Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (15 page)

Sampath briefly dismissed each one of them with: ‘This subject is not new. Already been done by others; this story has been produced three times over …’

‘What if it has? We shall do it again,’ said Mr Somu.

‘The public will run away on hearing the name of the story.’

‘Oh, what about this then? Has this been done by anyone before? The Burning to Ashes of Kama – God of Love.’

Sampath said: ‘No one has attempted this subject, I’m sure of it. Let us hear the story.’ Mr Somu narrated the story, humming and hawing and clearing his throat. ‘You see, sir,’ he began, and looked about in a terrified way, like a man who cannot swim when he gets into water.

‘Go on, go on,’ said Sampath encouragingly.

‘You see, you know Shiva –’

‘Which Shiva? The God?’ said Sampath, unable to resist a piece of impishness. Yes, we all happen to know him fairly well.’

Mr Somu was saying: You see …!’ He was still fumbling with You sees!’ and Srinivas felt that the time had come to succour him. He said in a quiet way: ‘I happen to know the story. Shiva is in a rigorous meditation, when his future bride, Parvathi, is ministering to his needs as a devotee and an absolute stranger. One day, opening his eyes, he realizes that passion is stirring within him, and looking about for the cause he sees Kama, the Lord of Love, aiming his shaft at him. At this, enraged, he opens his third eye in the forehead and reduces Kama to ashes …’ Srinivas’s imagination was stirred as he narrated the story. He saw every part of it clearly: the God of Love with his five arrows (five senses); his bow was made of sugar cane, his bowstring was of murmuring honey-bees, and his chariot was the light summer breeze. When he attempted to try his strength on the rigorous Shiva himself, he was condemned to an invisible existence.
Srinivas read a symbolic meaning in this representation of the power of love, its equipment, its limitation, and saw in the burning of Kama an act of sublimation.

‘You are perfectly right, Somu!’ he cried, almost reaching out his hand across the table and patting Somu on the shoulders. Somu’s face beamed with satisfaction; he looked like a child rewarded with a peppermint for a piece of good behaviour.

Sampath declared with great relief: ‘I’m glad, Editor, you like the subject. Now you will have to go on with the treatment. We will fix up other things.’

‘The advantage in this is,’ Somu put in, ‘there is any amount of love in the story, and people will like it. Personally, also, I never like to read any story if it has no love in it.’

Three days later the front page of most papers announced: ‘Sunrise Pictures invite applications from attractive young men and women for acting in their forthcoming production, “The Burning of Kama”. Apply with photographs.’

Day after day Srinivas sat working on his script. He now seemed to be camping in Kailas, the ice-capped home of Lord Shiva and his followers. Srinivas could almost feel the coolness of the place and its iridescent surroundings. He saw, as in a vision, before his eyes Shiva, that mendicant-looking god, his frame ash-smeared, his loin girt with tiger hide, his trident in his hand; he was an austere god; he was the god of destruction. His dance was in the burial-ground, his swaying footsteps produced a deluge. As Srinivas described it, his mind often went back to the little image of Nataraja that he had in a niche at home, before which his wife lit a small oil-lamp every day.

He was sketching out the scenes, and felt it a peculiar good fortune to have been allowed to do this work. He never bothered about anything else. His wife understood his mood and listened attentively to all that he said about it at home. She, too, knew the story, and the talk at home was all about Kama and his fate. Srinivas constantly explained the subtle underlying sense of the whole episode. His son, too, listened with great interest and boasted before his friends that his father knew all about Shiva’s burning of the Love God.

At his office, sheet after sheet filled up. Srinivas read and reread the dialogues and descriptions he had written. His mind had become a veritable stage for divine beings to move and act, and he had little interest in anything else. Coffee came to him from time to time, sent up by Sampath. He now left Srinivas alone for a great part of the day so as to enable him to produce the story with the least delay, while he tackled the vast volume of correspondence that resulted from their advertisements in the papers.

Into this delicately arranged world Ravi walked one day. Srinivas’s mind noted the creaking on the staircase. Srinivas put away his pen and paper and received him warmly. ‘Seems years since you visited us. Any progress with any picture?’ he asked. Ravi shook his head. ‘What has happened that I should draw now?’ Srinivas took out of his table-drawer the little sketch Ravi had drawn. Ravi looked at it and said: ‘I can make a full-length portrait in oils, the like of which no one else will have done in India. Give me another glimpse of my subject, and the picture is yours.’

