Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma (36 page)

‘Hello, friend,’ cried Dr Pal from the other side of the fountain. He was coming down the road on his cycle. ‘I thought I should never see you again – you went away without telling me where you lived. You didn’t come again for lotus!’ It took time for Margayya to be shaken from his business reverie. ‘Oh, you!’ he cried, not exactly liking being disturbed by this man now. He felt shy of meeting him, associating him with smut. Dr Pal leaned his cycle on the parapet and came over and sat beside him.

‘You didn’t come again for lotus,’ he said.

‘Oh, lotus – one was enough for me,’ said Margayya, putting into his tone all the despair he felt at the whole wasted activity.

‘People always go for lotus in a series, never in singles –’ said the other obscurely. Margayya laughed, pretending that he read some inner meaning. ‘Well, what makes you spend your time sitting here?’ Pal asked.

Margayya thought: ‘Why can’t people leave me alone?’ He didn’t like to give the correct explanation. He said: ‘Someone has promised to come up and meet me here.’

‘Oh, a business meeting, I suppose.’

‘Of course,’ said Margayya. ‘I have no time for just casual meetings. The time is –’ He looked around him.

‘Four,’ said the other, looking at his wrist-watch. ‘You won’t mind if I keep you company?’

‘Oh, not at all,’ replied Margayya mortified, but he overcame his mortification enough to add, ‘I only fear it may hold you up unnecessarily. You may have other business.’

‘I’m on duty even when I’m sitting here and talking to you. I’ll make a story of it for my paper – that’s all they want. They won’t mind as long as I fulfil my duty.’

‘Surely, you won’t write about me!’ Margayya said.

‘Why not! I might say Mr – –. Oh, what’s your name please? I’ve not enquired, although I’ve been around with you so much.’

‘Why do you want my name?’ Margayya asked defensively.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t publish it. I just want to know as a friend, that’s all. Suppose somebody asks me who is that friend with whom I have been talking and I say I don’t know, it’d look grotesque. Isn’t that so? What is your name?’

‘People call me Margayya –’

‘Excellent name; initials?’

‘No initials –’

‘Oh, no initials, that’s excellent. Initials indicate town and parentage … But that’s for lesser folk who have to announce their antecedents.’

‘It’s not necessary for me. If you say Margayya, everyone will know. However, that’s not my name.’

‘Oh, I thought it was.’

‘How?’

‘How? How? The “how” of things is my trade secret. Otherwise I wouldn’t be a writer. My business is to know things – not tell anyone how, you understand.’

‘Extraordinary fellow,’ Margayya said.

‘Yes, I am,’ said the other. ‘I know it. Come along, let us go somewhere and gossip.’

‘We are doing it here quite well,’ said Margayya.

‘Oh, no … This place is too noisy. I want to talk to you privately. Come on, come on; don’t say “no!” ‘He was irresistible. Margayya remembered in time to protest: ‘But I have told you I am waiting here for someone.’

‘Oh, he will follow us there, don’t worry.’

‘Come along to my office. I must show you my office.’

They walked along, through the crowd. It seemed to be all the same for Margayya, what he did or where he went. He followed the other blindly. He took him through the eastern end of Market Road, turned into a lane, stopped before a house and knocked on the door. A little boy opened it. ‘Who is inside?’ Pal asked.

‘No one,’ the boy said.

‘That’s fine!’ said Pal. ‘As I expected. Open my office then, young fellow!’

The young man disappeared and opened a side door and put his head out. ‘Hold the cycle,’ commanded Pal. The young man came out with alacrity and took hold of the bicycle. Pal marched in, asking Margayya to follow. He followed him into a very small room stuffed with empty packing cases, piled up to the ceiling. There was a stool in the middle of it with a higher stool before it. On the wall hung a printed sheet:
‘Silver Way
– Chief Representative’s Office’. There were a few stacks of paper in a corner. ‘Don’t look shocked by the state of my office,’ said Pal. ‘This is only a temporary place. I’m moving into a big office and showroom as soon as it is ready.’

‘Where?’ Margayya asked.

‘Wherever it may be available. That’s all I can say. You know how it is with the present housing conditions!’ Margayya did not feel disposed to agree with him. He said: ‘You can get houses if you honestly try. After all, you want only a room –’

‘But nobody will give it to me free, don’t you see, and that is the only condition on which our chief office is prepared to accept any accommodation! You see my problem. They want a place in the town to be called their office, but they won’t pay any rent for it. I got this because I also write accounts for these business men and they have allowed me to hang up my board.’

