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

by R. K. Narayan

  Sriram’s blood boiled at his words. ‘How dare you speak like that of those who are suffering for the country’s cause? You are mistaken. You are completely mistaken.’ He wanted to get up and hit him, but he remembered that Bharati would have labelled him a traitor to the non-violence creed of Mahatmaji. Perhaps she would have said, ‘I don’t want to look at your face again. Get out of here.’ And so he merely mumbled, ‘Don’t talk in that utterly ignorant manner of our patriots.’

  The other growled, ‘Who are you to talk to me in that tone?’

  There was a pause. The forger at his side nudged him and said, ‘Say you regret it. Don’t rouse him. He is very strong.’

  Sriram heard heavy steps approaching him from the other end of the cell. The man stood over Sriram and growled: ‘I insist upon saying that your political prisoners are no true prisoners, do you understand? I’ve been in ten gaols so far. I have seen a lot of them. They feel they are in their father-in-law’s house, visiting for Deepavali. I know what I’m talking about. I won’t have you correcting me, do you hear?’

  ‘I don’t agree with you,’ said Sriram. ‘They are great patriots. They put themselves through much suffering.’

  ‘I will knock your teeth out if you contradict me. Am I clear?’

  ‘I will say what I please,’ said Sriram defiantly. ‘Even the British Government could not make me do what I didn’t want to do!’

  The other sneered: ‘H’m, this is what comes of reading and writing. You don’t know obedience of any sort, let me tell you. People should never go to school. They talk too much.’

  ‘If I had been out, I’d have made you prostrate yourself before Mahatmaji, and confess your crimes,’ said Sriram with passion.

  At the mention of the Mahatma, the other brought his palms together and said, ‘Don’t drag his name in here; that great saint.’

  ‘He is also in prison, I suppose you know that,’ said Sriram.

  ‘He may be, but what is that to you? Do you think you are also Mahatmaji because you are here?’

  ‘Go back to your bed, man,’ commanded Sriram. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘You call yourself the Mahatma’s disciple, and you have derived no good from it. What business have you to come in our midst?’

  Sriram said in disgust, ‘Go back to your bed, man, I won’t talk to you.’

  The gangster swung his arm to hit Sriram. Sriram felt the rush of air in the dark, and ducked his head, and the other went back to his bed. Sriram felt happy and relieved only after he heard him stretch himself out and utter a long noisy yawn, which he prolonged into a song, till the sentry cried through the bars, ‘Hush! Silence. No more talk.’

  During the day the various duties he had to perform and the variety of derelict humanity he watched in the prison kept his mind from too much gloom. But when the last of the prisoners in his cell fell asleep and snored, loneliness came down on him and he became a prey to introspection. He was seized with a desire to meet and talk to Bharati. Where was she? Dead? Married to someone else? Or hanged in the prison? There was no way for him to know. He was amazed at the isolation that had been devised – inhabiting the same planet people were completely cut off from one another. States and their police minions seemed capable of devising any torture for human beings. Bharati had probably married Gorpad and gone to North India. It was months and years since they had met. He had lost count of time. The only reckoning they had was morning, midday and night punctuated by meal hours, drudgery, and occasional excitements such as that caused by the bully in his cell. He wondered if Bharati would ask, ‘Who are you?’ if he appeared before her. He was seized with the obsession that day by day he was deteriorating so much that he wouldn’t be fit to be seen by her. He was losing his identity. He had lost his patriotic aim. He wondered what he had done to warrant anyone calling him a political sufferer. But for Jagadish he would not have done things that he wouldn’t wish to enumerate before any decent person now. If it had not been for Jagadish he would probably have gone on living in his ruined temple until the police forgot him. And then he might have been worthy of associating with Bharati.

  The thought of her produced in him a certain uneasiness: he heartily wished that she had not been such an uncompromising zealot. Everything that she thought or said or expected was set in grooves and hard to practise. For all practical purposes he was a back-number now, nothing better than the associate of forgers and homicides: their world was his world. Why should he be thought of differently? The longer he stayed here the more likely he was to drift away from Bharati. It was imperative that he should get away. How? He revolved in his mind all the things he had read in story-books – of files and hack-saws, being smuggled into prisons and people working their way out. The more he thought of it, the more unhappy he became. The sheer helplessness of the whole business weighed him down. He became silent and glum. All night he was racked with dreams of being caught while escaping, taken out and shot, the shooting party being directed by Bharati. He woke up in a cold sweat and was greatly relieved to find that after all he was still in the solid and homely prison. Why was Bharati causing him worry even in his dreams? Why couldn’t she make herself agreeable and amenable like any other normal sweetheart?

  The Fund-Office Manager sought special permission to meet him.

  The call came to him when he was at work in the weaving shed. A warder came to say, ‘You are allowed to see a visitor today, between three and four in the afternoon.’

  Sriram felt excited. ‘What visitor?’ he cried. ‘Man or woman?’ He had a wild hope that his visitor might be Bharati. Could it be? What would he say to her? How was he going to talk to her? How could he tell her all that he wanted to within the time? Perhaps she would spurn him when she saw him. Better not see her. Could he send word back that he would not see anyone? All this passed through his mind in a flash. He asked: ‘What sort of a person?’

