’

Your daughter is the one studying in the school?’

He was greatly pleased to hear it. ‘Oh, you know about it, then!’ He went back to the chair. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial pitch and asked: ‘I say, you will help me, won’t you?’

‘In what way?’

He rolled his eyes significantly and reduced his speech to a whisper as he said: ‘My daughter was his one favourite in life. He mentioned an amount he had set apart for her marriage. Has he
ever mentioned it to you?’ He waited with bated breath for Srinivas’s reply, who was debating within himself whether to speak to him about it or not. Srinivas said finally: ‘Yes, he mentioned it once or twice,’ unable to practise any duplicity in the matter. The visitor became jumpy on hearing it. His eyes bulged with eager anticipation.

‘Where did he keep this amount?’ he asked.

‘That I can’t say,’ replied Srinivas. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

The other became desperate and pleaded: ‘Don’t let me down, sir, please help me.’

Srinivas looked sympathetic. ‘How can I say anything about it? He mentioned the matter once or twice – I really don’t know anything more.’

‘I hear that he has all his money in the Post Office Savings Bank. Is it true?’ Srinivas had once again to shake his head. He could not help adding: ‘It is difficult to get any money, even of living people, out of the Post Office Savings Bank!’

‘Oh, what shall I do about my daughter’s marriage?’ the visitor asked sullenly. He looked so concerned and unhappy that Srinivas felt obliged to say: ‘If he had lived a little longer, I am sure he would have done everything for your daughter. He was so fond of her.’

‘Just my luck,’ the other said, and beat his brow. ‘Why should he have held up his arrangements?’ He complained against sudden death, as if it were a part of the old man’s cunning, and looked completely disgusted with the old man’s act of dying. He got up and said: ‘I will look into it. Till then, please don’t pay the rent to anyone else.’ He took a step or two, then returned and said: ‘He used to confide in Mr Sampath. Do you think he will be any use and tell us something?’

‘Well, you can try him. He will probably be downstairs. You can see him as you go.’

Towards evening yet another person came: a tall man, who introduced himself as the eldest son of the old man.

‘I know my father wrote a will. Do you know anything about it?’

‘Sorry, no …’

The man looked pleased. ‘That’s right. He wrote only one will and that is with me. If anyone else starts any stunt about any codicils I shall know how to deal with them. It’s a pity you have paid the rent for this month. After this don’t pay it to anyone else till you hear from me.’ Yet another called on him next morning, demanding the rent and a hidden will, and Srinivas began to wonder if he would ever be able to do anything else than answer these people for the rest of his life. ‘I hear,’ said this latest visitor, ‘that he has put everything in the Car Street Post Office Savings Bank. How are we to get at it? He has left no instructions about it.’ All this seemed to Srinivas a futile involvement in life. ‘Where were all these people before this? Where have they sprung from?’ he wondered.

He decided to get clear of their company and its problems, and started looking for a house. But Malgudi being what it was, he could not get another. He forgot that if such a thing were possible he would not have become a tenant of the old man at all, and so he wasted a complete week in searching for a house. His wife had meanwhile become so enthusiastic about it and looked forward to a change with such eagerness that every evening when he came home her first question at the door was: ‘What about the house?’

‘Doesn’t seem to be much use; tomorrow I must try Grove Street and Vinayak Street. And after that –’ She became crestfallen. Mentally she had accommodated herself in a better house already, and now it seemed to her impossible to live in this house any more. She found everything intolerable: the walls were dirty and not straight, plaster was crumbling and threatening to fall into all the cooked food; the rafters were sooty and dark, the floor was full of cracks and harboured vermin and deadly insects, and, above all, there was a single tap to draw water from. Srinivas listened to her troubles and felt helpless. His son added to the trouble by cataloguing some of his own experiences: ‘Do you know, when I was bathing, a tile fell off the roof on my head? There is a pit in the backyard into which I saw a scorpion go,’ and so on. They had both made up their minds to quit. The relations of the old man also drove him to the same decision. But no house was available. What could anyone do? He confided his
trouble to Sampath. ‘We shall manage it easily,’ Sampath said, very happy to be set any new task.

The final version of the will which the old man was supposed to have made proved to be a blessing for the moment. When one of the relatives came next, Sampath neither accepted nor denied knowledge of the matter, and very soon had all of them running after him. ‘We shall have to convene a lost-will conference,’ he said. He was nearly in his old form, and Srinivas was delighted to notice it. Through his finery and tidiness an old light came back to his eyes.