‘What do they deal in? Tooth powder or something like that?’ Margayya asked.

‘They make cheap soap and export it to Malaya – make a lot of money –’ he said.

‘Must be an easy job,’ Margayya reflected aloud.

‘Most messy, and a terrible gamble.’

‘But I think there is a lot of money in it,’ said Margayya. His mind at once went off He had no clear idea how soap was made. He only remembered some piece of odd knowledge about coconut oil and caustic. Perhaps a hundred rupees invested might soon multiply, provided the soap became popular. Give it a lot of attractive colouring and sell it cheap and people would flock to buy it – Margayya’s soap, Margayya’s tooth powder, Margayya’s snuff. The choice of his business now seemed to be between these three. He would have to make up his mind about it and start somewhere instead of idling away the day on the fountain parapet… There was silence during these reflections. The other watched him, and then asked: ‘Have you done with your deep reflections?’

‘Some ideas connected with my business came to my mind suddenly –’

‘Sit down there; it’s not nice to remain standing,’ said Pal.

Margayya sat down. Pal sat down on the higher stool.

‘Margayya, listen to me very attentively,’ he began. ‘I am speaking to you on a very important matter now.’

‘Go ahead, I am not deaf… You can speak in whispers if you like, if it is such a great secret,’ Margayya said.

‘If you are thinking of making money or more money or just money, speak out,’ said Pal almost in a whisper, coming close to his face. His eyes were so serious that Margayya said: ‘How did you guess?’

‘There are only two things that occupy men’s minds. I’m a psychologist and I know.’

‘What are they?’ Margayya said.

‘Money … and Sex … You need not look so shocked. It is the truth. Down with your sham and hypocritical self-deception. Tell me truthfully, is there any moment of the day when you don’t think of one or the other?’ Margayya did not know how to answer. It seemed a very embarrassing situation. Pal said: ‘I’m an academician and I’m only interested in Truth and how human beings face it.’

‘I think of plenty of other things too,’ Margayya said defensively.

‘What are they?’

‘About my son and what he is doing.’

‘What is it but sex?’ asked the dialectician. ‘You cannot think of your son without thinking of your wife.’

‘Oh, that will do,’ said Margayya indignantly. ‘I don’t like anyone to talk of my wife.’

‘Why not?’ persisted Pal. ‘Have you considered why people make such a fuss about their wives? It is all based on primitive sexual jealousy.’

‘No – you should not speak lightly about wives. You know nothing about them. If you are a bachelor, then I don’t know what you are.’

‘I am a sociologist, and I cannot sugarcoat my words. I have to speak scientifically.’

Margayya was overawed by the man’s speech. He did not quite grasp what he was saying. All the same, he said: ‘It is generally understood that you may talk of any subject freely – but you must not make free reference to another man’s wife.’

‘Nor to one’s own wife,’ added Pal. ‘I don’t think anyone can speak openly about his wife. If he could speak out openly what she means to him and what she thinks of him or he of her behind the screen of their house or behind the screen of their bed chamber, you will know.’

‘Oh, stop, stop,’ cried Margayya. ‘I won’t hear any more of it.’ He felt ashamed. This ‘sociologist’ or whatever he called himself seemed to be preoccupied with only one set of ideas. Margayya said: ‘I wish you would marry some strong girl and settle down. It will give you other things to think of

‘I don’t want to think of anything else. I feel I am made by God in order that I may enlighten people in these matters and guide their steps to happiness,’ asserted Pal. ‘And do you know it is the most paying, most profitable occupation in the present-day world?’

At this Margayya sat up. This was a sentiment which appealed to him. He said: ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m going to start a sociology clinic, a sort of harmony home, a sort of hospital for creating domestic happiness, a sort of psychological clinic, where people’s troubles are set right … I can charge a small fee. Do you know how many people will come in and go out of it each day? I am certain to earn five hundred
rupees a day easily. My book “Bed Life” – you remember you saw it? –’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s only a first step in the scheme … When that book is published, I expect to have at least a lakh of copies sold.’

‘At what price?’ asked Margayya.

‘Say at about a rupee per copy. You must not price it higher than that. After all, our purpose is to reach the common man.’

‘You mean to say that you are going to make a lakh of rupees out of it?’

‘Yes, what is strange about that? That’s only for a start.’