Srinivas said: ‘Like Shiva, open your third eye and burn up Love, so that all its grossness and contrary elements are cleared away and only its essence remains: that is the way to attain peace, my boy. I don’t know how long you are going to suffer in this manner; you have to pull yourself together.’

‘Oh, shut up … You don’t know what you are talking about. All that I’m asking is another glimpse of my subject, that is all, and nothing more, and you go on talking as if I were asking someone to go to bed with me. Before I am able to open my third eye and burn up love I am myself likely to be reduced to ashes; that is the position, sir; and you want me to draw my pictures with a firm hand!’ He laughed grimly and leaned back in his chair. Srinivas looked at him in despair. ‘Something is seriously wrong with him,’ he reflected. ‘He won’t be sane unless he paints and he can’t paint unless he is sane; he can’t be sane unless he finds that girl; and he cannot find that girl unless he can – Heaven alone knows how many more “cans” and “ifs” are going to play havoc with his life.’ He looked at him despairingly. Ravi remained silent for a moment and suddenly said with tears in his voice: ‘I have lost my job today.’

‘Lost it? What do you mean?’ Srinivas cried.

‘It is all so hopeless,’ Ravi said. ‘It is all over … I don’t know … I don’t know,’ he sighed, thinking of all his dependants. ‘I think it is finished. I have three months’ arrears of rent to pay and the school fees of the children, and then and then –’

‘Don’t worry about all that now,’ Srinivas said. ‘Don’t lose heart. We will do something. Tell me, what has happened?’

‘The clerical staff of our office decided to present a memorial to our general manager, asking for promotions. We were all drafting it in our office when the manager called me in urgently. You know him – that compound of beef and whisky. He had found fault in the spelling of some word in a letter he had previously dictated; some mistake in a proper name; those wonderful names of English people. “Chumley”, it seems, must be spelt “Cholmondeley”. Who can understand all this devilry of their language! And he thundered and banged the table and flung the letter at me and asked me to take the dictation again. At this moment the others were coming towards our room to present the memorial. They were nearly thirty, and we could hear them coming. “What the hell is that noise?” he remarked, and went on with his dictation. Very soon we could hear them outside the door: a scurrying of feet and restless movement outside. I hoped that they would open the door and walk in in a body. We could see their feet below the half-door. We could see them moving up and down and shifting but not coming in. On the other hand, we presently saw them pressing their noses against the frosted glass pane of a window, trying to look in and see if the boss was in a good mood. It was of frosted glass, and though they could not see us we could see them on the other side.

‘“What is all this tomfoolery? What are they up to? Go and find out. Is this a peep-show?” I went out and told them: “Why do you shuffle and hesitate? Come in and speak to him boldly.” They looked at each other nervously, and before they could decide, the boss sounded the buzzer again and called me in. “What is it?”

‘“They have come with a representation, sir.”

‘“How many?”

‘“The entire staff, sir.”

‘“Damn!” he exclaimed under his breath. “I can’t see the whole gang here. Ask them to choose someone who can talk for them.” I went out and told them that. They looked at each other and would not choose anyone. They could not come to a decision about it. They were all for edging away and putting the responsibility on someone else. Even the man who held the memorial paper seemed ready to drop it and run away. I picked it up and went in.

‘“They want to come in a body, sir,” I said.

‘“No,” he cried. “This is not a bloody assembly hall, is it?”

‘“This is the memorial they want to present, sir,” I said, and put it before him. He looked at it without touching it. “All right, now leave me for a time, and go back to your seats.” He didn’t call me again. This note came to me at the end of the day, when I was starting to go home.’ He took it out of his pocket and held it up. It was a brief typewritten message: ‘Your services are terminated with effect from tomorrow. One month’s salary in lieu of notice will be paid to you in due course.’

Srinivas went over next day to Ravi’s office to see what he could do. It was a very unprepossessing building in a side-street beyond the market square, with a faded board hanging over a narrow doorway: ‘Engladia Banking Corporation’. A peon in a sort of white skirt (a relic of the East India Co. costume at Fort St George) and a red band across his shoulder sat on a stool at the entrance. On the ground floor sat a number of typists and clerks, nosing into fat ledgers; uniformed attendants were moving about, carrying trays and file-boards. A bell kept ringing.

