Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma

by R. K. Narayan

  ‘I heard only recently that you had a daughter. How is it none of them come this way?’

  ‘Oh –’ he wriggled in despair. ‘Don’t go into all that now. I have a granddaughter, that is all I wish to say. I would forget my daughter, if possible. That is an ungrateful brood,’ he said.

  ‘How many sons and daughters have you?’ Srinivas persisted relentlessly. The old man glared at him angrily for a moment and asked: ‘Won’t you leave that subject alone?’

  ‘No,’ Srinivas replied, ‘I have got to know. I’m not prepared to hear about your granddaughter unless you tell me first about your daughters and sons.’

  ‘Oh, if that is so I will tell you. I have three sons and two daughters; one daughter is in this town – the other daughter is in Karachi: I’m not concerned with her, because her husband is a customs officer, and she thinks it is not in keeping with her status to think of her father and the rest of us. It is over twelve years since she wrote. She pretends that she is of Persian royal descent, I suppose, and not an ordinary South Indian.’ He laughed at his own joke and continued: ‘Why should I care? I don’t. It saves me postage to forget her. Sometimes her mother used to fret about her, and for her sake I used to waste a postcard now and then. But since the old lady’s death I have forgotten that daughter … I’m not talking about my second daughter.’

  ‘You have not told me anything about your two sons.’

  ‘Oh, won’t you leave them alone? Why do you trouble a Sanyasi like me with such reminders?’

  ‘Where are they?’ Srinivas asked.

  ‘In heaven or hell, what do I care?’ the old man replied. ‘I refuse to talk about them: they are all an ungrateful, rapacious brood; why talk of them?’

  ‘Has this second daughter of yours a daughter?’ At the mention of the granddaughter his eyes glittered with joy. ‘You are absolutely right. Oh, what an angel she is! Whenever I want to see her I go to the Methodist girls’ school, where she reads, talk to her during the recess, and come away.’ His tone fell to cringing: ‘I wish to see her married. I have set apart five thousand rupees for her marriage. Let them produce a good husband for her, and the amount will go to her; and they must manage the wedding celebrations as well as the dowry within that amount.’

  ‘What is your son-in-law?’

  ‘He is a teacher in the same school.’

  ‘So you are bound to see him also when you go there?’

  ‘H’m, I never go in. I call her up from outside, see her for a moment, and go away. I don’t talk to that fellow nor to that wife of his.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘They neglected their mother and wouldn’t spend even an anna when she was ill. I had to pay the doctor’s bill – one hundred and seventy-five rupees – all myself. Not an anna was contributed by any of them. Do you know how much the old woman doted on them? I was always telling her that she was spoiling them. But she wouldn’t listen. After her death I cut off the entire brood completely. I have no use for ungrateful wretches of that type. Do you agree with me or not?’ Srinivas slurred over the question. The old man said: ‘For this granddaughter of mine, why don’t you find a bridegroom? I may die any moment. I’m very old, and as they say in Gita – He quoted a Sanskrit verse from Bhagavad Gita regarding mortality. He shrank his eyes to small slits and begged: ‘I want to see this girl married.’

  Srinivas said: ‘I don’t know what I can do.’

  ‘My tenant in that portion – Ravi, isn’t he your friend? I have often seen him going with you. I observe all things. Why don’t you persuade him to give me his horoscope? I think he will be a good match for this girl.’

  Srinivas could hardly believe his ears. At the sound of Ravi the entire picture of his complicated life flashed across his mind and he didn’t know what to say. ‘Why have you pitched on Ravi?’

  ‘Because I have observed him, and he is in a respectable job.’

  ‘But he has a very large number of dependants.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a fact. But I shall probably reduce his rent and give him another room. What can we do about his people? We will see about it all later. But will you kindly speak to him about my granddaughter and get me his horoscope? Ever since I saw him I have been thinking what a perfect match he would be for the girl. Tell him that the girl is beautiful and reads in sixth form.’ Srinivas promised to do his best, without much conviction.

  The printer sat down on the stool before Srinivas’s table and said: ‘I rather liked the friend you brought in the other evening – who is he?’ Srinivas told him about him. He took out the sketch and passed it on to the other for his scrutiny, saying: ‘Do you know, there are very few in India who can do that with a pencil?’

