Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (33 page)

‘Yes, you were here only last evening, have you forgotten it already?’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ Margayya replied. ‘I wonder what the time is.’

‘In this house there is no need for us to look at a watch. If it is dark, it is night. If it’s sunny, it’s day: that’s all we know. This is not a bank, you see.’ At the word ‘bank’ Margayya gulped suddenly. He thought it referred to him. He said: ‘I don’t have a watch either.’

‘But you ought to,’ said the priest. ‘A bank keeps a watch to see how fast interest is accumulating.’

‘My bank is finished. This is all I have,’ said Margayya, taking out of his pocket a small packet of currency notes – all that he was able to salvage from his banking operations. ‘Just two hundred rupees – what is it worth?’

‘Two hundred rupees,’ replied the priest. ‘Come in. I will give you some milk and fruit!’

‘What again!’ asked Margayya.

‘Yes, again, and again!’ answered the priest. ‘Is there anything strange about it? Don’t we have to eat every day, again and again?’ Margayya was cowed. He explained: ‘It’s not that. I was wondering what the time might be.’

‘It’s not yet tomorrow, that’s all I know,’ replied the priest. ‘If it is really late for you, you can go.’ He turned and moved down the corridor and passed out of sight. Margayya stood still for a few moments. He looked at the image of the God and threw it a vague nod. His wife might once again start a lot of bother and pull a long face and think he’d been visiting a brothel. ‘Funny creature, so jealous at this age!’ he reflected. ‘I can tell her I’ve been out on important business. What makes her think I have sweethearts!’ Ever since he could remember she had always shown a sort of uneasiness about Margayya. ‘Who’d consent to be a sweetheart to me!’ he said. ‘A fellow with the name “Margayya”, which seems almost a branding with hot iron.’ He remembered how a year or so ago she raised quite a lot of bother
when he mentioned that a woman had come to him as a client under the tree. She looked sullen for two days until he convinced her that he had only been joking.

He found himself obeying the priest without a single thought of his own. At a look from this gaunt man, he peeled four plantains and swallowed them in quick succession, and he drank a huge vessel of milk, treating the matter with as much reverence as he could muster. When the priest said approvingly, ‘That’s very good indeed. That’s an excellent performance,’ he felt proud of the certificate. The priest added, ‘You have been hungry without knowing it.’

‘Yes, but when one’s mind is full of worries, one does not notice,’ he said, feeling that the time had come for him to say something. The stars were out. A cool breeze was blowing, and night seemed quiet; the nourishment he had taken filled him with a sense of harmony, and so when the priest said: ‘Margayya! What is ailing you? You can speak out,’ he felt that he could no longer hesitate and fumble; that all barriers between himself and the world had been swept away and that he stood alone; that he alone mattered. He had a right to demand the goods of life and get them, like an eminent guest in a wedding house – a guest who belongs to the bridegroom’s party, with the bride dancing attendance, ever waiting for the slightest nod or sign to run to his side and do some pleasing act … He swelled with his own importance … When he inhaled the fresh night air it seemed to increase his stature so much that the earth and the sky were only just big enough to hold him … He began to talk in a grand manner … the priest with his eyes glinting in the starlight listened without speaking a word … He looked like a sloth-cub in the darkness as he humped into a ball with his chin on his knees, his lank face thrust forward … Margayya catalogued all his demands. He was like a Departmental Officer indenting for his stationery – a superior baize cover for his office table, a crystal paperweight, a shining mirror-like paper-knife, and so on. There was no reason why he should be given the inferior things. Let the department stores beware, he would throw it out of the window if they sent in the miserable stuff they put on their fourth clerk’s tables. He would just throw it out, that’s all … He would be a man of consequence, let them beware: let the Gods beware – they
that provided a man with a home, and cars, servants, the admiration of his fellow men, and good clothes. After letting him run on as long as he liked, the priest opened his mouth and said: ‘That means you would propitiate Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. When she throws a glance and it falls on someone, he becomes rich, he becomes prosperous, he is treated by the world as an eminent man, his words are treated as something of importance. All this you seem to want.’

