My Days (10 page)

My inseparable friend at the college was Ramachandra Rao. Slight of build and only five feet tall, wearing thick lenses, he was endowed with an ebullient nature. He sat beside me on the class bench, joined me again for a four-mile walk towards the hill, shared my cigarette expenses, jokes, and observations, and was full of humour and laughter. As the final exams approached we “joint-studied.” After dinner I walked to his home in Santhepet, a couple of miles away, a vast household teeming with many cousins and aunts where he managed to keep a room for himself. We sat down methodically at nine o'clock, determined to get through Hazen's
European History
or Gilchrist's political theories before the night ended—a fight to a finish with the subject, the heart of the matter to be wrenched out of the book, to recoup all that we had missed in the classroom. One of us read, the other listened by turns—thus we hoped to relieve the tedium of study. But in practice, hardly had one of us read ten pages when the other would interrupt with an observation, “Why waste time on this portion? We won't have any question on Italian unity this year. It was given two years in succession—skip it. Bismarck is more likely.” Arguments for and against this view. We would decide to take a quick glance through Italian unity, skipping details, not the heart of the matter but just the outline of the heart. Resuming the study after this interlude, we would start off again and come to a halt when something else came to mind, perhaps the amours of Maria Theresa, or some reminiscences of the classroom, or the farewells on the last day after the “social gathering,” and the group photo. After all this recollection in tranquillity, one of us would notice the Hazen lying open and suddenly declare, “I say, only fifteen days left! Even if we devote twenty hours a day, we will never finish the portions.” We would be seized with panic and resolve: “Let us sit up till six a.m. if necessary and finish European history, so that we may go on to other subjects.”

“Quite right. What if we don't sleep? Let us have all the sleep after April.”

“What about Indian history? Luckily no Greek history this year. Otherwise you would have six hundred pages of Bury!”

“Why go into that now?”

“We must get someone to summarize all the subjects in ten pages each. We must request Seenu to do it; after all, he has no public exam this year.”

Seenu, one year our junior in class, always obliging, would willingly undertake such literary tasks (as he still does, as a secretary for whichever maharaja or governor happens to employ him at the moment). This was a sudden, agreeable solution to our problems, bringing such a relief to our minds that we would shut the book and go out in search of a tea shop. A leisurely walk through the streets, marvelling at the tranquil air that the city wore at night, and after one or two cigarettes, we would return to our desk past midnight. Hazen again, but presently Nature would assert itself and make us nod; we would realize that “joint study” was a waste of time and that we should study separately if at all and meet occasionally to discuss and clear doubts, or better still watch for any secret leakage of the question papers through the devious and dark agencies operating in Bangalore, a city full of adventurous possibilities. And so good-night, one precious day out of the fifteen before the examination gone irrevocably.

Nineteen-thirty, when I attained a belated graduation, became a year of problems. What should one do with oneself now? Different suggestions came in from different quarters. One could become a lawyer, or a minor civil servant, or what not. At first I toyed with the idea of studying for an M.A. degree in literature and becoming a college lecturer. While I was going up the stairs of the Maharaja's College with my application for a seat in the M.A. class, a friend met me half-way and turned me back, arguing that this would be a sure way to lose interest in literature. I accepted his advice and went downstairs, once for all turning my back on college studies.

I
t was inconceivable that one should stay at home without some office to attend after graduation. The right thing would be to apply for jobs and meet influential persons, to knock on all doors of employment. My father had an old friend at Madras who ended up as the Chief Auditor of Railways but who in his college days had been hard up and was helped with clothes and money by my father. My father had immense hopes that his old friend would now help me. We were in Madras during the summer of that year. My father was insistent that I should meet his friend and seek his help for an appointment in the railways. One morning, neatly groomed and dressed, I started out to meet this man, putting on as mild and affable a look as possible, already imagining myself lording it over station masters and travelling in a saloon-car all over India freely. The gentleman was bare-bodied and glistened with an oil-coating, as he prepared himself for a massage; he blinked several times to make me out, as oil had dripped over his eyes and blurred his vision. He met me half-way across the front verandah of his house, where no man in his senses would let himself be seen by a visitor in that messy state, and unceremoniously shouted, not “Who?” but “What?” All my best efforts at grooming were wasted, for I must have looked to him like a photograph taken with a shivering hand. I explained my mission, citing my father's friendship with him. “Oh!” he cried looking outraged through his half-closed eyes. “What a notion! Impossible. Your father was always a dreamer. This is not a job for you. What was your optional subject for B.A.?”

“History, economics, and politics.” He looked at me with distaste. “No use,” he declared. “What class? What rank?” I trembled inwardly at the question and dodged a direct answer. “They have not announced the classes yet.” He waved me off and resumed his impatient pacing like a greasy bear in its cage.

My father next sent me on a similar errand to another friend who had retired from bank service. I did not take to this suggestion with any zest. I had had no misgivings about travelling in a saloon-car as a railway officer, but I had grave ones when I thought of myself as a bank official. I never felt at ease with figures. But I still went to this friend as my father desired another morning, well groomed and properly dressed. This man, though not oily, was also bare-bodied (everyone seemed to be shirtless in Madras). He was fanning himself with a palmyra leaf, sitting on a swing, while I kept standing. It was difficult to carry on a conversation with him as he approached and receded on his swing. I had to adjust my voice in two pitches to explain my mission and also step back each time the swing came for me. Like the previous gentleman, this man also figured in a group photo of select friends framed and hung in my father's study at Mysore. He also seemed to loathe history and economics and said, “You must pass some book-keeping and accountancy if you wish to try for a bank job. How does your father spend his time nowadays? He used to be such a fop!” He added, “He wrote to me that he has retired from service now. Now it is up to you young fellows to take over the family responsibilities. . . .”