  ‘Fine girl,’ the printer agreed, shaking his head, as if appreciating a piece of music or a landscape. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘God knows. They were in Car Street, and they are no longer there. That’s all he knows. He lost sight of her, and will not draw till he finds her again. He drew this because he thought they were back here.’ The printer pondered over it deeply. ‘What a fool to be running after an unknown girl – a man must shut his eyes tight if it proves useless to look any longer. That’s my principle in life.’ This was the first time Srinivas had heard the other talk in this strain. He had known very little of his family life, except that sometimes he referred to his home, away there by a cross-road in the new extension, containing a wife and five children. Srinivas opened his lips to ask something and hesitated; the printer seemed to read his mind, and said with a smile: ‘I’m not such a bad husband, sir, as you may think!’ He tossed the picture across the table and said: ‘I thought there was something funny about that young man – these artists are futile: they can neither get along with their jobs properly nor forget a face.’

  ‘But,’ Srinivas said, ‘I wish he could get that girl back, if it is only to make him go on with his drawing.’

  ‘You think it is so important!’ asked the printer. ‘Why, I can get a score of fellows to do this sort of thing.’ He scrutinized it again, making an honest effort to see what there might be in it. ‘Well, anyway, it is not his profession; what is there to sorrow about?’ Srinivas stared at him for a moment and rapped the table with his palm as if to get the other’s fullest attention. ‘Don’t you see what a great artist we are losing? He is an artist; don’t you see that?’

  ‘Oh!’ the other exclaimed, as if the truth were dawning upon him for the first time. ‘Oh!’ He added: ‘Yes – you are right.’ He looked at the sketch intently as if comprehending it better now. ‘You just leave him to me; I will tackle him; you will see him drawing these pictures one after another till you cry “Enough. No more”!’

  * * *

  A few days later, going down to the press one evening, he saw Ravi sitting in a chair opposite the printer. Srinivas was rather surprised. Ravi, who would usually come up and occupy his stool, had now been short-circuited by the printer. By the look on the artist’s face Srinivas understood that they had been in conclave for a long while. The moment Srinivas appeared the artist rose, gripped his arm and cried, pointing at the other: ‘Oh, he knows, he knows!’ His voice trembled with joy and his hands shook. The printer said, with his eyes twinkling: ‘He has promised to come and draw a picture of my little son tomorrow evening. Would you like to have any done for you?’

  When he went home the artist accompanied him. The printer saw them off at the door, effusively as ever. His parting word to the artist as they stepped into the street was: ‘The baby will be ready to receive you at seven o’clock sharp. Fourth cross-road, new extension. I will wait at the gate.’

  The artist chatted happily all the way. ‘Tomorrow I must leave home pretty early – a couple of hours at the printer’s house and from there on to the office direct. I shall be just there in time; I hope that child is sketchable. What sort of child is he; have you seen?’

  ‘No,’ replied Srinivas. ‘And what else did he tell you?’

  ‘Oh, my friend. I never
knew I was so near help. All that I want is just another look at that girl, and that will transform my entire life. I never knew that our printer was a man who could be so helpful. What a fine man he is!’ Srinivas didn’t like to pursue the matter further and remained silent. He somehow felt disinclined to speak about the printer. When they passed the last crossing in Market Road and turned down Anderson Lane he ventured to ask: ‘What would be your reaction if someone seriously proposed his daughter to you?’ ‘I would kick him,’ the other replied promptly and recklessly. Srinivas left it at that, feeling that he had discharged the duty laid upon him by the old man.

