Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (6 page)

His help was invaluable to Srinivas. He felt he was being more and more bound to him by ties of gratitude. The printer
declared: ‘When a customer enters our premises he is, in our view, a guest of the Truth Printing Works. Well, you think,
The Banner
is yours. It isn’t. I view it as my own.’

He acted up to this principle. In the weeks preceding the launching of
The Banner
he abandoned all his normal work: he set aside a co-operative society balance-sheet, four wedding invitations, and a small volume of verse, all of which were urgent, according to those who had ordered them. He dealt with all his customers amiably, but to no purpose. ‘You will get the proofs positively this evening, and tomorrow you may come for the finished copies. Sorry for the delay. My staff is somewhat overworked at the moment. They’ve instructions to give you the maximum co-operation.’ With all this suaveness he was not to be found in his place at the appointed hour. He threw a scarf around his throat, donned a fur cap, and was out on one or the other duties connected with
The Banner
. He arranged for the supply of paper, and he went round with Srinivas canvassing subscribers. The very first thing he did was to print a thousand handbills, setting forth the purpose and nature of
The Banner
. He had spent four nights and days devising the layout for it. Finally he decided upon a green paper and red lettering; when Srinivas saw it his heart sank within him. But the printer explained: ‘This is the best possible layout for it; it must catch people’s eye. I won’t bill you for it except some nominal charge for paper.’ He also printed a dozen tiny receipt books. He scattered the green-and-red notices widely all over the town, into every possible home; and then followed it up with a visit with the receipt book in hand. He worked out the annual subscription at about ten rupees, and managed to collect a thousand rupees even before the legal dummy was ready.

Srinivas was convinced that he could never have got through the legal formalities but for his printer. He had always disliked courts and magistrates; and he was really fearful as to how he would get through it all. The dummy to be placed before the magistrate was ready. Srinivas implored him: ‘Please make another copy. Is this the paper we are going to use?’

‘Oh, you don’t like this paper! Norway bond – I’ve refused it to some of our oldest customers, you know – it is the strongest parchment in the market.’

‘But the ink comes through.’

‘Oh, we will check that. I have put a little extra ink on this because magistrates usually like the title to be very dark. They like to carry some printers’ ink on their thumbs, I suppose,’ he said. ‘You had better leave this magistrate business to me.’

He walked into the hall of the court at Race-Course Road nonchalantly, adjusted his cap, stood before the court clerk, and handed up his application.

‘Can you swear that all your statements in this are true?’

‘Yes, I swear.’

‘You declare yourself the printer of
The Banner?’

‘Yes, I’m the printer.’ The clerk scrutinized the paper once more. As he was standing there, the printer took out of his pocket a pod of fried groundnut, cracked its shell, and put the nut into his mouth. Srinivas was shocked. He feared he might be charged with contempt of court. The printer’s eye shone with satisfaction; he put his fingers into his pocket, took out another bit, and held it out for Srinivas under the table. Srinivas looked away, at which the printer cracked it gently and ate that also. All around there were people: lawyers sitting at a horseshoe table, poring over books and papers or wool-gathering; policemen in the doorway; prisoners waiting for a hearing at the dock. Srinivas felt that they were going to be thrown out – with that printer of his cracking nut-shells. They were standing immediately below the magistrate’s table. But the printer was deft and calm with his nuts, and it passed off unnoticed. The clerk fixed his gaze on Srinivas and asked: ‘Your name? You declare yourself the editor and publisher of
The Banner?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you speaking the whole truth?’

‘Absolutely.’ The clerk picked up the papers and handed them up to the magistrate, who seemed to be looking at nothing in particular. The magistrate’s lips moved, and the clerk asked: ‘Will you promise to avoid all sedition and libel?’

The printer quickly answered: ‘On behalf of both of us, we promise.’ The magistrate’s lips moved again; the clerk asked: ‘Are you going to deal in politics?’

Once again the printer answered swiftly: ‘No, it is a literary magazine.’ The magistrate slightly nodded his head and then the
clerk pressed a couple of rubber stamps on the papers, and the magistrate signed on the dots indicated by him. It was over. The permission was secured.

Before they crossed the court compound Srinivas protested: ‘Why did you say it was going to be literary? Far from it. I shall certainly not avoid politics; while I don’t set out to deal only in politics, I can’t bind myself –’

‘You go on with politics or revolution or whatever you like, but you can’t say so in a court; if you do, they may ask for deposits, and you will have all kinds of troubles and worries. You know, I have achieved an ambition in life: I’ve always wanted to crack nuts and eat them in a court – something to foil the terrible gloom of the place. I have done it today.’

His brother’s letter reached him, addressed to the office. He had not written home ever since he came to Malgudi. His brother wrote:

Srinivas pondered over this letter, sitting in his office. He admired his brother for detecting the similarity in all the contributions: all of them were written by himself. Heaven knew what difficulties he went through, on one side, churning up the matter for the twelve pages, and on the other keeping in check the printer, who threatened to overflow on to the editorial side. Not content with appointing himself the dictator in matters of format and business, he was trying to take a hand in the editorials also, but Srinivas dealt with him tactfully and nicely. He could not pass a copy downstairs without feeling like a schoolboy presenting a composition to his master. He waited with suspense as the printer scrutinized it before passing it on: ‘You wouldn’t like me to advise you here, I suppose?’

‘No,’ Srinivas said, meaning it but trying to make it sound humorous.

‘Well, all right. But you see, sir, that film was not produced at Bombay, but at a Calcutta studio.’

