‘Oh, the young subedhar is going to the right school with the right book,’ Kanni remarked. ‘He must live to be as great as his father and grandfather put together.’
Granny muttered, quickening her steps, ‘Don’t stand and talk to that man; he will plague us with his remarks; that’s why I never wanted your grandfather to sell that site opposite, but he was an obstinate man, such an obstinate man! He was also fond of this Kanni, who was then a young fellow.’
‘Did Grandfather also buy plantains?’
‘Not only plantains,’ she muttered, with a shudder, recollecting his habit of buying cheroots in Kanni’s shop. She had thought it degrading for any person to be seen smoking a cheroot. ‘Like a baby sucking a candy stick!’ she was wont to remark, disturbing the even tenor of their married life. She had always blamed Kanni for encouraging her husband to smoke and never got over a slight grudge on that account.
Before reaching the Fund Office they had interruptions from other neighbours who peeped out of their doorways and demanded to be told what extraordinary thing made the old lady go out in the company of her grandson. They could understand her going out all alone on the first of the month in the direction of the Fund Office – that was understandable. But what made the lady go out in the company of the young fellow, who was – an unusual sight – holding on to a bank book?
‘What!’ cried a lady who was a privileged friend of Granny’s, ‘does it mean that this urchin is going to have an independent account?’
‘He is no longer an urchin,’ cried the old woman. ‘He’s old enough to take charge of his own affairs. How long should I look after him! I’m not immortal. Each responsibility should be shaken off as and when occasion arises to push off each responsibility.’ This was a somewhat involved sentiment expressed in a round-about manner, but her friend seemed to understand it at once, and cried, coming down the steps of her house, ‘How wisely you speak! The girls of these days should learn from you how to conduct themselves,’ which pleased Granny so much that she stopped to whisper in her ear: ‘I was only a trustee of his money. From today he will take care of his own.’
‘Wisely done, wisely done,’ the other cried and asked, ‘How much in all?’
‘That you will never know,’ said Granny and walked off. Sriram, who had gone ahead, asked: ‘How is it, Granny, you stop and talk to everyone! What were you telling her?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘You follow the same rule and you will be a happier man. Your grandfather ruined himself by talking. Anything that happened to him, good or bad, was bound to be known to everyone in the town within ten minutes; otherwise his soul felt restless.’
‘Why should anything be concealed from anyone?’ asked the boy.
‘Because it’s better so, that’s all,’ said the old lady.
All these interruptions on the way delayed her arrival at the bank. The clock struck four as she showed her face at the counter.
‘Must you be on the last second, madam?’ the manager asked. ‘Is there any reason why you could not come a little earlier?’
‘No, none,’ she said, ‘except that I’m not a young creature who can frisk along.’ The manager, used to her ways, got down from his high seat, opened a side door, and without a word, let her in.
Sriram was being initiated into the mysteries of banking. The bank manager opened the last page of his passbook and said: ‘What figure do you see here?’ Sriram wondered for a moment if he was testing him in arithmetic, a terrible memory of his early schooldays. He became wary and ventured to say: ‘Thirty-eight thousand, five hundred rupees, seven annas, and six pies.’
‘Quite right!’ cried Granny. She appeared surprised at the intelligence he exhibited.
Sriram asked petulantly, ‘What did you take me for, Granny? Did you think I would not be good enough even for this?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘How should I think otherwise, considering how well you have fared in your studies!’
The manager, a suave and peace-loving man, steered them out of these dangerous zones by changing the subject: ‘You see, this is your savings deposit. You may draw two hundred and fifty rupees a week, not more than that. Here is the withdrawal form. See that you don’t lose it, and that nobody gets at it.’
‘Why? Would it be possible for anyone else to get at my money with that form?’
‘Probably not, but it’s our duty to take all possible precautions in money matters,’ said the manager.
Granny for some reason felt upset at Sriram’s questions. ‘Why do you ask so many things? If the manager says, “Do this,” or “Do that,” it’s your duty to obey, that is all.’
‘I always like to know what I am doing,’ said Sriram, and added, ‘There’s nothing wrong in that.’
