Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (65 page)

She said, ‘Do you know what it means? Bapu wants you to stay on and do your work here. He feels your work here is worth while and that you will have to go on with it.’

‘How do you know he means that and not something else?’

‘I know it because I can read what he writes and understand it.’

‘I can also read what he writes,’ said Sriram with pointless haughtiness.

‘Did you write anything to him?’ she asked.

He didn’t like the cross-examination. ‘Perhaps or perhaps not,’ he said with anger in his voice.

‘Why should you be angry? I’ll write to Bapu next time that you are a very angry man.’

In answer he suddenly threw himself on her, muttering, ‘You will only write to him that we are married.’ It was an assault conducted without any premeditation, and it nearly overwhelmed her.

He gave her no opportunity to struggle or free herself. He held her in an iron embrace in his madness. He lost sight of her features. The hour was dark. He felt her breath against his face when she said, ‘No, this can’t be, Sriram.’

Sriram muttered, ‘Yes, this can be. No one can stop me and you from marrying now. This is how gods marry.’

Her braid laid its pleasant weight on his forearm. Her cheeks smelt of sandalwood soap. He kissed the pit of her throat. He revelled in the scent of sandalwood that her body exuded. ‘You are sweet-smelling,’ he said. ‘I will be your slave. I will do anything you ask me to do for you. I will buy you all the things in the world.’ He behaved like an idiot. She wriggled in his grasp for a moment and at the same time seemed to respond to his caresses. He rested his head on her bosom and remained silent. He felt that any speech at this moment would be a sacrilege. It was a night of absolute darkness. The trees rustled, crickets and
night insects carried on their unremitting drone. He wanted to say something about the stars and moonlight, but he felt tongue-tied. The only thing that seemed to be of any consequence now was her warm breathing body close to his.

He murmured: ‘I always knew it. You are my wife.’

She gently released herself from his hold and said, ‘Not yet. I must wait for Bapu’s sanction.’

‘How will you get it?’

‘I shall write to him tomorrow.’

‘If he doesn’t sanction it?’

‘You will marry someone else.’

‘Don’t you like me? Tell me – tell me – ‘he said in a fevered manner.

She felt the trembling of his body, and said: ‘I shouldn’t be coming here or meeting you if I didn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t Mahatmaji have known?’

‘No. His mind is too pure to think anything wrong –’

‘What is wrong with what?’

‘This is very wrong – we – we should not have – I – I – she sobbed. ‘I don’t know what Bapu will think of me now. I – must – write to him what has happened.’

He had never seen her so girlish and weak. He felt a momentary satisfaction that he had quashed her pride, quelled her turbulence. He said aggressively: ‘Bapuji will say nothing. He will understand. He knows human feelings, and so don’t worry. There is nothing wrong in loving. You and I are married.’

‘When?’

‘On the very first day I saw you.’

‘That’s not enough. I can’t marry without Bapu’s sanction.’

He became positive and dynamic. He swore: ‘We shall marry this very moment.’ He dragged her by the hand into the inner sanctum. He ran hither and thither feverishly doing things. He lit the lamp and placed it before the image, whose nose and arms were broken, but whose eyes still shed grace. He ran out and came back with a few leaves and flowers, and placed them at the foot of the pedestal. He took out a thread from his spinning wheel saying, ‘You cannot have a
thali
more sacred than this, nor
a priest more holy than this god.’ When he attempted to place the thread round her neck, she gently drew herself away from him.

A sudden firmness came in her voice, as she said: ‘Know this, Sriram. If I had not trusted you I’d not have come here again and again.’ He did not understand why she was saying it. He felt bewildered. Why was she talking like this? Perhaps she suddenly remembered that she ought to marry Gorpad or someone else. Yes, now it flashed across his mind there used to be some significant exchange of looks between her and Gorpad. What a fellow to marry, rough as emery paper! A stab of jealousy shook him for a moment and he said, ‘Will you swear before this god that you will marry only me.’

‘Yes, if I marry at all, and mark this, if Bapu agrees to it.’

‘Bapu! Bapu!’ It filled him with despair. He wailed: ‘He is too big to bother about us. Don’t trouble him with our affairs.’

She said, ‘I won’t marry if he doesn’t sanction it. I can’t do it.’