‘Where is the manager?’ asked Srinivas.

The servant pointed up the staircase. Srinivas came before a brass plate on the landing, and tapped on the half-door.

‘Come in,’ said a heavy voice.

Srinivas saw before him a red-faced man, sitting in a revolving chair, with a shining bald front and a mop of brown hair covering the back of his head. He nodded amiably and said: ‘Good-morning,’ and pointed to a chair. Srinivas announced himself, and the other said: ‘I’m very pleased to see you, Mr Srinivas. What can I do for you?’

‘You can take back my friend Ravi into your service. It is not fair –’

‘You are friends, are you?’ the other cut in. He paused, took out his cigarette-case, and held it out. ‘I don’t smoke, thanks,’ said Srinivas. The other pulled out a cigarette, stuck it in a corner of his mouth, looked reflective and said: ‘Yes, it is a pity he had to go, but we are retrenching our staff; those are the instructions from our controlling office at Bombay.’

‘He is the only one to suffer,’ said Srinivas. ‘Yes, at the moment,’ the other said with a grim smile.

Srinivas burst out: ‘You are very unfair, Mr Shilling. You cannot sack people at short notice –’

‘I’m afraid I agree with you. But the controlling office at Bombay –’

‘This is all mere humbug. You know why you have dismissed my friend. Because you think he is an agitator.’

‘I don’t know that I would care to discuss all that now. Other things apart, Mr Srinivas, there is such a thing as being fit for a job. What can I do with a stenographer who cannot understand spelling?’

‘Why the devil do you spell Chumley with a lot of idiotic letters? You cannot penalize us for that.’

You are certainly warming up,’ the other said, quite unruffled. ‘I quite agree with you. English spelling needs reforming. But till it is done, stenographers had better stay conventional. You see my point?’ He raised himself in his seat slightly, held out his thick hand, saying: ‘If there is nothing else I can do –’

Srinivas pushed his chair back and rose, and said: ‘This is not the India of East India Company days, remember, when you were looked upon as a sahib, when probably your grand-uncle had an escort of five elephants whenever he stirred out. Nowadays you have to give and take at ordinary human levels, do you understand? Forget for ever that God created Indians in order to provide clerks for the East India Company or their successors.’

‘Well, you are saying a lot –’ The other left his seat and came over to him. ‘Mr Srinivas, you are not helping your friend by making a scene here. I don’t understand what you are driving at.’

‘Don’t you see how you are treating the man? Can’t you see the lack of elementary justice? He has a family dependent upon him, and you are nearly driving him to starvation.’

‘Now you must really go away, Mr Srinivas,’ he said, holding open the door. ‘Good-morning.’

His self-possession was a disappointment to Srinivas. He muttered weakly: ‘Good-morning,’ and passed out. He ran downstairs, past the man in skirt-like dress, out into the Market Road. He paused for a moment at the turning of Market Road to collect his thoughts. A few cyclists rang their bells at him impatiently. The sun was warm – though it was October it still looked like June. Edward Shilling was red as blotting-paper and suffocated with the heat, and yet he sat there in his shirt-sleeves, worked for his controlling office, and kept his self-possession. Turning over what he had said, Srinivas felt he had spoken wildly and aimlessly. ‘What is it that I’ve tried to say?’ he asked himself. He felt that his ideas arranged themselves properly and attained perspective only when he was writing in
The Banner
. He wished he could sit down and spin out a page under the heading: ‘Black and White’ or ‘East India Company’ and trace Shilling’s history from the foundation-stone laying of Fort St George.

At the Kabir Lane office downstairs, Sampath was in conference with an odd assortment of people – actors, musicians and so on, who had besieged him after the advertisements in the papers. Srinivas stood in the doorway unnoticed, wondering how he was going to have a word with the other. ‘Will you come out for a minute?’ he cried. Sampath got up and elbowed his way out. They stood at the foot of the staircase. ‘Ravi is done with at his office. We shall have to do something for him now.’ Sampath was a man of many worries now. This was just one more. He rubbed his forehead and said: ‘I’m interviewing some of these artists. I will come up in a moment.’