Granny turned to the manager and said with pride, ‘You see the present generation! They are not like us. How many years have you been seeing me here? Have you ever heard me asking why or how and why not at any time?’
The manager made indistinct noises, not wishing to displease either his old customer or the new one. He placed a letter before the old lady, tapped the bottom of the page with his finger, and said, ‘May I have your signature here? It’s the new authorization, and you won’t be bothered to come here often as before.’
‘After twenty years, relief!’ Granny cried. She had the triumphant expression of one who had run hard and reached the winning post. Sriram did not fully realize what it all meant, but took it quite casually. He simply said, ‘If I had been you I wouldn’t have taken all this trouble to accumulate the money.’
‘You are not me, and that’s just as well. Don’t say such things before this man who has watched and guarded your property all these years!’
Sriram wanted to test how far the magic toy put into his hands would work. He seized the penholder, stabbed it into the inkwell, wrote off a withdrawal for two hundred and fifty rupees, tore off the page and pushed it before the manager with an air of challenge. ‘Let us see if I am really the owner of this money!’
The manager was taken aback by the speed of his activity. He smiled and said: ‘But my dear fellow, you know we close at four, and cash closes at two every day. If you want cash, you must be here before two on any working day. Change the date, and you can come and collect it the first thing tomorrow. Are you sure that you want all that sum urgently for the first draw?’
‘Yes, I am positive,’ said Sriram. ‘I would have taken more if you had permitted more than two hundred and fifty at a time.’
‘May I know why you need all this amount?’ asked Granny.
‘Is it or is it not my money?’ asked Sriram.
‘It is and it is not,’ said Granny in a mystifying manner. ‘Remember, I don’t have to ask you what you do with your own funds. It’s your own business. You are old enough to know what you do. I don’t have to bother myself at all about it. It’s purely your own business. But I want to ask you – just to know things, that is all – why you want two hundred and fifty rupees now. It’s your business, I know, but remember one thing. One is always better off with money unspent. It’s always safer to have one’s bank balance undamaged.’
‘Quite right, quite right,’ echoed the bank manager. ‘Great words of wisdom. I tell you, young man, come tomorrow morning,’ he said, picking up the form.
Granny cried: ‘Give it here,’ and, snatching the paper from his hand, said, ‘Correct it to fifty. You need only fifty rupees now and not two hundred and fifty. I’d have torn up this, but for the fact that it is your first withdrawal form and I don’t want to commit any inauspicious act.’
‘Ah! That’s a good idea,’ said the manager. ‘It’s better if you carry less cash about you nowadays with pick-pockets about.’
He dipped the pen in the ink and passed it to Sriram: ‘Write your signature in full on all the corrections.’
Sriram obeyed, muttering, ‘See! This is just what I suspected! I’m supposed to be the master of this money, but I cannot draw what I want! A
nice situation!’
The manager took the form back and said: ‘Come at ten-thirty tomorrow morning for your cash.’
‘I hope you won’t expect me to come again with my grandmother!’ Sriram said with heavy cynicism.
Next day Sriram stood at Kanni’s shop and ordered coloured drinks and plantains. ‘How much?’ he asked after he was satisfied.
‘Four annas,’ said Kanni.
Sriram drew from his pocket several rolls of notes, and pulled one out for Kanni. It was a veritable display of wealth. Kanni was duly impressed. He immediately became deferential.
‘Have you examined your pockets to see if there may not be some small change lying somewhere there?’
‘If I had small change, would I be holding this out to you?’ asked Sriram grandly.
‘All right, all right.’
Kanni received the amount and transferred it immediately to his cash chest. Sriram waited for change. Kanni attended to other customers.
Sriram said, ‘Where is my change?’
Kanni said: ‘Please wait. I have something to tell you. You see –’
An itinerant tea-vendor just then came up with his stove and kettle to ask for a packet of cigarettes. And then there were four other customers. The place was crowded and Kanni’s customers had to stand on the road below his platform and hold out their hands like supplicants. All the while Sriram stood gazing on the portrait of the rosy-cheeked queen who stared out at the world through the plantain bunches suspended from the ceiling. School children came in and clamoured for peppermints in bottles. Kanni served everyone like a machine.