‘If he asks you to marry someone else,’ he asked pathetically, checking at the last second the name ‘Gorpad’.

‘Bapu has better things to do than finding a husband for me,’ she said clearly, unequivocally.

He blinked for a moment. The excitement made his throat parched. He wanted to ask something again. But even in his confused state, he was aware that he was saying the same thing over and over. He blinked pathetically. The broken-armed god looked on. Sriram had never bargained for such an inconclusive love-making. It had begun with such spirit that he had felt he would be shot into elysium next moment, but here he was, standing before a god immobilized and listening to an obscure speech. The girl would probably take him for a fool to leave so much space between them. He tried to remedy it by approaching her again and attempting to storm her as he did a moment ago. The first time he had the advantage of a sudden impulse. But now it didn’t work. She just beat down his outstretched arm: ‘No. You will not touch me again.’ She said it with such authority that he felt foolish.

‘I didn’t intend to if you don’t want it. I know you hate me,’ he said childishly.

She simply said, ‘Why should I hate you?’

‘Because I am bothering you.’

‘How?’ she asked.

‘By, by – asking you to marry me. It’s wrong, perhaps wrong.’

‘It wouldn’t be if Bapu agreed to it.’

He resigned himself. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘As you please –’

‘We shall marry,’ she said, ‘the very minute Bapu agrees.’ She was very considerate.

He felt it was time for him to ask again: ‘Do you – like me?’

‘Yes, when you don’t misbehave.’

Days of listlessness and suspense followed. Sriram lost sight of her for a considerable period. He thought he had lost her for ever. It made him so paralysed that all day he did nothing but lounge in front of his cottage going over in mind again and again all that had happened that night. He had suspended his usual round of lecturing, agitation, and demonstrations; he didn’t seem to think he owed any duty to the country. He ate and stayed in his den all day, he had read the joke about a ‘He’ and a ‘She’ two hundred times already. He saw the train arrive and depart. He saw the postman stop on the boulder and go away to the estates. He lounged against the corner tablet and brooded endlessly.

After all, one day she turned up. She came at noon. It seemed significant that she should avoid the dusk. The moment he sighted her on the bend, he gave a shout of joy and wanted to ask, ‘Are you coming now, because it is a safe hour?’ But he checked himself. He ran to meet her at the usual bend of the road. He asked: ‘What news?’ She didn’t speak till they were back in their place. She sat down, leaned back on the tablet, took a letter out of her bag. Sriram snatched it hungrily and glanced through it:

‘Blessed one, not yet… I am going to ask all workers if they are underground to come out. I want you to give yourself up at the nearest police station. Take your disciple along too. God bless you both.’

Sriram felt stunned. He read the letter over and over, trying to make out its significance. He tried to interpret it. ‘“Not yet,” he says. What does he mean?’

‘He just means that and nothing more,’ she replied. ‘It is never hard to understand what Bapuji says.’

Sriram felt amazed at the hardihood and calmness of the girl. She didn’t seem to possess any feeling. She spoke of it with such indifference. He was appalled at her calmness. She was probably feeling relieved that Bapuji had vetoed their plans. It suited her very well – Gorpad. And of course, in his sick imagination he felt that probably Mahatmaji was also in favour of Gorpad, he’d naturally prefer to marry her to a grim and dry-as-dust worker like Gorpad. But why couldn’t she be plain with him?

‘Why can’t you be plain?’ he asked her all of a sudden.

‘What do you mean?’

He felt tongue-tied, and asked: ‘Why should Bapu not want us to marry?’

‘He doesn’t say so.’

He sighed: ‘I thought he would send us his blessing, but he has only turned down our programme.’ In his disappointment, he felt sore with the whole world, not excluding Bapu. He suddenly asked her: ‘Don’t you feel disappointed that we are not married?’

‘I have other things to think of,’ she said.

‘Oh!’ Sriram said significantly. ‘What may they be?’

‘I am going to gaol …’

The full significance of the whole thing dawned upon him now. He cried, ‘Bharati, you just can’t do that, what do you mean?’

