Malgudi Days (20 page)

Now Kannan shook the box, held the slit up to light and tried to find out how much it contained. A dull resentment that he felt at the thought of his wife made him prey to a wicked idea. He held the box upside down and shook it violently till he felt deaf with the clanging of coins. But not one came out of it. The blacksmith had made a good job of it—the slit was exactly the thickness of a coin, which could go one way through it. No power on earth could shake a coin out of it again. After a while Kannan paused to ask himself, ‘Am I right in taking my youngster's money?' ‘Why not?' whispered a voice within seductively. ‘Son and father are the same. Moreover, you are going to double or treble the amount, and then you can put it all back into the box. That way it is really a benefit you are conferring on the son by opening this little box.' That settled it. He looked about for something with which to widen the slit. He got up and ransacked an odd assortment of useless things—strings, bottle-corks, cast-off ox-shoe, and so on. Not a single sharp instrument anywhere. What had happened to that knife? He felt annoyed at the thought of his wife, that woman's habit of secreting away everything on earth, or perhaps she had carried it away to her brother. He clutched the box and kept banging it against the floor for a while. It only lost shape and looked battered, but it would not yield its treasure. He looked about. There was a framed picture of a god hanging by a nail on the wall. He took down the picture and plucked out the nail. He threw a look at the god on the floor, felt uneasy and briefly pressed his eyes to its feet. He brought in a piece of stone, poised the nail over the box with one hand and brought the stone down on it with the other. The nail slipped sideways and the stone hit his thumb and crushed it to a blue. He yelled with pain and flung away the box. It lay in a corner and seemed to look back at him viciously. ‘You dog!' he hissed at it. He sat nursing his thumb for a while, looked again at the red tin and said, ‘I will deal with you now.' He went to the kitchen-corner and came out bearing a large stone pestle with both hands over his head. He held the pestle high above the box and dropped it vertically. It proved too much even for that box, which flattened and split sideways. He put his fingers in, scooped out the coins hungrily and counted: six annas in three-pie copper coins. He tucked up the coins at his waist in his dhoti, locked the door and started out.

At Mantapam luck deserted him, or rather never came near him. Within a short time he lost all his money. He continued on credit for a while till someone suggested he should give up his place to someone else more solvent. He rose abruptly and started homeward while the sun was still bright.

As he turned into his lane, he saw at the other end his wife coming up with a bundle in one hand and the youngster clinging to the other. Kannan stood stunned. ‘May it be a dream!' he muttered to himself. She came nearer and said, ‘A bus came this way and I returned home.' She was going towards the door. He watched her in a sort of dull panic. Her box with all its contents scattered, the god's picture on the floor, the battered red tin—she would see them all at once the moment she stepped in. The situation was hopeless. He opened the door mechanically. ‘Why do you look like that?' she asked, going in. His son held a couple of coins up to him. ‘Uncle gave me these. Put them into the box.' A groan of misery escaped Kannan. ‘Why do you do that, Father?' the boy asked. Kannan held up his thumb and mumbled, ‘Nothing. I have crushed my thumb.' He followed them in, resigning himself to face an oncoming storm.

Sambu demanded, ‘You must give me four annas to see the film tomorrow.' His mother was horrified. How could this boy! She had been dreading for six months past the arrival of the film. How could people bear to see him on the screen when they knew he was no more? She had had a vague hope that the producers might not release the picture out of consideration for her feelings. And when a procession appeared in the street with tom-tom and band, and with young boys carrying placards and huge coloured portraits of her husband, she resolved to go out of town for a while; but it was a desperate and unpractical resolve. Now the picture had arrived. Her husband was going to speak, move and sing, for at least six hours a day in that theatre three streets off.

Sambu was as delighted as if his father had come back to life.

‘Mother, won't you also come and see the picture?'

‘No.'

‘Please, please. You must come.'