Well said, I thought. But that precisely is our problem now, sir. Why don't you put your shirt on and do something about it, instead of swinging back and forth in that silly manner advising people?

My father had retired from service a year or two before, and it had meant all sort of readjustments at home. His pension was meagre, and we had to move on to a cheaper house in Laxmipuram, leaving Bojjanna Lines, where I had spent the dreamiest of my years. The Laxmipuram house was smaller, less roomy, two small hexagonal rooms in the front part, separated by a short verandah; one was occupied by my father, and the parallel room by me and my elder brother, as usual, where we had the advantage of watching a very pretty neighbour as she bent over her studies in her room upstairs, clearly visible from our window; that she was not distracted by our attention was proved when eventually she won first class in several subjects in the B.A. and received medals at the convocation in the same year as I took my degree lost in a back row.

Our room had a broad wooden staircase which led nowhere. I used its top landing for storing a monstrous typewriter that I had acquired at Madras and had brought with me in a capacious linen basket, since it was presented to me without a cover. It looked like a computer. It had separate keys for capital and lower cases; and its carriage moved with a big boom. All afternoon I sat on the landing and typed a play called
Prince Yazid
, the story of an independent-minded Mughal prince who was tortured and tormented by his father. After several decades, this was recently returned to me from the office of my literary agent, David Higham, where it had been discovered among their destroyable papers, and one may judge of its career from this simple fact. The entire staircase rocked and boomed when I was at work, and my father sometimes protested against the noise, whereupon I would have to haul the machine over to the roof of the house and type there. My brother Seenu, as ever, helped me with typing the play and often quoted lines from it admiringly. If I am not mistaken, he was the only reader of
Prince Yazid
. All this amount of desperate composition was to allow me to earn money and help the family. My father still had three of my younger brothers at school, and Seenu himself in M.A.; Seenu still remembers his first day in M.A. when his professor, teaching Indian culture, began, “Culture is of different kinds: agriculture, physical culture, sericulture, and so forth. But we must distinguish between cultures and find out their common characteristics and differences. All culture is one.” In spite of this teacher, Seenu persisted in his M.A. studies, as they would mean a better market value for him than a mere B.A. My elder brother worked in a radio-repair shop and then as the manager of a bus service, and was away the whole day until midnight; he added fifty rupees a month to the family budget. My father occasionally enquired of me, “What are you attempting on that road-roller?” (my typewriter). He gently suggested that I should not be wasting my time thus.

Having nothing to do in Mysore, I moved off to Bangalore and stayed with my grandmother, who was there to recoup her health; and so back again under the care of my grandmother after many years' interval. I wandered about the streets of Bangalore, dreaming and thinking and planning. On a certain day in September, selected by my grandmother for its auspiciousness, I bought an exercise book and wrote the first line of a novel; as I sat in a room nibbling my pen and wondering what to write, Malgudi with its little railway station swam into view, all ready-made, with a character called Swaminathan running down the platform peering into the faces of passengers, and grimacing at a bearded face; this seemed to take me on the right track of writing, as day by day pages grew out of it linked to each other. (In the final draft the only change was that the Malgudi Station came at the end of the story.) This was a satisfactory beginning for me, and I regularly wrote a few pages each day.

At about this time one of my father's efforts to place me bore fruit. I received a government order appointing me as a teacher at a government school in our old Chennapatna, where I used to spend my vacations as a schoolboy. So I was going back one fine morning by train from Mysore to the land of my grasshopper collections. I was seen off at Mysore with great enthusiasm by everyone in the family; everybody was happy that I was to work in Chennapatna, familiar ground, only half-way between Mysore and Bangalore; it would be like being in both places at once. Many were the benefits and blessings of being posted to Chennapatna rather than anywhere else, and of course I caught a part of their enthusiasm and had pictured Chennapatna as a haven of pleasant prospects. But the memories and impressions created in childhood could be very misleading. My train arrived at Chennapatna at about ten-thirty in the morning, and I had to climb into a jutka with a roll of bedding and my trunk, and drive straight to the high school in order to report for duty before eleven. The government order had said, “You must report yourself in the forenoon on the first of December.” This was the first of December, and forenoon. I paid off the jutka and left my baggage on the school verandah and went into the headmaster's room, announced myself, and signed a register of service. The headmaster gave me a few words of welcome and advice, and sent me off to a sixth-form class to teach Tennyson's “Morte d'Arthur.” I had no notion how I should teach. An old servant of the school, whom we used to call Venkata, followed me uttering advice in a menacing undertone. He had survived since the days of my father's headmastership. He said in a warning manner, “Take care that you don't let down your great father's reputation.” He used to escort us when we were children during our evening walks, and now did not seem to recognize that I was a grown-up and a teacher appointed by the government. He warned me, “If you don't maintain the reputation of my old master, I will not let you off lightly, remember!” While I took my seat in the teacher's chair, he stood at the door surveying me with great satisfaction, and nodded his head approvingly when I tapped the table with my hands and cried, “Silence!” Somehow it had an effect. An eerie silence ensued as the boys studied their new master with interest. “Page seventy . . . I hope all of you have your copies ready. Never come to the class without your books,” I said, discovering a new principle for myself. “I am very strict about it.”