She replied, ‘You will have to come too …’ She opened the letter and glanced through it again. ‘Bapu has also given instructions as to how I should occupy my time in gaol. “This is an opportunity for you to learn some new language. I wish you could read Tulasi Das Ramayana without any assistance; you speak Hindi well, but your literary equipment will also have to be equally good. You may ask the gaol superintendent to give you facilities if you are going to be classed as B to take your
charka
along. I would like to hear that you are spinning your quota in gaol. Don’t for a moment ever feel that you are wasting your time. Wherever you may be with a copy of Ramayana and Gita, and a spinning wheel, there you are rightly occupied. Anyway look after your health. Very mild exercise may be necessary, you may get it by walking around the compound if you are permitted … If
you would rather not be in B class but would like to be an ordinary class prisoner like others, you will have to ask for it. All that I am saying to you applies to your disciple too.”’

Sriram pleaded, ‘Don’t. Please tell Bapu …’

Bharati looked at him with wonder. ‘After all these months of association and work, how can you speak like this? How can we do anything other than what Bapuji asks us to do?’

Sriram had no cogent answer to give. He hung down his head. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten that he was a soldier in the struggle for freedom.

She said resolutely, ‘I ought to be there already. I am reporting to the police station at …’

‘How long will they keep you in gaol?’ he asked pathetically.

‘How can I say?’ she replied. ‘Are you coming too?’

He said, ‘Not now. I want to think it over. But I will readily come if they will keep me in the same prison, preferably in the same cell.’

‘It won’t be possible, the government won’t keep us together,’ she said.

This enraged Sriram. The whole universe seemed to be organized to defeat his purpose, even the government which differed from the Mahatma on most matters seemed to be in accord with him where it concerned him and Bharati. The worst of it was that Bharati herself seemed to rejoice in the arrangement. He became wild at the thought and said, ‘Why is everyone opposed to my loving you?’

She took pity on him and said tenderly, ‘Poor fool. You have lost your wits completely.’

‘How dare you say that?’ he shouted.

‘There is no point in your shouting,’ she said. ‘Don’t let us quarrel. I will be gone in a moment … I want to report myself before it strikes four. If they want to send me to the Central or some other gaol they must have time to catch the evening train.’

‘What shall I do without you?’ he wailed.

‘That is why Bapu has asked you to report too.’

He shook his head. ‘I have a lot of things to do outside … Bapu has given everyone freedom to carry on the
Satyagraha
in his own manner. He doesn’t really mean me,’ he said dolefully.

In answer Bharati seized the letter and held it open under his nose. ‘“This applies to your disciple also,” he says.’

‘But that doesn’t mean me. It may mean anyone,’ said Sriram.

‘I thought he always understood whom he meant by “disciple”,’ she said grimly. ‘Anyway the choice is yours. You may do what you think best. I am doing what seems to me the right thing to do.’

‘How do you know it is the right thing to do?’

‘I need not answer that question,’ she said irritated. ‘If I had known that you would treat Bapuji’s word so lightly –’

Sriram felt crushed by her tone. ‘Oh, Bharati, don’t add to my troubles by mistaking me so completely. I revere the Mahatma, you know I do. Why do you suspect me? Have I not followed every word of what he has been saying? … Otherwise I should not have been here. I should not have left the comfort of my house. All that I want is some more time to think it over. I am …’ he brought out his masterpiece on an inspiration. ‘I am only thinking of my grandmother. I want to see her before I am finally gaoled. That is why I asked you how long we should be in prison. She is very old, you know. I will surrender myself after I have seen her once. I must manage to see her.’

This idea seemed to soften the girl. She thought it over, leaning back on the tablet. She seemed to appreciate his tender feelings for his grandmother.

‘That is all right, Sriram. I am sorry I mistook you.’ He wanted to touch her arm, but he felt afraid to do so. She would surely say, ‘Keep off, not until,’ and that would irritate him again and make him speak nonsense.

She got up. He asked, ‘Must you go?’

‘Yes, it is late for me.’

He followed her sheepishly, ‘When we meet again after the gaol, and wherever we may meet … will you not forget me?’

‘I will not forget you,’ she said, catching her breath ever so lightly.

He loved her as she drew herself up, more than at any other time in his life, but he also felt afraid of her more than at any other time. He simply said, ‘If you will not be angry with me, Bharati, I wish to ask one thing.’