Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (55 page)

Sriram told himself, looking at the vision beside the microphone, ‘Definitely it’s not bitterness. I love her.’

‘But,’ Mahatmaji was saying, ‘if I have the slightest suspicion that your heart is not pure or that there is bitterness there, I’d rather have the British stay on. It’s the lesser of two evils.’

Sriram thought: ‘Oh, revered Mahatmaji, have no doubt that my heart is pure and without bitterness. How can I have any bitterness in my heart for a creature who looks so divine?’

She was at a great height on the platform, and her features were not very clear in the afternoon sun which seemed to set her face ablaze. She might be quite dark and yet wear a temporarily fair face illumined by the sun or she might really be fair. If she were dark, without a doubt his grandmother would not approve of his marrying her. In any case it was unlikely that they would have her blessing, since she had other plans for his marriage: a brother’s granddaughter brought up in Kumbum, a most horrible, countrified girl who would guard his cash. If Grandmother was so solicitous of his money she was welcome to take it all and hand it to the Kumbum girl. That would be the lesser of two evils, but he would not marry the Kumbum girl, an unsightly creature with a tight oily braid falling on her nape and dressed in a gaudy village
sari
, when the thing to do was to wear
khadar
. He would refuse to look at anyone who did not wear
khadi, khadi
alone was going to save the nation from ruin and get the English out of India, as that venerable saint Mahatmaji explained untiringly. He felt sad and depressed at the thought that in the twentieth century there were still people like the Kumbum girl, whom he had seen many many years ago when his uncle came down to engage a lawyer for a civil suit in the village.

Sriram wanted to go and assure the girl on the grandstand that he fully and without the slightest reservation approved of her outlook and habits. It was imperative that he should approach her and tell her that. He seized the chance at the end of the meeting.

Mahatmaji started to descend from the platform. There was a general rush forward, and a number of volunteers began pushing back the crowd, imploring people not to choke the space around the platform. Mahatmaji himself seemed to be oblivious of all the turmoil going on around him. Sriram found a gap in the cordon
made by the volunteers and slipped through. The heat of the sun hit him on the nape, the huge trees on the river’s edge rustled above the din of the crowd, birds were creating a furore in the branches, being unaccustomed to so much noise below. The crowd was so great that Sriram for a moment forgot where he was, which part of the town he was in, and but for the noise of the birds would not have remembered he was on the banks of Sarayu. ‘If that girl can be with Mahatmaji I can also be there,’ he told himself indignantly as he threaded his way through the crowd. There was a plethora of white-capped young men, volunteers who cleared a way for Mahatmaji to move in. Sriram felt that it would have been much better if he had not made himself so conspicuously different with his half-arm shirt and
mull-dhoti
, probably products of the hated mills. He feared that any moment someone might discover him and put him out. If they challenged him and asked, ‘Who are you?’ he felt he wouldn’t be able to answer coherently, or he might just retort, ‘Who do you think you are talking to, that girl supporting the Mahatma is familiar to me. I am going to know her, but don’t ask me her name. She came with a collection box one day in the market …’

But no such occasion arose. No one questioned him and he was soon mixed up with a group of people walking behind Mahatmaji in the lane made by the volunteers, as crowds lined the sides. He decided to keep going till he was stopped. If someone stopped him he could always turn round and go home. They would not kill him for it anyway. Killing! He was amused at the word: no word could be more incongruous in the vicinity of one who could not hurt even the British. One could be confident he would not let a would-be follower be slaughtered by his volunteers.

Presently Sriram found himself in such a position of vantage that he lost all fear of being taken for an intruder and walked along with a jaunty and familiar air, so that people lining the route looked on him with interest. He heard his name called. ‘Sriram!’ An old man who used to be his teacher years before was calling him. Even in his present situation Sriram could not easily break away from the call of a teacher: it was almost a reflex: he hesitated for a moment wondering whether he would not do
well to run away without appearing to notice the call, but almost as if reading his mind, his teacher called again, ‘A moment! Sriram.’ He stopped to have a word with his master, an old man who had wrapped himself in a coloured shawl and looked like an apostle with a slight beard growing on his chin. He gripped Sriram’s elbow eagerly and asked, ‘Have you joined them?’