She had to explain to him how utterly impossible it would be for her to see the picture. The boy had a sort of ruthless logic: ‘Why should it be impossible? Aren't you seeing his photos, even that big photo on the wall, every day?'

‘But these photos do not talk, move or sing.'

‘And yet you prefer them to the picture which has life!'

The whole of the next day Sambu was in great excitement. In his classroom whenever his master took his eyes off him for a moment he leant over and whispered to his neighbour, ‘My father was paid ten thousand rupees to act in that film. I am seeing it this evening. Aren't you also coming?'

‘To see
Kumari
!' sneered his friend. He hated Tamil pictures. ‘I won't even pass that way.'

‘This is not like other Tamil films. My father used to read the story to us every night. It is a very interesting story. He wrote the whole story himself. He was paid ten thousand rupees for writing and acting. I will take you to the picture if you are also coming.'

‘I won't see a Tamil picture.'

‘This is not an ordinary Tamil picture. It is as good as an English picture.'

But Sambu's friend was adamant. Sambu had to go alone and see the picture. It was an attempt at a new style in Tamil films—a modern story with a minimum of music. It was the story of Kumari, a young girl who refused to marry at fourteen but wanted to study in a university and earn an independent living, and was cast away by her stern father (Sambu's father) and forgiven in the end.

Sambu, sitting in the four-anna class, was eagerly waiting for the picture to begin. It was six months since he had seen his father, and he missed him badly at home.

The hall darkened. Sambu sat through the trailers and slide advertisements without enthusiasm. Finally, his father came on the screen. He was wearing just the dhoti and shirt he used to wear at home; he was sitting at his table just as he used to sit at home. And then a little girl came up, and he patted her on the head and spoke to her exactly as he used to speak to Sambu. And then Father taught the girl arithmetic. She had a slate on her knee and he dictated to her: ‘A cartman wants two annas per mile. Rama has three annas on hand. How far will the cartman carry him?' The girl chewed her slate pencil and blinked. Father was showing signs of impatience. ‘Go on, Kumari,' Sambu muttered. ‘Say something, otherwise you will receive a slap presently. I know him better than you do.' Kumari, however, was a better arithmetician than Sambu. She gave the right answer. Father was delighted. How he would jump about in sheer delight whenever Sambu solved a sum correctly! Sambu was reminded of a particular occasion when by sheer fluke he blundered through a puzzle about a cistern with a leak and a tap above it. How father jumped out of his chair when he heard Sambu declare that it would take three hours for the cistern to fill again.

When the film ended and the lights were switched on, Sambu turned about and gazed at the aperture in the projection room as if his father had vanished into it. The world now seemed to be a poorer place without Father. He ran home. His mother was waiting for him at the door. ‘It is nine o'clock. You are very late.'

‘I would have loved it if the picture had lasted even longer. You are perverse, Mother. Why won't you see it?'

Throughout the dinner he kept talking. ‘Exactly as Father used to sing, exactly as he used to walk, exactly . . .' His mother listened to him in grim silence.

‘Why don't you say something, Mother?'

‘I have nothing to say.'

‘Don't you like the picture?'

She didn't answer the question. She asked, ‘Would you like to go and see the picture again tomorrow?'

‘Yes, Mother. If possible every day as long as the picture is shown. Will you give me four annas every day?'

‘Yes.'

‘Will you let me see both the shows every day?'

‘Oh, no. You can't do that. What is to happen to your lessons?'

‘Won't you come and see the picture, Mother?'

‘No, impossible.'

For a week more, three hours in the day, Sambu lived in his father's company, and felt depressed at the end of every show. Every day it was a parting for him. He longed to see the night show too, but Mother bothered too much about school lessons. Time was precious, but Mother did not seem to understand it; lessons could wait, but not Father. He envied those who were seeing the picture at night.