When everybody had gone Sriram asked, ‘How long do you want me to wait for my change?’
‘Don’t be angry, master,’ Kanni said. He pulled out a long notebook, blew the dust off its cover, turned an ancient page, and pointed at a figure and asked, ‘Do you see this?’
‘Yes,’ said Sriram, wondering why everybody was asking him to read figures these days. He read out: ‘Nine rupees, twelve annas.’
‘It’s a debt from your grandfather which is several years old. I’m sure he’d have paid it if he had lived – but one doesn’t know when death comes: I used to get him special cheroots from Singapore, you know.’
‘Why didn’t you ask Granny?’
‘Granny! Not I. He wouldn’t have liked it at all. I knew some day you would come and pay.’
‘Oh,’ Sriram said generously. ‘Take it, by all means,’ and turned to go.
‘That’s a worthy grandson,’ muttered Kanni. ‘Now the old man’s soul will rest in peace.’
‘But where will the soul be waiting? Don’t you think he will have been reborn somewhere?’ said Sriram.
Kanni did not wish to be involved in speculations on postmortem existence, and turned his attention to the other customers.
Before going away Sriram said, ‘I can buy that picture off you whenever you can sell it, remember.’
‘Surely, surely. When I wind up this shop, I will remember to give it to you, not till then: it’s a talisman for me.’
‘If the lady’s husband turns up and demands the picture, what will you do?’ Sriram asked, which made Kanni pause and reflect for a moment what his line of action should be.
Sriram walked down the street, not having any definite aim. He felt like a man with a high-powered talisman in his pocket, something that would enable him to fly or go anywhere he pleased. He thrust his fingers into his jiba pocket and went on twirling the notes. He wished he had asked the manager to give him new ones: he had given him what appeared to be secondhand notes: probably the Fund-Office Manager reserved the good notes for big men. Who was a big man anyway? Anyone was a big man. Himself not excluded. He had money, but people still seemed to think he was a little boy tied to the apron strings of his grandmother. His grandmother was very good no doubt, but she ought to leave him alone. She did not treat him as a grownup person. It was exasperating to be treated like a kid all the time. Why wouldn’t she let him draw two hundred and fifty instead of fifty, if he wanted it? It would be his business in future, and she ought to allow him to do what he pleased. Anyway it was a good thing he had only fifty to display before Kanni. If he had shown two hundred he might have claimed half of it as his grandfather’s debt. Sriram was for a moment seized with the problem of life on earth: was one born and tended and brought up to the twentieth year just in order to pay off a cheroot bill? This philosophical trend he immediately checked with the thought: ‘I shall probably know all this philosophy when I grow a little older, not now …’ He dismissed his thought with: ‘I am an adult with my own money, going home just when I please. Granny can’t ask me what I have been doing …’
He walked round and round the Market Road, gazing in shops, and wondering if there was anything he could buy. The money in his pocket clamoured to be spent. But yet there seemed to be nothing worth buying in the shops. He halted for a moment, reflecting how hard it was to relieve oneself of one’s cash. A man who wore a cotton vest and a tucked-in dhoti held up to him a canvas folding chair,
‘Going cheap, do you want it?’
Sriram examined it. This seemed to be something worth having in one’s house. It had a red striped canvas seat and could be folded up. There was not a single piece of furniture at home.
‘Ten rupees sir, best teakwood.’
Sriram examined it keenly, although he could not see the difference between rosewood and teak or any other wood.
‘Is this real teak?’ he asked.
‘Guaranteed Mempi Hill teak, sir, that is why it costs ten rupees: if it were ordinary jungle wood, you could have got it for four.’
‘I will give seven rupees,’ said Sriram with an air of finality, looking away. He pretended to have no further interest in the transaction. The man came down to eight rupees. Sriram offered him an extra half rupee if he would carry it to his door.
Granny opened the door and asked in surprise, ‘What is this?’
Sriram set up the canvas chair right in the middle of the hall and said, ‘This is a present for you, Granny.’