  But the warder said, ‘See for yourself. The interview is in the Chief’s room. If you don’t waste too much time asking questions, you can have a few minutes with the visitor.’

  Sriram followed the other meekly, dropping his job. His neighbours muttered: ‘Your mother-in-law has probably come to see you with sweets!’

  At the entrance to the Chief’s office, the warder halted for just a second to look him up and down, flick off a cake of dirt on his jacket, and pull up his dress in general: he murmured: ‘Remember how you should behave before the Chief. If you make any trouble, he will have you whipped.’

  Sriram answered, ‘I don’t like whipping,’ to which the other retorted, ‘Don’t talk back. It is enough if you do what you are told.’

  It was only after Sriram had mumbled an unqualified affirmative that he would behave properly that the warder pushed him in. He saw the Fund-Office Manager waiting for him. He looked intimidated by his surroundings; he sat on a stool, his legs dangling, afraid to cross them.

  The Chief looked up briefly and said, ‘Prisoner, you have special permission to meet a visitor today.’

  Sriram felt abashed to stand there in that uniform and face the Fund-Office Manager. He stared at the manager, who stared back at him. The Chief was busy looking through the papers on his table.

  ‘You may speak,’ he ordered. ‘I can’t allow this interview to be prolonged beyond four p.m. If you have anything to say to each other, go ahead, and don’t waste time.’

  Sriram felt like a fool. He thought that the manager should break the ice and begin the conversation. But the man seemed bereft of speech.

  The Chief tried to ease the situation again by interrupting his study of the papers to order, ‘Guards wait outside.’

  Two men who had mounted guard over Sriram saluted, clicked their heels, and went out. This brought a slight improvement, but still the interview did not proceed beyond the stage of mutual staring. The Fund-Office man seemed to be stunned by the sight of the Sriram he saw before him now. He seemed to doubt whether this lank, sallow, close-cropped ma
n in striped knickers and jacket could be the one he had come to see. Sriram noted his surprise and hesitation and said to himself: ‘When even the manager is so reluctant to admit my identity, what will Bharati do? Perhaps she will say, “Get out, you budmash. Who do you think you are?”’

  The Chief looked at his watch and fretted. He said: ‘You may talk about anything except politics and other banned subjects.’

  Sriram suddenly found his voice to say, ‘How is everybody, Manager?’

  ‘Very well, very well,’ the man said, swinging his short legs, still afraid to cross them.

  ‘Tell me about Granny,’ said Sriram.

  ‘That is why I have come here,’ said the manager. ‘We had a communication from her today.’

  ‘Communication! Where from?’

  ‘Don’t you know? She is in Benares now.’

  ‘When did she go there?’

  ‘Don’t you know the story? When she revived at the cremation ground, some orthodox people said that she could not come back into the town because it was inauspicious and might blight the city. She respected their wishes and stayed in the toll-gate house for some days, and then said she would go to Benares. We helped her to take the train at Talapur.’

  ‘Benares! What is she doing at Benares?’

  ‘She is with a number of others, who spend their last years there, old persons who are waiting to die. They cheerfully await their death, and look forward to the final fire and the final ablution in the sacred Ganges.’

  ‘Did she ask for me?’

  ‘Oh, she was so – ‘the manager began, and at this point the Chief said, without looking up from his papers, ‘Not allowed. Talk of something else.’

  ‘But it is not politics,’ began Sriram.

  ‘Don’t argue. Talk of something else,’ ordered the Chief.

  Sriram helplessly glared at him and said to the manager: ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘She is quite well in Benares. There is a whole street of them, old people who have retired there to the banks of the great Ganges, awaiting their end. Some have been there for years. That’s as it is enjoined upon old people in the shastras. No one could wait for a happier end.’

  The man from the Fund Office seemed to be so impressed with this that he became very eloquent, and Sriram could not help asking, ‘You too want to retire there?’

  ‘Yes, in good time. If God wills it. Everyone can’t be as fortunate as your granny!’ He paused to reflect, gently swinging his short legs. He had respectfully left his sandals outside the office and Sriram noted how dirty his feet were, and blackened with dust and wear. When he came back to the sordid world again, the manager said, ‘She has given instructions regarding the disposal of the rent of her house. She wants the amount to be sent to her.’

  ‘Is someone living in the house?’

  ‘Of course, of course. Didn’t you know?’

  Sriram seemed to be hopelessly out of date, he knew nothing of what had happened anywhere. ‘It was her instruction that a tenant should be found for the house, and accordingly we found one to pay a rent of forty rupees only, which they are crediting to the old lady’s account in the bank.’

  It was an appalling thought for Sriram that someone else should be living in the old house, shutting and opening its doors.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Some yarn merchant.’

  ‘Yarn merchant! I never thought we would have to surrender our old house to a yarn merchant!’ he said with disgust.

  ‘It’s no surrender, they will vacate at a month’s notice.’