One Lakh of Rupees! One Lakh of Rupees! In Margayya’s eyes this man began to assume grandeur. This lank fellow, cycling about and gathering news, held within his palm the value of a lakh of rupees. Margayya was filled with admiration. Tooth powder and snuff and all the rest seemed silly stuff beside this …You could never see a lakh of rupees with these commodities; it would probably go back into the oven again and again, perhaps. But here was a man who spoke of a lakh of rupees as if it were a five-rupee note!

‘That’s only a starting point,’ Pal added. ‘There is no reason why it should not go on earning a similar sum year after year. It’s a property which ought to bring in a regular rent. There is no limit to your sales. The book will simply be – there will be such a clamour from humanity for this stuff that ultimately every human being will own a copy. The Tamil-speaking area in India gives us a good start; add to it the tens and thousands of people in Siam, Burma, South Africa and so on, and you get the number of copies you should print. And then if it is translated into Hindi, it should reach the whole of India – and the population of India is three hundred and sixty millions according to the last census. If every man parts with a rupee, see where you are.’

‘Yes,’ replied Margayya greatly impressed. ‘I never thought there was such a wide scope for selling books.’

‘Not for all books. For instance, if I wrote a book of, say, poems or philosophy, nobody would touch it – but a book like “Bed Life” is a thing that everyone would like to read. Do you know, people like to be told facts, people like to be
guided in such matters. Ultimately, as I told you, I shall open a clinic. I want to serve mankind with my knowledge. I don’t want to keep it within my closed fists. We must all be helpful to each other. I have worked for years and years studying and writing, just in order that mankind may be helped.’ He spoke without stopping for breath, and concluded: ‘Do you know, if I just throw down a hint anywhere that there is such a book as this people will fall over each other to publish it.’

‘Indeed!’

‘Yes, there are offers often thousand rupees or more for it. But I won’t part with it for ten times that amount.’

‘Why not?’ asked Margayya.

‘Because I can do better than that if I keep it. If people come to make a business offer, they will find me very hard, let me assure you, because I know my mind.’

‘So it will be impossible to get it out of you?’ asked Margayya.

‘Yes, generally, if anyone comes to me as a business man.’

‘Oh!’ Margayya said, remembering with despair that he came under that category.

The other added: ‘But let a man come to me as a friend and hold out his hand, the book is his.’

‘But you will lose your lakh –’

‘I wouldn’t care. Don’t imagine I am so fond of money. I treat money as dirt.’

This was a shocking statement for Margayya. He cried: ‘Oh, don’t say such things. You must not.’ He recollected how the Goddess Lakshmi was such a sensitive creature that if a man removed a tumbler of milk she fled from the place and withdrew her grace.

‘I’m a man who cares for work, human relationships, and service to mankind,’ said Dr Pal. ‘Money comes last in my list.’

Margayya felt a desperate idea welling up in him. He could hold it back no longer. It almost burst through his lips, and he asked: ‘Suppose I say “give me that for printing and selling”, what would you do?’

In answer, the other went out and came back carrying the bag which had been hanging from his cycle handle. He thrust his hand into the bag, and brought out the manuscript. Without
another look at it he dropped it on Margayya’s lap as he sat on the stool.

‘Are you playing?’ asked Margayya, hardly able to believe his eyes. It was bound in a blue wrapper. He vaguely turned its leaves to assure himself that it was the right book. ‘Principles of Embracing’.

‘You take it. It’s yours. Do whatever you like with it,’ said Pal magnificently.

‘No, no, no,’ said Margayya. ‘How can I?’

‘It’s no longer mine,’ said the other. ‘It is a bargain which is closed.’ He looked resolute. He then held out his hand and said: ‘Give me what you have in your pocket. I will take it in exchange. It’s a bargain. You cannot back out of it.’

Margayya said: ‘I haven’t brought any money –’

‘Then why have you brought that purse? I see its outline.’

Margayya looked down with a sigh. Yes, the damned stuff was showing. ‘It’s not a purse,’ he tried to say. But the other said: ‘Take it out, let me see what it is that looks like a purse, but isn’t. Stick to your bargain.’ Margayya put his hand in and brought out the little purse, which had a silver George V embossed on it. He opened it. Twenty-five rupees were all its contents. He took out a five-rupee note and placed it on the outstretched palm of Dr Pal. The other didn’t close his fingers or withdraw his arm. He sternly said: ‘Stick to your bargain. Empty it.’