‘Yes,’ said Margayya, authoritatively. ‘Why not?’ He took out of his pocket his little snuff-box and tapped its lid. He flicked it open and took a deep pinch. The priest said: ‘Go on, go on, no harm in it. A devotee of Goddess Lakshmi need care for nothing, not even the fact that he is in a temple where a certain decorum is to be observed. It’s only a question of self-assurance. He has so much authority in his face, looks, so much money in his purse, so many to do his bidding that he cares for nothing really in the world. It’s only the protégé of Goddess Saraswathi
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who has to mind such things. But when Saraswathi favours a man, the other Goddess withdraws her favours. There is always a rivalry between the two – between the patronage of the spouse of Vishnu and the spouse of Brahma. Some persons have the good fortune to be claimed by both, some on the contrary have the misfortune to be abandoned by both. Evidently you are one of those for whom both are fighting at the moment.’ Margayya felt immensely powerful and important. He had never known that anybody cared for him … and now to think that two Goddesses were fighting to confer their favours on him. He lifted his eyes, glanced at the brilliant stars in Heaven as if there, between the luminous walls, he would get a glimpse of the crowned Goddesses tearing at each other.

‘Why should they care for me?’ he asked innocently.

The priest replied: ‘How can we question? How can we question the fancies of Gods? It’s just there, that’s all … it’s beyond our powers to understand.’

Intoxicated by this, Margayya said: ‘A man with whom the Goddess of Wealth favours need not worry much. He can buy all
the knowledge he requires. He can afford to buy all the gifts that Goddess Saraswathi holds in her palm.’

The priest let out a quiet chuckle at Margayya’s very reckless statement. Margayya asked: ‘Why do you laugh?’ Already a note of authority was coming into his voice. The priest said: ‘Yes, this is what every man who attains wealth thinks. You are moving along the right line. Let me see your horoscope. Bring it tomorrow.’ Tomorrow! It seemed such along way off. ‘Can’t you say something today?’ Margayya asked pathetically, feeling that he was being hurled back to the earth. The priest said: ‘About the same time as today, meet me with your horoscope.’

‘Yet another night out and all the trouble with my wife,’ Margayya thought immediately.

The priest saw him off at the door and shut the temple gate.

The moment his wife opened the door Margayya demanded: ‘Where is my horoscope?’

‘Horoscope?’ his wife said dreamily. ‘What’s happened that you want it so urgently at this hour?’ She looked him up and down suspiciously and, feeling probably that it was not the right time to drag him into a talk, turned and went back to bed.

It was eight o’clock when Margayya got up. He would probably have slept on till eleven, but for the fact that Balu sat on his chest and hammered his head with his lacquered wooden elephant. When he opened his eyes, Balu let out a shout of joy, put his arms round his neck, and pretended to lift him out of bed. Margayya looked at him benignly. ‘This boy must grow up like a prince. The Goddess willing, he’ll certainly …’ He sprang up from bed. In a quarter of an hour he was ready, bathed, wearing a clean dress, and his forehead smeared with red vermilion and a splash of sacred ash. He seemed to be in such a great hurry that his wife, although she had resolved to ignore his recent eccentric ways, was constrained to ask, ‘What is agitating you so much?’

‘Is coffee ready?’ he asked.

She laughed cynically. ‘Coffee! The milk-vendor created a scene here last evening demanding his dues. It was such a disgrace with the people in the next house watching.’

‘They seem to have nothing better to do,’ he said irrelevantly, his mind going off at a tangent.

‘Anybody will watch when there is something to watch,’ she said.

‘So, no coffee?’ he asked with a touch of despair. It seemed terribly hard for him to start the day without a cup of coffee. It produced a sort of vacuum, a hollow sensation. He braved it out saying: ‘That’s right. Why should we want coffee? As if our ancestors –’ She added: ‘There is no milk even for the child.’ Margayya threw a sad look at Balu. Balu seemed happy to be missing his milk. He said: ‘Let us drive away that milkman. It will be so nice.’

‘Why, aren’t you hungry?’ Margayya asked.

‘Yes, I’m hungry. Give me biscuits.’

Margayya said: ‘Wait a little, young man. I’ll fill a whole shelf with biscuits and chocolates and fruit.’

‘All for me?’ the boy asked eagerly.

‘Yes, absolutely, provided you don’t bother me, but leave me alone now,’ Margayya said. He went into their little room and pulled out a wooden chest. It was filled with letters in their old envelopes of nearly thirty years ago: there you could find letters written by Margayya’s father from a village; Margayya’s father-in-law writing to his new son-in-law; a letter from an uncle saying that there was a nice girl to be married and proposing her for Margayya, enclosing horoscopes. There were several letters containing saffron-tipped horoscopes on old stiff paper. There were unknown names of girls – either proposed to Margayya or to his brother, with their horoscopes; and many acrimonious letters that passed between him and his brother before the partition. Every letter he picked up stirred a cloud of dust. Little Balu stole up and stood at his shoulder as he squatted on the ground. Margayya turned round and said: ‘Balu, you must promise not to put your hand out.’

