Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (74 page)

When Sriram emerged from behind a shelf loaded with old
discoloured bundles of papers and documents, he felt he was back in his old shape. He rolled up his striped shorts and jacket, and shoved them into a corner. The man said, ‘You are free, you are discharged.’ Sriram stood still unable to decide which direction to take. ‘Go this way, the door opens out,’ said the man. Sriram saluted him vaguely, and muttered, ‘I am going,’ and opened the door; it gave on to a small yard which was closed with a barred gate at the other end; an armed sentry paced in front of it. Sriram’s first instinct was to turn back at the sight of him, but he told himself, ‘I am no longer a prisoner,’ and walked on haughtily. The man opened the door at his approach. He said as Sriram passed, ‘Going out! Very good, try not to come back, unless you like this place very much.’

‘I hate it,’ said Sriram with feeling. ‘I never wish to see a prison again.’

‘That is the right spirit,’ said the man, ‘keep it up.’ He was evidently used to uttering this formula to every outgoing prisoner. It was a sort of convocation address.

When the barred gate closed behind him Sriram could hardly believe that he was free. He felt weak and faint, and inexplicably unhappy. The memory of his cellmates who had become sullen and gloomy when it became known that he would be leaving was painful.

The bully had said, ‘You are a selfish sort. I don’t like your type.’

The forger said, ‘If you can be released, why not we? Tell Mahatmaji that we want to come out.’

Another one said, ‘If you become a big minister or some such thing, don’t forget me.’

The bully had added, ‘When I am released I will break into your house some night, and teach you good sense. I don’t like selfish fellows like you.’

The warders had trooped behind him for tips. There was a little money that had accumulated as his wages, which the Gaol Accountant had handed over to him, and his old warders followed him muttering, ‘We have been together so long. I would like you to remember us.’ ‘This is my child’s birthday. Give me something to remember you by.’ ‘We cannot come beyond this
block and please give anything you like.’ ‘We have looked after you all these months.’

Sriram gave a rupee to each of the crowd that followed him importuning, and that took away fifty per cent of his earnings.

He walked on as in a dream. It was difficult for him to move about without a guard following him, and without being told where he should go. He found the evening light dazzled his eyes, the wide open spaces were oppressive. He turned back to cast a look at the building which he had occupied for years now. It looked in its slate-grey colour innocent enough, but what a tyrannical world it had contained: a fellow there could not do anything he wanted, even the calls of nature had to be answered as per regulations! The gaol was outside the town limits at the Trunk Road end. He had never gone so far before; he had been living all along on the Trichy Trunk Road, not knowing where he was.

He walked down the road towards the town, wondering where he should go now. A few buses passed him. He hoped people would not recognize him. There was a policeman sitting in one of the buses and Sriram turned instinctively away from the direct line of his vision. He walked on along the edge of the road. ‘This is an independent India into which I am walking now,’ he reflected. What was the sign that it was independent? He looked about him. The trees were as usual, the road was not in the least improved, and policemen still rode on the footboard of highway buses. He felt tired and hungry. He had not more than a few rupees left after the warders had had their claim. He wished that some sort of transport was provided for prisoners let out of gaol: it was very inconsiderate, even in a free India to have to face this! He hoped that some day they would make him a minister and then he would open a canteen, and place station-waggons at the disposal of prisoners at the gaol gate so that those that came out might not feel so lost.

It was dusk when he got into the Market Road. Nobody seemed to notice him. Here and there he saw buildings hung
with the tricolour flags, the
charka
in the middle. He saw that there was less traffic than formerly. Shops were lit and crowded as ever. He felt a pang of disappointment. He had a gnawing hunger inside him. There were still a few rupees in his pocket, hard-earned, literally earned by the sweat of his brow. He put his hand into his pocket and jingled the coins, and remembered the axe he had wielded, and all the undreamt-of tasks that he had performed. He had a feeling of pride at the thought of all he had earned by his hard labour: no one could say that he was one who lived on the fat of the land. Even his granny could feel proud of his achievement and ability. He sat on the bench of a small park that had been formed at the traffic junction of New Extension and the Market Road. He sat there in order to think clearly how he ought to manage. There was no use trying to settle things while walking. This was a free country and no one was going to demand why he sat there and not somewhere else. It was difficult to get used to the idea, it was a luxurious idea worth brooding over. But he felt startled again and again as he thought from habit that he was exposing himself to the public gaze too much, and that he might have to slip swiftly into a hiding place. Sitting there on the cement bench beside a potted fern, he told himself: ‘I’m free. No one can come after me now. No one will bother whether I have a clean-shaven face or a hairy one.’ He felt hurt at first that the pedestrians went by without noticing him and the traffic without pausing to say, ‘Hallo, hero!’ But he soon realized the blessedness of being left alone after all the years of being hunted and looked for everywhere.