  This information filled Sriram with uneasiness. ‘Where am I to live?’ he thought. ‘Where am I to accommodate Bharati, when I marry her?’

  Although he had lived away from the old house for so many years, he still had a feeling that everything was all right so long as Grandmother lived there and so long as he could think of it as a home. He was filled with nostalgia for its brass-bonded, slender pillars, the pyol over the gutter, and the coconut-tree tops beyond the row of buildings.

  ‘This is the point,’ said the manager. ‘She wanted me to tell you about it, and if you didn’t want this money – it’s been accumulating, as I have already told you, into a considerable amount – she said it might be sent to her. She seems to have exhausted all the cash she had taken with her. This can be done, I suppose?’

  ‘Of course, why not?’

  ‘I am merely carrying out her instructions. She wants me to consult your wishes in the matter.’

  ‘Do anything she asks you to do. If she needs more money, don’t hesitate to take it out of my funds. Poor Granny! I wish I had more time to give to her affairs. She has done so much for me. How is she? Does she feel very lonely?’

  ‘Far from it. A friend came from Benares today. She is keeping very well; bathes thrice in the Ganges, and prays in the temple, cooks her food, has good company. A sublime life; it’s this friend who has brought the letter.’

  Sriram thought of his house again and felt unhappy.

  ‘They are probably driving nails in all the walls, and what has happened to all my books and other things?’ He gave a list of articles he possessed, and the manager said soothingly, ‘Don’t worry about all that. They are all safely kept. In that end room, which we have reserved for your own use.’

  ‘What other news? How is the war?’

  ‘Don’t talk of that,’ said the Chief.

  ‘How is everything else?’

  The man got up to say something, but Sriram interrupted with: ‘I don’t even know what year or month it is.’

  ‘Nothing on those lines,’ said the Chief. ‘No politics, no war.’

  Sriram in the solitude of midnight in his cell developed the notion of escape. He revolved in his mind all the techniques of escape that he had read or heard about. Smuggled files and rope formed, of course, the staple points in the whole business. Scaling the walls and crawling through ventilators were an inevitable feature. He dwelt on reminiscences of Monte Cristo’s escapades; it was all very interesting and kept his mind busy planning. His admiration for the old prisoners became genuine; his sympathies were really widening. He realized how impossible it was to do anything within the walls of a prison except what the gaoler permitted. The warders seemed to take a personal pleasure in carrying out their duties, they were incorruptible and could not in any way be influenced. And yet how did people smuggle in hack-saws and things like that? While his hands were busy digging the earth or turning a wheel, his mind revelled in dreams of filed bars and nimble ascents up dangling ropes, escapes which story and film writers presented so slickly. This dream became so troublesome that he could not contain himself any longer. Lying on his cement bed at night he was busy weaving a rope that would go up to the ventilator in the ceiling, through which the night sky was visible, the only glimpse of a shining free world.

  His only consoling thought, perversely enough, was that perhaps Bharati herself was languishing similarly within the bounds of the Old Slaughter House. It was not that he wanted to see her suffer, but the idea of her suffering established a community of interest. If he succeeded in escaping from the gaol, he would smuggle the tip to Bharati, wherever she might be, so that she might climb out of her prison, meet him outside its formidable walls, and hug him as her hero. But she might insist upon going back to her cell, refusing to walk out of it unless they opened the gates for her in a right royal manner. She might spurn him for his labour. She was incalculable in her behaviour. She would want the sanction of Bapuji, perhaps. Bapuji would probably applaud the proposal, if it could be proved that Sriram’s technique would enable all prisoners to climb out of gaols; they would at once understand its national implications: how the British could be driven to despair if they were made to realize that their prisons could hold no one. It might drive them mad and make them decide, ‘Well, we will quit. We can’t hold India any longer.’

  It was wishful thinking on a very big scale, but that could not be helped. It was the only excitement
that he could ever conjure up. In his desperation he consulted the bully in his cell when an opportunity occurred. One evening he was unusually friendly, and Sriram slipped over to his cement bed and sat there. He whispered: ‘Why don’t we all escape from this hell?’

  The other laid a clammy sympathetic hand on Sriram and said, ‘It’s usual to get that feeling. But nowadays I don’t get it. I just do my Bhajan and feel all right. You must also join us in our Bhajan.’

  ‘Well, we will speak about that later. But now let us discuss how we should escape.’

  ‘How?’ asked the other.

  ‘You must help us. You are experienced. Have you never escaped from a prison?’

  ‘Yes, twice, that’s why I’m doing my seven years now.’

  ‘You should not have allowed yourself to be caught.’

  ‘Well, these things just happen, we can’t help it,’ said the other philosophically.

  Sriram was interested in the method and asked, ‘How did you escape?’

  ‘Easy,’ said the other, looking up at the ventilator. ‘We were just six in a cell. We spun out the blanket strands, raised ourselves on each other’s shoulders, tied up the rope, and climbed out: it didn’t take much time. We were crossing the cholam fields in about an hour. No one would have found us again, but a fellow who had come out with us broke the lock of a house on the way and was caught.’