  The old man appeared just as he was hurrying to his office. He turned the corner of the street, and the old man hailed him from under the street-tap where he had been bathing. ‘Mister Editor! Oh! Mister Editor,’ he called from the tap, and his cry rang past a ring of spectators waiting for the tap to be free. Srinivas turned and wished he could clear the entire street at a jump. But it was not possible. The old man came up to him, dripping with water. He shook his head disapprovingly. ‘No, no, you must not be so very inconsiderate to an old man.’ Srinivas tarried and said: ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Who is not?’ asked the old man promptly. ‘Every creature is in a hurry, every ant is in a hurry, every bird is in a hurry, every fellow I meet is in a hurry, the sun is in a hurry, the moon is in a hurry – all except this slave of God, I suppose.’ Srinivas was too much engrossed in his own thoughts to say anything in reply. He said: ‘Now I will be off. I will see you this evening.’ And he tried to cover the rest of the street at one stride. But the old man would not let him go. He almost cantered behind him and caught up with him. He was panting with the effort. His chest heaved. Srinivas felt that if the old man dropped down dead on the spot, the responsibility would be his, and made a quick decision to change his route from that day. The old man panted: ‘Have you forgotten that I have such a thing as a granddaughter?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Srinivas. ‘I remember your request. But the time is not yet.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me that you have not seen the boy?’ Srinivas paused to consider if he might make such an evasion. But the old man went on: ‘Don’t say that, because some evenings ago I saw you both going home. Didn’t you turn the street together? I may be old, but not too old to see by street light when there is something to see.’ Srinivas felt exasperated. ‘Why is this man plaguing me like this?’ He had left home a few minutes earlier in order to clear up some heavy work in the office. He looked hard at the old man and said: ‘The boy doesn’t seem to be in a mood to marry anyone, that is all.’

  The old man gripped his arm and said: ‘Do you think I believe a word of what you say?’ He gazed on Srinivas’s face with his eyes half covered with water drops and attempted to express a merry twinkling at the same time: ‘Young fellows are always shy about marriage. They will not say so. In fact, do you know, when they came and proposed I should marry, I tried to hide myself in the paddy barn on the wedding day. I was just twelve –’

  ‘But he is twenty-eight –’

  ‘Bah! What an age!’ the other commented. ‘What can a fellow decide at twenty-eight? And why have they left him unmarried for so long? All this is due to the idiotic things they say about child marriage. I was eleven when I married and my wife nine, and yet what was wrong with our marriage?’

  Srinivas said: ‘I will positively come and see you tonight in your room. I promise. I’m in a hurry now.’

  ‘All right, go; I like people who attend to their duties properly. Don’t forget that I have a granddaughter!’ Srinivas almost broke into a run for fear he might be stopped again.

  The artist dropped in one afternoon, went straight to his stool, drew it near the window, turned his back on Srinivas and sat looking out. Srinivas was, as usual, submerged in his papers; his mind noted the steps on the creaking staircase, but he did not like to interrupt himself or allow his mind to speculate about the visitor. He went on writing and correcting without lifting his head. He laid his pen aside, rolled up a manuscript, and flung it downstairs. He returned to his seat, leaned back and asked: ‘Ravi, are you asleep or awake?’

  ‘Neither. I’m dead,’ the other replied and came nearer, dragging the stool. He planted the stool right in front of the table and cleared his throat as a prelude to a harangue. Srinivas knew he would have to listen to a great deal now. He kept himself receptive. He felt it was his duty to give every possible encouragement to the other, now that he had shown an inclination to go on with his drawings. As a sort of lead he asked: ‘Well, how far are you progressing with your sketch?’ Ravi leaned over and asked: ‘Of that child?’ indicating his fingers down the staircase. ‘Don’t you see that I have avoided him and come up direct?’

  ‘Not finished it yet?’

  ‘It will never be finished,’ he replied in a hushed voice. ‘But I dare not tell him.’

  ‘Why? What is wrong?’

  ‘It is an awful subject. I won’t go on with it.’

  ‘But I hear that you go there every day.’

  ‘Yes, yes, every day I go and sit before the child, study it for about an hour in the hope of discovering even the faintest thing to hold on to. But I definitely give it up. Nothing is right about it: all its lines are wrong; its expression is awfully dull and lifeless. It is a pity!’

  ‘But the poor fellow is hoping every day that you are going to do it!’

  ‘That is why I’m trying to avoid him, though I’ve got to see him. How am I to manage it? I can’t tell him about his child, can I?’

  ‘No, no, that’d hurt any parent.’

  ‘I wish I could get the view of a parent. You haven’t seen the child?’ Srinivas didn’t answer: his mind went off on another line. He wondered if he should tell the printer. ‘No,’ he told himself. ‘There’s no sense in interfering in other people’s lives …’ His mind perceived a balance of power in human relationships. He marvelled at the invisible forces of the universe which maintained this subtle balance in all matters: it was so perfect that it seemed to be unnecessary for anybody to do anything. For a moment it seemed to him a futile and presumptuous occupation to analyse, criticize and attempt to set things right anywhere.