Unable to withstand his persuasions any more, his mother agreed to see the picture on the last day. They went to the night show. She sat in the women's class. She had to muster all her courage to sit down for the picture. She had a feeling of great relief as long as the slide advertisements and trailer pieces lasted. When the picture began, her heart beat fast. Her husband talking to his wife on the screen, playing with his child, singing, walking, dressing; same clothes, same voice, same anger, same joy—she felt that the whole thing was a piece of cruelty inflicted on her. She shut her eyes several times, but the picture fascinated her: it had the fascination of a thing which is painful. And then came a scene in which he reclined in a chair reading a newspaper. How he would sit absorbed in a newspaper! In their years of married life, how often had she quarrelled with him for it! Even on the last day he had sat thus after dinner, in his canvas chair, with the newspaper before him; she had lost her temper at the sight of it and said, ‘You and your newspaper! I could as well go and sleep off the rest of the day,' and left his company. When she saw him later he had fallen back in his chair with the sheets of newspaper over his face . . .

This was an unbearable scene. A sob burst from her.

Sambu, sitting in his seat on the men's side, liked to see his father in the newspaper scene because the girl would presently come and ask him what he was reading, annoy him with questions and get what she deserved: Father would shout, ‘Kumari! Will you go out or shall I throw you out?' That girl didn't know how to behave with Father, and Sambu disliked her intensely . . .

While awaiting eagerly the snubbing of the girl, Sambu heard a burst of sobbing in the women's class; presently there was a scramble of feet and a cry: ‘Put the lights on! Accident to someone! ' The show was stopped. People went hither and thither. Sambu, cursing this interruption, stood up on a bench to see what the matter was. He saw his mother being lifted from the floor. ‘That is my mother! Is she also dead?' screamed Sambu, and jumped over the barrier. He wailed and cried. Someone told him, ‘She has only fainted. Nothing has happened to her. Don't make a fuss.' They carried her out and laid her in the passage. The lights were put out again, people returned to their seats and the show continued. Mother opened her eyes, sat up and said, ‘Let us go away.'

‘Yes, Mother.' He fetched a
jutka
and helped her into it. As he was climbing into it himself, from the darkened hall a familiar voice said, ‘Kumari! Will you go out or shall I throw you out?' Sambu's heart became heavy and he burst into tears: he was affected both by his mother's breakdown and by the feeling that this was the final parting from his father. They were changing the picture next day.

No one in the house knew her name; no one for a moment thought that she had any other than Ayah. None of the children ever knew when she had first come into the family, the eldest being just six months old when she entered service; now he was seventeen and studied in a college. There were five children after him, and the last was four years old.

The Ayah repeatedly renewed her infancy with each one of them, kept pace with them till they left her behind and marched forward. And then she slipped back to the youngest and grew up with him or her. It might be said that the limit to which she could go in years was six; if she stepped beyond that boundary she proved herself a blundering nuisance. For instance, how hard it was for her to conduct herself in the servant world, which consisted of the cook, two men servants, a maid servant, a gardener and his unpaid assistant. Their jokes fell flat on her, their discussions did not interest her and she reported to her mistress everything that she heard. The gardener very nearly lost his job once for his opinion of his master, which was duly conveyed by the Ayah. She was fairly unpopular in the servants' quarters. She constituted herself a time-keeper, and those who came late for work could not escape her notice. The moment a latecomer was sighted, the old woman would let out such a scream demanding an explanation that the mistress of the house would come out and levy a fine.

This was an entirely self-imposed task, just as she also kept an eye on the home-tutor who came in the mornings and taught children arithmetic and English. The Ayah hovered about all the time the teacher was present, for she had a suspicion that he would torture the children. She viewed all teachers as her enemies and all schools as prison houses. She thought it was a cruel perversity that made people send children to school. She remembered how her two children (now grandfathers) used to come home and demand three pies for buying some herb, a paste of which was indispensable for preparing their skins for the next day's pinching and caning. They said that the school inspector himself had ordered the purchase of the herb. It was a part of their education.