He realized that his first business was to eat something. He could do the clear thinking while sitting on a hotel chair instead of a park bench. He got up and moved briskly off down the road; the first hotel that showed itself in sparkling bulbs was ‘Sri Krishna Vilas’. He turned in. Most of the tables were empty. It was long past the rush hour. He sat at a marble-topped table and waited for someone to come and ask what he wanted. A man sat at the exit on a raised seat with a cash box. The waiting-boys were all in a group chattering among themselves. ‘They don’t care,’ Sriram told himself. ‘I suppose I look like a gutter-rat.
They will drive me out.’ He looked around him. He recognized one of the waiters: he used to come here often in other days.

‘Hey, Mani!’ he called, and the waiter turned. ‘Come here,’ he commanded.

The other came up. He recognized Sriram, and cried, ‘Why, it’s you! Where have you been all these years, sir? It’s a long time since we saw you.’

‘I was away on business. Give me something good to eat.’

At the word ‘good’ the boy puckered his face in worry.

‘There is nothing very good now, sir, what with the present difficulty of getting rice and any pure food. Our government do not do anything about it yet. Do you know how hard it is to get any frying oil? Most of it’s adulterated stuff, I tell you.’ He started on a long narrative about the situation in the country, the food shortage, the post-war confusion, and the various difficulties and hardships that people experienced. All this was a revelation: it was the first report that Sriram was getting of the contemporary world. But he had no patience to listen to much of it.

‘What have you?’

The boy cast a brief look at the shelf on which trays of edibles were on display and started,
‘Kara sev, vadai
, and
potato bonda
…’

Sriram said sharply, ‘I can see all that from here. I want to know if you have anything fresh inside, on the oven, something more solid.’ The thought
idli
, soft and light, and of
dosai
, was alluring. It seemed as if he had tasted them in a previous birth. While he spoke he was racked with the thought that he had probably lost the necessary idiom to get on with ordinary folk. Perhaps he only had the ability to talk to gaolmates. He said, ‘Something very g – ‘he avoided the word ‘good’ lest it should start the other off again analysing the world situation. He said, ‘I want something heavy, just made, I am very hungry.’

‘There’s nothing inside, sir. This is closing hour, and the kitchen department is the first to shut up. While our proprietor wants
us
to work till ten, those who sit at the fireside –’

Sriram lost his patience. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening listening to shop-talk. He said sharply, ‘All right, all right, get me something, anything to eat, now run and get me coffee,
good
coffee,’ and he felt sorry that he had again blundered
into the word, for the boy began to say something about the difficulties of making good coffee: milk-supply difficulties, the sugar racket, and the general avarice of black marketeers of various kinds. Sriram didn’t know what to do. He lost his patience completely, ‘Why do you tell me all that?’

‘Because it is so.’

‘All right,’ he said callously, ‘I’m hungry. If you are going to give me anything look sharp. If you stand here and talk, I shall get up and go away.’

‘What shall I give you, sir?’ the boy asked officially, for the first time giving an impression that he was on duty.

‘Two sweets, one savoury and a large quantity of hot coffee,’ commanded Sriram. This was the first time in many months he was able to order anyone about. He was surprised at his own voice, almost fearing that someone would say that he was to be put in solitary confinement. But it worked. The boy ran off with alacrity and interest.

He felt elated after his tiffin, and after chewing a betel leaf and nut he felt as if he were back in the times when there was no war, no political struggle of any kind. He was himself, grandson of a grand old lady, with no worries in life, shuttling between a free reading-room, the market place and Kanni’s shop, living in a world with well-defined boundaries, with set activities, no surprises or worries, everything calculable and capable of anticipation.

He hurried on to Kabir Street. It was a fine home-coming. It was seven o’clock, but as usual children were playing in the streets, and the space in front of every house was washed and decorated with white flour. Why could he not have lived like these folk without worries of any kind or any extra adventures; there seemed to be a quiet charm in a life verging on stagnation and no change of any kind. The lights were on in most of the houses. He ran down the street with his eyes wide open. He stopped in front of his house. He looked through the doorway. Some strangers were moving about. He felt angry and cheated. What right had they to usurp his place? Some unknown children were chasing each other in the front hall under the lamp – that old lamp where Granny had taught him so many things in life!
He wanted to run up the steps and tell the children: ‘You can’t run around here, I can stop you if I want to.’ They were probably knocking holes in the wall, banging the doors and shutters, only leaving wreckage behind for him to occupy when the time came.