He got the half-dozen relatives sitting around Srinivas’s table on a Saturday afternoon. They threw poisoned looks at each other; not one of them seemed to be on speaking terms with the others. Sampath said unexpectedly in a voice full of solemnity: ‘We are all gathered today to honour the memory of a noble master.’ They could not easily dispute the statement. ‘I have had the special honour of being in his confidence. I’ve had the privilege of learning the secrets of truth. Even in mundane matters, I think, I was one of the few to whom he opened his heart…’ Here they looked at each other darkly. ‘I must acknowledge my indebtedness to our Srinivas, our editor, for introducing me to the old gentleman.’ They once again looked at each other darkly. He added vaguely: ‘Let us now pull together – his relations and sons and friends – and do something to cherish the memory of this great soul; that we can do by treating each other liberally and charitably.’ Srinivas was amazed at Sampath’s eloquence. Presently he came down to practical facts. ‘He has left us his houses, his money in the post office, and all the rest that may be his. No doubt, if he had had the slightest inkling of what was coming, he might have made some arrangements for the distribution of his worldly goods. But this I doubt, for after all, for such a saintly man, worldly goods were only an impediment in life and nothing more. He used to quote an old verse:

‘However, this is a digression. Now it is up to us to decide what we should do. Here is Srinivas and my other friend Ravi in a portion of the house in Anderson Lane, among the tenants I have most in mind. Now the position is that our editor does not know to whom he should pay the rent.’ A babble arose. Sampath silenced them with a gesture and said: ‘It’s certainly going to someone or everyone; that I don’t dispute. It will certainly be decided very soon, but till then, where is he to pay the monthly rent, since he is a man who does not like to keep back a just due?’

‘That question is settled,’ said several voices. Sampath made an impatient gesture and then said without any apparent meaning: ‘Yes, as far as everyone of us is concerned. But where is a tenant to pay in his rent till the question is established beyond a shadow of doubt? My proposal is that till this is established my friends will pay their monthly rents into a Savings Bank account to be specially opened.’ There were fierce murmurs on hearing this, and Sampath declared: ‘This is the reason why my friend wants to move to another house. He says “How can I live in a house over which people fight?”’ And he paused to watch the effect of this threat on the gathering. They looked bewildered. They need not have been. But somehow, since the remark was delivered as a threat, they were half frightened by it. ‘You cannot afford to lose an old, valued tenant,’ Sampath added, driving the threat home.

‘No, no, we do not want to disturb him,’ they all said and looked at each other sourly. ‘What we want to know is, where is the will?’ asked a voice. ‘I thought we had come here about that. Do you know anything about it?’ Now all eyes were fixed on Sampath. He replied simply: ‘In a delicate matter like this, how can I say anything? I have heard him mention so many things.’

You need not tell us anything of other things. But, surely, you could tell us about the will,’ they cried. Sampath said decisively: ‘No. I will not speak of it for two months. By that time whatever there is to be known will be known. Of that I’m certain.’

‘Here is the copy of the will, registered by my father. Please examine this, Mr Sampath,’ said the eldest son. The others became feverish. Sampath bent over and read out its contents ceremoniously: ‘I do hereby bequeath … and I hold that there is no further will.’

‘What about my daughter?’ ‘What about my share?’ ‘You certainly were not his dearest one…’ ‘Have you forgotten…’ A babble broke out. ‘It must be tested in a court and not here,’ Sampath said. ‘We do not care to be involved in all this. After all, blood relations may quarrel today and unite the day after. It is none of a stranger’s business to get involved in such a matter. We will pay the rent to whoever is justly entitled to it … Meanwhile, whoever thinks that he is entitled to the house, ought to complete all the unfinished business of the old gentleman; he will have to undertake some responsibility; that’ll establish his claim.’

‘What responsibility?’ they asked.

Sampath said: ‘There is a car below; please follow me.’ He got up. They trooped behind him. They seemed very happy to have the chance of a car ride. They sat crushing each other. Sampath went straight to Srinivas’s house. It was like an investigation committee examining the spot. The first thing he said was: ‘This is the only source of water for four families – imagine!’ And then the various families, including Srinivas’s, gathered round and mentioned a list of all their requirements.