‘Oh! In that case –’ Srinivas hastily snatched it back and scrutinized it again. ‘Sorry for the blunder –’

‘It is quite all right – natural,’ replied the printer expansively, forgivingly, as if to suggest that anyone who was forced to write about so many things himself was bound to commit such foolish mistakes. Srinivas did not very much like the situation, but he had to accept it with resignation. It was true: he was putting his hand to too many departments. But there was no way of helping it. He could not afford to engage anyone to assist him. And his programme was more or less as follows: Monday, first page; Tuesday, second page; Wednesday, cinema and arts; Thursday, correspondence and main editorial; Friday, gleanings, comments and miscellaneous. This virtuous calendar was constantly getting upset, and all the items jammed into each other, and he found himself doing everything every day, and all things on Friday, the printer shouting from the bottom of the staircase for copy every five minutes. He flung the matter down the stairs as each page got ready, and the printer picked it up and ran in with it. Or if he had a doubt he shouted again from the bottom of the staircase. At four o’clock the last forme went down and then the major worries were over. The treadle was silenced at six, and peace descended suddenly on the community at Kabir Lane.

The intellectual portion of the work was now over, signified by the passing of the editor down the stairs; after which he stepped into the press to attend to the dispatch of copies. The printer lent him a hand in this task. Five hundred copies of
The Banner
were all over the floor of the printer’s office. They squatted down and gummed, labelled and stamped the copies with feverish speed, and loaded them on the back of a very young printer’s devil, who ran with his burden to the post office at the railway station, where it could always be posted without late fee till 8 p.m.

This brought him up against the R.M.S. It took him time to understand what R.M.S. meant. But he had to grow familiar with it. He received a letter in his mail-bag one day saying: ‘You are requested to see the undersigned during the working hours on any day convenient to you.’ He was writing his editorial on the new housing policy for Malgudi. Plenty of labour from other districts had been brought in because the district board and the municipality had launched a feverish scheme of road development and tank building, and three or four cotton mills had suddenly sprung into existence. Overnight, as it were, Malgudi passed from a semi-agricultural town to a semi-industrial town, with a sudden influx of population of all sorts. The labour gangs, brought in from other districts, spread themselves out in the open spaces. Babies sleeping in hammocks made of odd pieces of cloth, looped over tree branches, women cooking food on the roadside, men sleeping on pavements – these became a common sight in all parts of Malgudi. The place was beginning to look more and more like a gipsy camp.

Srinivas made it his mission to attack the conditions in the town in every issue. The municipality feared that they were being made the laughing-stock of the whole country, and decided to take note of the editorials appearing in
The Banner
. And they revived an old plan, which they had shelved years ago, of subsidizing the development of a new town on the eastern outskirts. It was gratifying to the editor of
The Banner
to see the effect of his words! He felt that after all something he was saying had got home. He had the pleasure of reflecting on these lines when he received a note from the municipality: ‘The president would like to meet the editor at any time convenient to him on
any working day.’ He opened the next and read that the R.M.S. would like to meet him. ‘God! How many people must I go and meet? When have I the time?’ On working days and other days he had to sit in the garret and manufacture ‘copy’; if there was the slightest delay the smoothness of life was affected. That life went on smoothly was indicated by the purring of the treadle below. All went well as long as that sound lasted. The moment it paused he knew he would hear the printer’s voice calling from the bottom of the staircase: ‘Editor! Matter!’ He worked under a continuous nightmare of not being able to meet his printer’s demand. That meant continuous work, night and day, all through the week, and even on a Sunday. He seldom approved of what he wrote and would rewrite and tear up and rewrite, but it was always the printer’s call that decided the final shape.

‘When I’m so hard-pressed for time I can’t be bothered in this way,’ he remarked to himself, and tossed away the two letters to a farther corner of his table, where they lost their individualities in a great wilderness of paper. He had learnt to deal with the bulk of his correspondence in this way. ‘Till I can afford to have a secretary and an assistant editor and a personal representative, an accountant, office boy, and above all, a typewriter – all correspondence must wait,’ he said to his papers. Every post brought him a great many letters. He flung away unopened everything that came to him in long envelopes. He shoved it away, out of sight, under the table. He knew what the long envelope contained: unsolicited contributions, poems, essays, sketches. It was surprising how many people volunteered to write, without any other incentive than just seeing themselves in print. And then an equal number of letters demanding to be told what had happened to their contributions; and why there was no reply, even though postage was enclosed. ‘It is not enough, my friend,’ Srinivas said to them mentally, ‘I must have a fair compensation for looking at your handiwork; that is why I don’t open the envelope. Any time you are free you can come and collect it from under my table.’

And then there were letters from readers, marriage invitations from unknown people, sample packets of ink powder and other things for favour of an opinion, and copies of Government and
municipal notifications on thin manifold paper. The last provided him with a miscellany of unwanted information: ‘Note that from the 13th to 15th the railway level-crossing will be closed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.,’ said one note.

‘Well, I note it for what it is worth; what next?’ Srinivas asked. The municipality sent him statements of average rainfall and maximum and minimum temperatures; somebody sent him calendars, someone else the information that a grandchild was born to him. ‘Why do they think all this concerns me?’ he at first asked, rather terrified. But gradually he grew hardened and learnt to put them away. Most of his correspondence was snuffed out in this manner; but not the R.M.S. and the municipal chairman.

Very soon he had another letter from the R.M.S. ‘Your kind attention is drawn to our previous letter, dated … and an early reply is solicited.’