‘What! For me!’ She examined the canvas and said, ‘It’s no use for me. This is some kind of leather, probably cow-hide, and I can’t pollute myself by sitting on it. I wish you had told me before going out to buy.’
Sriram examined the seat keenly, dusted it, tapped it with his palm and said, ‘This is not leather, Granny, it is only canvas.’
‘What is canvas made of?’ she asked.
Sriram said, ‘I have no idea,’ and she completed the answer with, ‘Canvas is only another name for leather. I don’t want it. You sleep on it if you like.’
He followed this advice to the letter. All day he lounged on this canvas seat and looked at the ceiling or read a tattered novel borrowed from the municipal library. When evening came he visited the Bombay Anand Bhavan and ordered a lot of sweets and delicacies, and washed them down with coffee. After that he picked up a beeda covered with coloured coconut gratings, chewed it with great contentment, and went for a stroll along the river or saw the latest Tamil film in the Regal Picture Palace.
It was an unruffled, quiet existence, which went on without a break for the next four years, the passing of time being hardly noticed in this scheme – except when one or the other of the festivals of the season turned up and his granny wanted him to bring something from the market. ‘Another Dasara!’ or ‘Another Deepavali!. It looks as though I lighted crackers only yesterday!’ he would cry, surprised at the passage of time.
It was April. The summer sun shone like a ruthless arc lamp – and all the water in the well evaporated and the road-dust became bleached and weightless and flew about like flour spraying off the grinding wheels. Granny said as Sriram was starting out for the evening, ‘Why don’t you fetch some good jaggery for tomorrow, and some jasmine for the pooja? He had planned to go towards Lawley Extension today and not to the market, and he felt reluctant to oblige her. But she was insistent. She said,
‘Tomorr
ow is New Year’s Day.’
‘Already another New Year!’ he cried. ‘It seems as though we celebrated one yesterday.’
‘Whether yesterday or the day before, it’s a New Year’s Day. I want certain things for its celebration. If you are not going, I’ll go myself. It’s not for me! It’s only to make some sweet stuff for you.’
Grumbling a great deal, he got up, dressed himself, and started out. When he arrived at the market he was pleased that his granny had forced him to go there.
As he approached the Market Fountain a pretty girl came up and stopped him.
‘Your contribution?’ she asked, shaking a sealed tin collecting box.
Sriram’s throat went dry and no sound came. He had never been spoken to by any girl before; she was slender and young, with eyes that sparkled with happiness. He wanted to ask, ‘How old are you? What caste are you? Where is your horoscope? Are you free to marry me?’ She looked so different from the beauty in Kanni’s shop; his critical faculties were at once alert, and he realized how shallow was the other beauty, the European queen, and wondered that he had ever given her a thought. He wouldn’t look at the picture again even if Kanni should give it to him free.
The girl rattled the money-box. The sound brought him back from his reverie, and he said, ‘Yes, Yes’; he fumbled in his jiba side-pocket for loose change and brought out an eight-anna silver coin and dropped it into the slot. The girl smiled at him in return and went away, seeming to move with the lightest of steps like a dancer. Sriram had a wild hope that she would let him touch her hand, but she moved off and disappeared into the market crowd.
‘What a dangerous thing for such a beauty to be about!’ he thought. It was a busy hour with cycles, horse carriages and motor-cars passing down the road, and a jostling crowd was moving in and out of the arched gateway of the market. People were carrying vegetables, rolls of banana leaves and all kinds of New Year purchases. Young urchins were hanging about with baskets on their heads soliciting, ‘Coolie, sir, Coolie?’ She had disappeared into the market like a bird gliding on wings. He felt that he wanted to sing a song for her. But she was gone. He realized he hadn’t even asked what the contribution was for. He wished he hadn’t given just a nickel but thrust a ten-rupee note into her collection box (he could afford it), and that would have given her a better impression of him, and possibly have made her stand and talk to him. He should have asked her where she lived. What a fool not to have held her up. He ought to have emptied all his money into her money-box. She had vanished through the market arch.
Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma Page 48