The result was: in a few days the block of houses in Anderson Lane became transformed: it only meant a little dislocation for Srinivas – having to shift with his family to his office. When he returned he found the walls scraped and lime-washed, tiles changed, floor smoothed with cement, and an independent water-tap planted in his own backyard; some of the partitions behind Ravi’s house were knocked down, and now only three families lived where there had been four or five before. It would not have been easy to investigate and say who was mainly responsible for these changes. All the relations seemed to have vied among themselves to give their tenants amenities. Srinivas’s wife was delighted. Sampath said: ‘So that settles your problem, Mr Editor. You will have to send your rent to the Savings Bank on the first. They’ve agreed to it. Meanwhile, the entire gang is going to the court for succession rights. But it’s none of our business at the moment.’

One of the most important sequences. Shiva is in a trance. He opens his eyes and keeps looking at Parvathi. Vague desires stir in him. He looks into his own mind for the reason. Till today he was able to receive her ministrations with absolute detachment, but today he finds himself interested in her. He feels that there is some mischief afoot and looks for the reason, and he espies in a corner the God of Love aiming his shaft at him, and burns him up immediately; then he resumes his meditation.

This was filmed and projected on the screen. They lounged in their comfortable cushion chairs, lit their cigarettes and watched in silence. Somu, Sampath, Sohan Lai, who was buying the picture, De Mello, and a number of technicians in the back row. The operator in his cabin was tired of mechanically throwing the same reel on the screen over and over again. Somu was the first to break the gloomy silence. He asked Mr Lai: ‘Well, what do you say, Mr Lal?’

Lal said: ‘It’s no good. I shall be obliged if you will retake it. It is lacking in something.’

‘It’s lacking in pep, if I may put it in a word,’ added De Mello. ‘There is a lot of scope for working up this sequence on the right lines. I agree with Mr Sohan Lal.’

‘Well, if everyone thinks the scene must be retaken, we’ve got to do it, that is all. The script will have to be rewritten.’ They all looked at Srinivas. ‘Do you think that the scene can be rewritten?’

‘How?’ asked Srinivas, trying to look as calm and considerate as possible. He felt pity for them, for the hunted look they wore. They were dealing with things beyond them, and the only pressure was commerce. He tried to sympathize with them and suppress the indignation that was rising within him. His question remained unanswered. They looked at each other in a frightened
way and whimpered uncomfortably. It was De Mello who plucked up enough strength to say: ‘Perhaps a dance act will serve the purpose: that will appeal to the public’

‘Yes,’ agreed Sohan Lai. ‘A dance act would be excellent. This picture needs some entertainment.’

‘The comedy is there,’ said Somu, for he was particularly proud of this contribution. Srinivas tried not to hear, for his blood boiled whenever he thought of those comic scenes. He had detached himself from them early; and Sampath and Somu had hatched them between themselves, shot them separately, and cut them up and scattered them like spice all along the story. He found that some of the most sublime moments he had conceived faded into the horseplay of Gopu and Mali and their suggestive by-play. They were the highest-paid comedians on the films, and they propped up any picture by this means. The public always flocked to see them and hear their gags. Somu was highly gratified with his own efforts. To his remark Sohan Lal replied: ‘Well, that’s only comedy. We must have an entertainment item like a dance sequence.’ And they decided to convert this scene into a dance act, and they at once called up a number of people from various parts of the studio. Srinivas accepted the position with resignation. He only exerted himself to the extent of refusing to write the scene any further. This was one of his favourite scenes. By externalizing emotion, by superimposing feeling in the shape of images, he hoped to express very clearly the substance of this episode: of love and its purification, of austerity and peace. But now they wanted to introduce a dance sequence. Srinivas found himself helpless in this world. He tried not to take a too tragic view of the situation. He wanted to avoid further tortures to his mind, and so leaned over and whispered to Sampath: ‘I’m going. I don’t have to explain why?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Sampath, and Srinivas went out. He walked along the open drive of the studio. So many people, so busily engaged, and going from place to place with a serious preoccupied air for at least ten hours in the day. ‘With this manner of theirs, why can’t they do something worth while?’ he reflected and went on. He came to the art and publicity block.