  As an example: here was the printer telling Ravi imaginary stories about his ability to find the other’s sweetheart. Ravi’s head was in the clouds on account of those stories; and here was the artist helping the printer also to keep his head in the same cloud-land with promises of sketching his child: these two seemed to balance each other so nicely that Srinivas felt astounded at the arrangement made by the gods. If only one could get a comprehensive view of all humanity, one would get a correct view of the world: things being neither particularly wrong nor right, but just balancing themselves. Just the required number of wrongdoers as there are people who deserved wrong deeds, just as many policemen to bring them to their senses, if possible, and just as many wrongdoers again to keep the police employed, and so on and on in an infinite concentric circle. He seized his pen and jotted down a few lines under the heading ‘Balance of Power’. He was occupied for fully fifteen minutes. He said: ‘Don’t mistake me, Ravi, I had to jot down some ideas just as they came, otherwise I’d lose them for ever.’ He felt thrilled by the thought that he stood on the threshold of some revolutionary discoveries in the realm of human existence – solutions to many of the problems that had been teasing his mind for years. He merely said: ‘You see, I’m getting some new ideas which may entirely change our Banner.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The expected revolution in The Banner came in another way. On a Friday, when the editor flung down the manuscript with: ‘Matter’ – the shout came back from the bottom of the staircase: ‘Editor, you have to spare me a few minutes today,’ and the printer came upstairs. His face didn’t have the usual radiance; he leaned over the table and said: ‘Your formes are not going in.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘My men have gone on a strike today.’
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  Srinivas was aghast. He jumped to his feet, crying: ‘We can’t let down our subscribers.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said the printer. ‘We’ve got to do something – I don’t know: labour trouble – we are helpless against labour everywhere.’

  ‘How many?’ Srinivas asked, hoping that at least now he’d know how many worked behind that purple curtain.

  ‘All of them are on strike,’ replied the printer, and shattered his hope. ‘All of them: the entire lot. They gave no signs of it and went on a lightning strike at midday; even the first forme for the day had gone on the machine. They walked out in a body.’ Srinivas’s mind once again wondered how many workers could form a strike, and his speculations lashed vainly against that purple-dotted curtain.

  He looked helplessly down the stairway and ruminated over the hollow silence that reigned in the treadle-room. The printer pushed away a few papers and seated himself on the edge of the table. Srinivas’s head was buzzing with alternative suggestions. His mind ran over all the available presses in the town: the Crown Electric, the City Power, Acharya Printing, Sharpe Printing Works, and so on and so forth. He had gone the round once before, when starting the journal, and recollected what a hopeless task it had proved to get any press to undertake the printing of his journal. There was a press law which terrified most printers: they understood very little of it, but always seemed to feel it safer not to go near a periodical publication: they had not enough confidence to read the articles and judge whether they would land themselves in trouble or not (the printer being a willy-nilly partner, by virtue of the Government’s order, in all that an editor or publisher might do). They avoided trouble by confining themselves to visiting cards, catalogues and wedding invitations. Everywhere Srinivas got the same reply: ‘Journal? Weekly. Oh! Sorry, we are not sure we should be able to print the issues in time. Oh, sorry we cannot undertake –’ It was only this printer who had said at once: ‘Leave it to me. I will manage somehow.’ Going round the town in search of a printer Srinivas had wasted nearly a week, and was weary of the stock reply. He had gone up and down, and accidentally met this man at the Bombay Anand Bhavan in Market Road, where he had gone in for a cup of coffee. Srinivas had by now almost decided to give up all ideas of printing his work in Malgudi, as he sat gloomily in the noisy hall of the Bombay Anand Bhavan, sipping his coffee. He was attracted to his future printer by his voice, a rich baritone, which hovered above the babble of the hall, like a drone. Srinivas understood little of what he had been saying, since he spoke in Hindi and could be easily mistaken for a North Indian, with his fur cap and the scarf flung around his neck. He sat in a chair next to the proprietor at the counter and seemed to be receiving special attention, by the way waiters were carrying him plates and cups and pressing all sorts of things on him. Apparently he said something amusing to everyone who went near him, since everyone came away from him grinning. He seemed to be keeping the whole establishment in excellent humour, including the fat proprietor. Srinivas was so much struck by his personality that he asked the boy at his table: ‘Who is that man?’