He turned round to see Kanni and talk to him. But the shop had gone: the portrait of Maria Theresa was no longer there to brighten up the surroundings. In Kanni’s place, a new cement structure rose without windows, probably a godown. He felt pained and cheated again. He walked up and down the road. None of his neighbours noticed him. He saw a few of them in their houses, sitting by the window reading an evening paper – comfortable folk. He felt like going up and talking to them, but they’d probably reprimand him for various lapses and he felt diffident about his ability to talk to anyone! He was obsessed with the thought that he had lost the idiom of communication with these people. The street remained very much unchanged since he saw it last – only Kanni’s shop was gone, and there was no one of whom he could enquire.

Suddenly he felt that he had nowhere to go that night. In the prison at least, one had been assured of a place of retirement for the night.

The photographer’s establishment was brightly lit, and threw its illumination on the road. It was a low-roofed shop with the usual glass front displaying a variety of enlarged portraits of children, pretty girls, and important men.

There was no one in the front parlour with its coir carpet and a small stool with a decorative potted plant on it. There was no sign of anyone living there. Sriram stepped into the next room, which was also empty. He cleared his throat and made sounds with his feet in order to indicate his presence.

‘Who is there?’ came the call. It was the photographer’s voice.

Sriram replied: ‘A gaol-bird.’

He felt happy that after all there was someone he knew to meet him in this world. The other came out of the innermost chamber and advanced, trying to find out the identity of the visitor. He had evidently been working close to a light and could not see clearly. When he came near enough, he cried, ‘You!
When were you released? What a pity I didn’t know. I was wondering what you had done with yourself. Where were you? They would not tell us where you were. If I had known you were coming out today, I’d have arranged a grand reception for you at the gaol gate with flowers and garlands. The trouble is that things are still disorganized. But I blame no one. Ours is an infant state, still a baby, many things have still to be done, we must be happy that we are our own rulers and no foreign nation rules over us. We must be happy that things are being done and not spend the time finding fault with anyone.’

‘We ought to rejoice that it’s our own people that are blundering, isn’t that so?’ Sriram asked, some of his irresponsible spirit returning.

‘Fancy Nehru and Patel and the rest sitting there where there were haughty Viceroys before. Didn’t Churchill call Mahatmaji “The Naked Fakir”? The “Naked Fakir” is everything now, think of it …’ He was excited. ‘There are bound to be mistakes, bound to be blunders everywhere, but we must not make much of them.’ He was wildly incoherent and happy. ‘If you had been out of gaol, you would have been garlanded and carried in a procession on Independence Day. What a pity you missed it. It was a grand affair.’

Jagadish seated Sriram on a large sofa, put a great album on his lap, took a seat by his side and turned its leaves. He remarked, ‘As a photographer, I am proud of this. Future generations can never blame me for being neglectful. I have done my best. Here is a complete history of our struggle and the final Independence Day Celebration.’ He had put various pictures of himself into the album, subscribing himself as a humble soldier. There were even photographs of the ruined temple, where Sriram had lived and worked. The photographer had entitled it: ‘One of the secret headquarters of the Independence Army.’ Sriram looked through the album which in effect was a documentary of the independence movement.

Jagadish had even stuck in photographs of gaols and their exteriors. He had pictures of barbed-wire entanglements. It was a completely romantic picture. Nor could he be said to suffer from modesty in any way. He was the chief architect of
Independent India, the chief operator in ejecting the British. He had included several pictures of Malgudi street scenes. Flags flew from every doorway and shop, crowds were moving in procession with people singing and playing musical instruments. Flowers everywhere. Great masses of men moving down the roads. Jagadish looked at the scenes with great pride. He felt he had striven to give people a good time and had succeeded. He said, ‘After all, what do I get for all the trouble I took and the risks I ran? Are they going to make me the Minister of this and that? Not a chance, sir, there are others waiting for the privilege. Even if I stand for election, who will know who I am? Will the parliamentary board choose me as their candidate? Not a chance, sir, that is the reason why I have held fast to my camera and studio all through my various activities. Nobody can take it away.’ There was a tone of regret in his voice which Sriram did not understand.

‘After all, as you said now, we are an infant nation.’ The word was very convincing, it had a homely and agreeable sound, nobody need worry what it meant or why it was mentioned.

‘True, true,’ said the photographer, ‘I’m not complaining or grumbling. What I have done, I have done with the utmost satisfaction. I am not worried about it at all. What I say is I have got these photographs to record all that we have done, that’s all.’

There were hundreds of pictures to wade through. Sriram began to turn the leaves fast. He felt bored. They were monotonous to see. More and more processions. More and more people. Flags. Pictures carried in the procession of national leaders and others, and more and more people. There was a sameness about the whole thing; he simply could not stand any more. He briskly turned the leaves of the album and came to the last page of the sequence in which Jagadish was seen hoisting the flag at some public gathering. Sriram put away the album and asked, ‘How did you manage to photograph yourself?’