In his room Ravi was busily working on a publicity poster. He was sitting on the ground with a huge board leaning against the wall. He was clutching a brush in his hand. A huge outline of Shanti was pencilled, and he was colouring it. It seemed to be an enlargement of the little pencil sketch he had done long ago. Its eyelashes were so full of life, its eyes shone so much with light, and a ray of light reflected off a diamond in the ear; it was coloured so elegantly that it seemed a masterpiece worthy to hang in any art gallery. Srinivas stood admiring it.

‘How do you like it?’ Ravi asked.

‘Is this the portrait you mentioned?’

‘Oh, no, this is only a poster for a theatre gate. The other’s in oils and is my own.’

‘Where is it?’

‘There, turned to the wall.’ Srinivas saw the back of a wooden board in a far-off corner. He made a motion towards it, asking: ‘May I see it?’

‘Oh, no, it’ll probably be years before I can let anyone see it…’ He put away the brush, sat down in a chair and said: ‘It gives me a feeling of being near her when I do this. I want nothing else in life when I’m doing her picture, even if it is only a poster. Do you think he is quite truthful in saying that she is different?’

‘Don’t you worry about all that,’ Srinivas implored.

‘I am not worrying. I see her going home every day, sitting close to Sampath and touching him; they are always together. He doesn’t allow me to approach her at all. Does he take me for a fool?’ he laughed bitterly. ‘I’m not going to talk to her, even if she comes and speaks to me. She is pretending she is someone else.’

‘Don’t keep brooding over all that, Ravi; you do your work and forget the rest.’

‘Practically what I’m doing now. What else should I do? As long as I’m doing a portrait like this, even if it is only a poster, I’m at peace. Let that fellow keep her to himself, I don’t care; I’ve got something better out of her.’

All round the room there were preliminary advertisement layouts. One of them said: ‘Golden opportunity to see God himself Ravi pointed at the caption and said: ‘How do you
like the lettering? This is the advertisement slogan I’m asked to write out.’

‘God has never had a worse handling anywhere.’

Ravi merely shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do I care? I just do what I’m asked. If they want me to write “I’m an unmatched fool”, I will provide the required lettering for it. What do I care? I tell you, we have an art director who is fit only to be a clock-winder in the studio. He cannot even draw a straight line or a curve, but yet he is our boss, and we get our salary only if he approves of our work.’ He laughed uncontrollably. The veins on his forehead stood out like pipes, and he spoke loudly. He was very careless in his talk and seemed to want to challenge everybody with his remarks. He did not bother either to subdue his voice or speak discreetly. He seemed to have become very garrulous, too. This Srinivas suddenly noticed in him; and he also saw that his complexion was turning yellow and waxen. ‘I say, you must take care of your health. Why are you neglecting yourself in this way?’ Ravi made a wry face at the thought of looking after himself. He got up, looked at himself in a looking glass on the wall with distaste. ‘This is the best that can be done about you, my dear chap,’ he said, addressing himself. ‘Don’t demand further concessions. You are being treated better than you really deserve.’ And he once again broke into a laugh. He interrupted it to explain: ‘You see, my director wants a dozen different advertisement posters to be ready, and then we have the actual work on the sets. I go on working here all night nowadays. I have not been home.’ A shiver ran through him at the thought of his home. ‘I prefer this place. My father has completely given up talking to me. He becomes so rigid when he hears my voice at home that I fear he will have a seizure some day. Of course, he keeps hectoring my poor mother, and that is the worst of it. But for those young fellows and my mother,’ he said reflectively, ‘I should have blasted my so-called home ages ago.’

You aren’t free to come out for a moment, I suppose?’

‘Where to?’ asked Ravi.

‘Come to my house. I will give you good coffee and something to eat. You can rest there and return to the studio whenever you want.’ Ravi revolved the offer in his mind and rejected
it. ‘I have to finish three different styles of this god notice before tonight.’ And he settled down resolutely.

At home Srinivas’s wife said: ‘Do you know, Sampath’s wife was here this afternoon?’

‘How did she come all this way? You have not seen her before?’

‘No, she managed to come in a car. What a lot of daughters she has.’

‘Why, do you envy her?’ Srinivas asked, and she replied: ‘What is there to joke about in all this! She came on a very serious business. She wants me to speak to you about her husband.’

‘What about him?’

‘It seems that their household has become impossible. There is that woman who is playing Parvathi. He is always with her.’

‘He is her cousin.’

‘It seems they are not cousins. They are of different castes.’