‘Why?’

Margayya handed him over to his wife with: ‘Take this fellow away. If you let him come near me again –’

She snatched him up as he protested and shouted and carried him away, muttering: ‘This is only a trick to send me off. You
don’t like me to see what you are doing. I suppose. I don’t know what you are up to! So mysterious!’

‘Women can’t hold their tongues, that’s why,’ Margayya replied. Little Balu made a good deal of noise in the other room and Margayya muttered: ‘She has completely spoilt him, beyond remedy; I must take him out of her hands and put him to school. That’s the only way; otherwise he will be a terrible scoundrel.’ As he rummaged in the contents of the box his mind kept ringing with his wife’s weak protests and grumblings: ‘Seems to be bent upon worrying me – she’s getting queer!’ he said to himself. He took up every envelope, gazed on its postmark, examined the letters, became engrossed for a while in by-gone family politics, and finally came upon a couple of horoscopes tucked into an envelope addressed to his father. A short note by his father-in-law said: ‘I’m returning to you the originals of the horoscopes of Sowbhagyavathi (ever-auspicious) Meenakshi, and your son Chiranjeevi (eternally-living) Krishna. Your daughter-in-law is keeping well. Any day you ask us to fix the nuptial ceremony I shall bring her over.’ Margayya (he hadn’t yet attained that name) felt a sudden tenderness for his wife. She seemed to become all at once a young bashful virgin bride.

‘Meena!’ he cried. ‘Here are the horoscopes.’ She came up, still bearing her son on her arm. Margayya flourished the horoscopes. ‘I’ve found them.’ He clung to them as if he had secured the plan of approach to a buried treasure. ‘What is it?’ she asked. He held up the letter and cried: ‘This is a letter from your father about our nuptials.’ She blushed slightly, and turned away: ‘What has come over you that you are unearthing all this stuff?’ Little Balu would not let her finish her sentence. He started wriggling in her arm, and showed an inclination to dash for his father’s horoscope. ‘Take him away,’ cried Margayya. ‘Otherwise we shall find all this in the gutter before our house – so much for this son of ours.’

Presently she came without their son to ask: ‘What exactly are you planning?’ Her face was full of perplexity. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, looking up at her. He still felt the tenderness that he had felt for her as a virginal bride. He told her: ‘Don’t worry. I’ve not been hunting out my horoscope in order to search for a bride.’ He
laughed. She found it difficult to enjoy the joke with him. It was too puzzling. She merely said: ‘By all means, look for a bride. I shan’t mind.’ He was disappointed that she sounded so indifferent: he was proud to feel that she guarded him jealously. However, he bantered her about it without telling anything. He could not exactly say in all seriousness what he was trying to do. ‘You will know all about it very soon.’ When he started out that day, she asked rather nervously: ‘Will you be late again today?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What if I am late? I’m only out on business, be assured.’

His son said: ‘I will come with you too,’ and ran down the steps and clung to him. Margayya could not shake him off easily. He carried him up to the end of the street and lectured him all the way on how he should behave in order to qualify for biscuits and chocolates. The lecture seemed to affect him since he became quite docile when Margayya put him back at his house and left.

That night, in his shack, the priest scrutinized the horoscope with the aid of an oil-lamp. He spread it out and pored over it for a long while in silence. He said: ‘Saturn! Saturn! This God is moving on to that house. He may do you good if you propitiate him. Why don’t you go and pray in that other temple where they’ve installed the Planetary Deities? Go there with an offering of honey.’ ‘Where can I get honey?’ Margayya asked, looking worried. He suddenly realized that he had never bought honey in his life. It was just one of those things that one always had at home, when the household was managed by one’s parents. Now he recollected that ever since he became an independent family head he had managed to get along without honey. Now the testing time seemed to have come. The priest burst into one of his frightening chuckles. He remarked: ‘Margayya shows the whole world how to increase their cash – but honey! He stands defeated before honey, is that it?’ ‘I will manage it,’ Margayya said haughtily. ‘I was only saying –’ The priest arbitrarily cut short all further reference to the subject. ‘On Saturday go to the temple and go round its corridor thrice. Do you know that Saturn is the most powerful entity in the world? And if he is
gratified he can make you a ruler of this world or he can just drown you in an ocean of misery. Nobody can escape him. Better keep him in good humour.’