‘Whom?’

‘Them – ‘said the teacher, pointing.

Sriram hesitated for a moment, wondering what he should reply, and mumbled, ‘I mean to …’

‘Very good, very good,’ said the master. ‘In spite of your marks I always knew that you would go far, smart fellow. You are not dull but only lazy. If you worked well you could always score first-class marks like anyone else, but you were always lazy; I remember how you stammered when asked which was the capital of England. Ho! Ho!’ he laughed at the memory. Sriram became restive and wriggled in his grip.

The teacher said, ‘I am proud to see you here, my boy. Join the Congress, work for the country, you will go far, God bless you …’

‘I am glad you think so, sir,’ said Sriram and turned to dash away.

The teacher put his face close to his and asked in a whisper, ‘What will Mahatmaji do now after going in there?’

‘Where?’ Sriram asked, not knowing where Gandhi was going, although he was following him.

‘Into his hut,’ replied the teacher.

‘He will probably rest,’ answered Sriram, resolutely preparing to dash off. If he allowed too great a distance to develop between himself and the group they might not admit him.

A little boy thrust himself forward and asked, ‘Can you get me Mahatma’s autograph?’

‘Certainly not,’ replied Sriram, gently struggling to release himself from his teacher’s hold.

His teacher whispered in his ear, ‘Whatever happens, don’t let down our country.’

‘No, sir, never, I promise,’ replied Sriram, gently pushing away his old master and running after the group, who were fast disappearing from his view.

They were approaching a wicket gate made of thorns and bamboo. He saw the girl going ahead to open the gate. He sprinted forward as the crowd watched. He had an added assurance in his steps now he felt that he belonged to the Congress. The teacher had put a new idea into his head and he almost felt he was a veteran of the party. He soon joined the group and he had mustered enough pluck to step up beside the girl. It was a proud moment for him. He looked at her. She did not seem to notice his presence. He sweated all over with excitement and panted for breath, but could not make out the details of her personality, complexion or features. However, he noted with satisfaction that she was not very tall, himself being of medium height. Gandhi was saying something to her and she was nodding and smiling. He did not understand what they were saying, but he also smiled out of sympathetic respect. He wanted to look as much like them as possible, and cursed himself for the hundredth time that day for being dressed in mill cloth.

The Mahatma entered his hut. This was one of the dozen huts belonging to the city sweepers who lived on the banks of the river. It was probably the worst area in the town, and an exaggeration even to call them huts; they were just hovels, put together with rags, tin-sheets, and shreds of coconut matting, all crowded in anyhow, with scratchy fowls cackling about and children growing in the street dust. The municipal services were neither extended here nor missed, although the people living in the hovels were employed by the municipality for scavenging work in the town. They were paid ten rupees a month per head, and since they worked in families of four or five, each had a considerable income by Malgudi standards. They hardly ever lived in their huts, spending all their time around the municipal building or at the toddy shop run by the government nearby, which absorbed all their earnings. These men spent less than a tenth of their income on food or clothing, always depending upon mendicancy in their off hours for survival. Deep into the night their voices could be heard clamouring for alms, in all the semi-dark streets of Malgudi. Troublesome children were silenced at the sound of their approach. Their possessions were few; if a cow or a calf died in the city they were called in to carry
off the carcass and then the colony at the river’s edge brightened up, for they held a feast on the flesh of the dead animal and made money out of its hide. Reformers looked on with wrath and horror, but did little else, since as an untouchable class they lived outside the town limits, beyond Nallappa’s Grove, where nobody went, and they used only a part of the river on its downward course.