‘What if they are?’ Srinivas asked, thinking what an evil system caste was. She flared up. ‘Let her be any caste she pleases, but what business has she to come and ruin that family? They were so happy before. Now he doesn’t care for the house at all. He is always with her. And it seems now that he is threatening to marry her and set up another household. The poor girl has been crying for days now. You have got to do something about her.’ She was so much worked up and became so vehement that Srinivas felt that he ought to speak to Sampath.

Srinivas waited for an opportunity to meet Sampath alone at the studio. He was always with Shanti, except when she went in to dress or into the women’s makeup room, when he hung about Sohan Lai, who had still to pay him a lakh and a half. The mastery of the studio was now gradually passing into the hands of Sohan Lal, and Sohan Lal was completely absorbed in arranging the dance act. Sampath was told: ‘Give me the dance act completed, and I will pay the first half of the agreed amount.’ And if he received that lakh and a half, Sampath was going to buy up the interests of Somu also and become virtually the owner of the
picture; then he would put on hand another picture almost at once. So it was in his interest to complete the dance act as quickly as possible, and night and day he was being dragged hither and thither to complete it. Sohan Lal was dogging his steps, and he dogged the steps of Sohan Lal, and Somu went round and round these two, hoping for the completion of the dance act, when he, too, hoped to get various payments made to him. It was, on the whole, a very intricate mechanism of human relationships. In this maze Srinivas walked about unscathed, because he had trained himself to view it all as a mere spectator. This capacity saved him all the later shocks. He saw, without much flutter, the mangling that was going on with his story. The very process by which they mangled his theme attracted him, and he moved from room to room, studio to studio, through floor-space and setting, laboratory and sound processing and moviola, into the projection room, watching, and he very soon accommodated himself to the notion that they were doing a picture of their own entirely unconnected with the theme he had written.

It was difficult to get at Sampath alone. All the same, when they were passing from their discussion chamber to the second studio to see a test arrangement for the dance act, he managed to ask him: ‘Please spare me fifteen minutes.’

Sampath looked at him in pained surprise. He was wearing a silk shirt with gold studs, and on his wrist gleamed a platinum watch, bound with a gold strap. He wore a pair of spectacles nowadays. ‘Every sign of prosperity is there,’ Srinivas remarked to himself. ‘All except your old personality, which is fast vanishing.’ He went everywhere now by car, and that habit had given him a new rotundity. Srinivas felt like saying: ‘I do hope you will not acquire the appearance of Mr Somu in due course. Pull yourself together in time.’

‘Anything urgent?’

‘Absolutely,’ Srinivas said.

‘I will free myself after seeing the dance test. It won’t take ten minutes. Come along, have a look at it.’ Srinivas excused himself and stayed behind in the garden. Presently Sampath came down. ‘This dance idea is very good, you know. It is going to make the picture top-class, the most artistic production in India. We may
even send it abroad. Of course, you are not annoyed about these changes, are you?’

‘Not at all; why should I worry about it?’

‘We are only taking liberties with the details, you know, but we are keeping to your original in the main treatment.’

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ Srinivas said, feeling that this was the familiar eyewash every film-maker applied to every writer. ‘It’s not about that that I wish to trouble you now. It’s about another matter.’ He mentioned it gently, apologetically. At first Sampath pooh-poohed the entire story. But later said, with his old mischievous look coming back to his eyes: ‘Some people say that every sane man needs two wives – a perfect one for the house and a perfect one outside for social life … I have the one. Why not the other? I have confidence that I will keep both of them happy and if necessary in separate houses. Is a man’s heart so narrow that it cannot accommodate more than one? I have married according to Vedic rites: let me have one according to the civil marriage law….’

‘Is it no use discussing it?’

‘I’m afraid not, Mr Editor…. You will forgive me. I love her, though you may not believe it.’

‘How can you ever forget that you are a father of five?’

‘As I have told you, man’s heart is not a narrow corner.’

‘Think of your wife.’

‘Oh, these women will make a scene. She will be all right. She must get used to it.’ He remained for a moment brooding, but soon set himself right, saying airily: ‘It’s her nature to fuss about things sometimes. But she always changes for the better. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it, Mr Editor, but somehow –’

‘I can’t say that I’m very happy to hear this news, Sampath. I do hope you will think it over deeply,’ said Srinivas, feeling a little uncomfortable at having to sound so pontifical. He got up. ‘You have to take into consideration the future of all your five children.’