This was the background to the life of the people in whose camp Gandhi had elected to stay during his visit to Malgudi. It had come as a thunderbolt on the Municipal Chairman, Mr Natesh, who had been for weeks preparing his palatial house, Neel Bagh in the aristocratic Lawley Extension, to receive Gandhi. His arguments as to why he alone should be Mahatmaji’s host seemed unassailable: ‘I have spent two lakhs on the building, my garden and lawns alone have cost me twenty-five thousand rupees so far. What do you think I have done it for? I am a simple man, sir, my needs are very simple. I don’t need any luxury. I can live in a hut, but the reason I have built it on this scale is so that I should be able for at least once in my lifetime to receive a great soul like Mahatmaji. This is the only house in which he can stay comfortably when he comes to this town. Let me say without appearing to be boastful that it is the biggest and the best furnished house in Malgudi, and we as the people of Malgudi have a responsibility to give him our very best, so how can we house him in any lesser place?’

The Reception Committee applauded his speech. The District Collector, who was the head of the district, and the District Superintendent of Police, who was next to him in authority, attended the meeting as
ex officio
members.

A dissenting voice said, ‘Why not give the Circuit House for Mahatmaji?’

The Circuit House on the edge of the town was an old East India Company building standing on an acre of land, on the Trunk Road. Robert Clive was supposed to have halted there while marching to relieve the seige of Trichinopoly. The citizens of Malgudi were very proud of this building and never missed an opportunity to show it off to anyone visiting the town and it always housed the distinguished visitors who came this way. It
was a matter of prestige for Governors to be put up there. Even in this remote spot they had arranged to have all their conveniences undiminished, with resplendent sanitary fittings in the bathrooms. It was also known as the Glass House, by virtue of a glass-fronted bay room from which the distinguished guests could watch the wild animals that were supposed to stray near the building at night in those days.

The dissenting voice in the Reception Committee said, ‘Is it the privilege of the ruling race alone to be given the Circuit House? Is our Mahatmaji unworthy of it?’

The Collector, who was the custodian of British prestige, rose to a point of order and administered a gentle reproof to the man who spoke: ‘It is not good to go beyond the relevant facts at the moment: if we have considered the Circuit House as unsuitable it is because we have no time to rig it up for receiving Mr Gandhi.’

It was a point of professional honour for him to say
Mr
Gandhi and not
Mahatma
, and but for the fact that as the Collector he could close the entire meeting and put all the members behind bars under the Defence of India Act, many would have protested and walked out, but they held their peace and he drove home the point.

‘Since Mr Gandhi’s arrival has been a sudden decision, we are naturally unable to get the building ready for him; if I may say so, our Chairman’s house seems to suit the purpose and we must be grateful to him for so kindly obliging us.’

‘And I am arranging to move to the Glass House leaving my house for Mahatmaji’s occupation.’

That seemed to decide it, and his partisans cheered loudly. It was resolved by ten votes to one that Mahatmaji should stay in Neel Bagh, and the Chairman left the meeting with a heavy, serious look. He wrote to Gandhiji’s secretary, receiving a reply which he read at the next meeting: ‘Mahatma Gandhi wishes that no particular trouble should be taken about his lodging, and that the matter may be conveniently left over till he is actually there.’

The council debated the meaning of the communication and finally concluded that it only meant that though the Mahatma was unwilling to be committed to anything he would not refuse to occupy Neel Bagh.

The dissenting voice said, ‘How do you know that he does not mean something else?’

But he was soon overwhelmed by the gentle reprimand of the Collector. The communication was finally understood to mean, ‘I know Mahatmaji’s mind, he does not want to trouble anyone if it is a trouble.’

‘He probably does not know that it is no trouble for us at all.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said another soothsayer. And they were all pleased at this interpretation.

A further flattering comparison was raised by someone who wanted to create a pleasant impression on the Chairman: ‘Let us not forget that Mahatmaji takes up his residence at Birla House in Delhi and Calcutta; I am sure he will have no objection to staying in a palatial building like the one our Chairman has built.’

The dissenting voice said, ‘Had we better not write and ask if we have understood him right, and get his confirmation?’

He was not allowed to complete his sentence but was hissed down, and the District Superintendent of Police added slowly, ‘Even for security arrangements any other place would present difficulties.’