My Days (13 page)

“How come my shirt is torn?” asked my uncle, and they both laughed.

“He broke the wall of my house!”

“And your head too, if you had dared to peep out; you fellows thought I was drunk? Not necessarily.”

This man was frail and without his front teeth. My uncle, when he was not addressing him as “Prince,” called him “Poet” or “Editor” and appointed him my literary guru, urging me to meet him at his house and take his advice. All the advice he could give was, “Newspapers like to have coverage of social news. Watch paragraphs describing a marriage or a social function, and cut them out, and model your writing on those. Next get invited to all weddings and social functions.”

After a month's stay at Bangalore, my uncle returned to Madras, persuading me to go with him and try my luck there. And so I was back in Purasawalkam. Our old house was still there, but much changed; my uncle (senior) was married and had many children. My grandmother was bed-ridden with cancer; and her garden and space had been parcelled and sold out to meet the expenses of running the house. My uncle had given up all lucrative activities on principle and was dedicated to bringing out a literary weekly to revive Tamil classics, and all his resources were utilized for it.

I was introduced to another character at Madras, who was planning to bring out a “Matrimonial Gazette.” His editorial office was situated at an obscure and inaccessible spot in George Town. The man sitting at a desk cluttered with dusty bundles of paper straightaway came to business. “I hear from your uncle that you want to be a writer. Good. But don't expect to become a millionaire in a day. Remember that the world is not waiting to read your stuff, whatever it may be. People have better things to do. But you must work hard and by sheer persistence, draw their attention to yourself—which means write, write, and write.” After this gratuitous advice, he made his offer. “At the moment, I have no notion what you write or how. But your uncle is a dear friend and I'll take his word.” He paused to sweep aside the papers on his table and shouted through the window, “Hey, bring two
colours
immediately.” And immediately on his table were placed by an urchin two bottles of some red aerated water fizzing and hissing like a cobra. “You must be thirsty, drink that
colour
. It's good.” He set an example by tilting his head back and practically sucking the water out of the bottle, which he thrust between his lips. He put it down, belched loudly, pressed his nostrils with his fingers and said, “I want to start a magazine solely devoted to matrimonial themes. Marriage is the most serious situation everyone has to face sooner or later, and few give the subject enough thought. Many are the problems that arise before, during, and after a marriage. Two strangers come together and have to live for the rest of their lives. Our journal will be devoted solely to this subject. We want jokes, stories, philosophies, and reflections all on this theme—of women who suffer, of men who are callous, and so on and so forth. You may write anything on these lines. Come back with some material as soon as you can and then we'll talk further.” My head was in the clouds when I returned home that evening.

For the next three days, sitting beside my grandmother, I wrote and soon produced several pages of interesting anecdotes and a variety of imaginary stories centering around matrimonial life: about wife-beaters, husband-baiters, a live-and-let-live couple who faced some calamity, young runaways, elopers and elopees, and every kind of permutation and combination of man and woman. The tone, for some reason, emphasized misery—if not tragedy. It seemed so hard to find a happy couple in this world. Probably I felt that there was monotony in a contented, harmonious married life, nothing to write about. It was only a broken marriage or one at a breaking-point that offered literary material. I had no facility for typing, and wrote everything in the best calligraphy I could manage, pinned the sheets neatly, wrapped them into a package, and carried them to the editor with no doubt that he would accept them with joy. My junior uncle, who was hardly at home but was in and out at certain specific hours for a wash or a change of dress, admonished me constantly, while passing, to write suitably and try and please the editor and forget all that damnfool stuff about Malgudi and such things. So one day I took the literary package to George Town and placed it before the editor. He offered me a seat, and glanced through the sheets. I had managed to fill about thirty or forty pages. After studying them, he said, “You have a flair for writing, definitely, but you will have to understand our needs and aim at satisfying them. We should first take you as an apprentice in our office.” (Suddenly he had switched on to the royal “we,” although I did not notice a second person in the establishment.) “During the probationary period, you will not be paid. In fact we charge a fee, generally for training people. But in your case, I'll exempt you, being a nephew of my friend. I'll put you through every branch of the journal, and after three months, will consider paying you an honorarium commensurate with your aptitude.”

“What about these?”

“Of course we will use them as and when we find an opportunity after editing them suitably.”

“You will pay for them?” I asked timidly.

“Of course by and by, but not at present.” I didn't understand what he meant. All that I could gather was that he was looking for a free assistant, or probably an assistant blackmailer, as I found that he was proposing to subtitle his publication
True Tales
(of matrimony) and needed a researcher in social life.

I had to drop this man and look for other possibilities. I offered samples of my writing to every kind of editor and publisher in the city of Madras. The general criticism was that my stories lacked “plot.” There was no appreciation of my literary values, and I had nothing else to offer.
Malgudi
was inescapable as the sky overhead. “You have a command of the language, but . . .” was the almost routine statement made.

I stayed at Madras for three months during that year and pursued the editors of newspapers and magazines indefatigably. My junior uncle was at first wildly angry with me for letting down his matrimonial-gazette friend. But he still helped me to meet and talk to whomever he thought would be in my line, although most of them had only the English alphabet in common with me. Race-horse analysts, almanac-makers, film-writers, and so forth—most of them being my uncle's bar associates too. My senior uncle devoted most of his time to editing his literary weekly. He sat up all night in his attic (where I had once concealed myself) and wrote seventy-five per cent of the eight-page weekly himself under different pen names and in different styles, edited and rewrote other's contributions, corrected proofs, prepared copy, and studied voluminous ancient Tamil poetry. Also he conducted night schools for slum children, and left his desk for a couple of hours in the evenings on this mission. A hard-working intellectual who spurned the idea of earning money but somehow carried on. He had, of course, discarded his old hobby of photography; his cumbrous camera lay gathering dust on the top of a shelf, along with many other discarded things.

I showed him some of my writing. He read them and said, “Good start, but you must study a lot more. Shakespeare, for instance, and above all
Ramayana
by Kamban. Try to read his version, and try to understand it with the help of the commentaries you will find in my journal. You will profit by it. Your writing will gain seriousness and weight. There is no hurry to seek publication yet. Keep writing, but also keep reading. . . .” I could not quite accept his advice. I was setting out to be a modern story-writer, and he tried to make me spend my time poring over tough old classics. I listened to his suggestion out of politeness but rejected it mentally.

He wore himself out trying to establish his journal, and was on his deathbed in 1938 from a damaged heart, after running the weekly for eight years single-handed. I was in Mysore at the time and was summoned by a telegram to Madras to his bedside at the General Hospital. He lived for a couple of hours after my arrival, but had clarity of mind and speech. He gave me an advice with his last breath: “Study Kamban's
Ramayana
.” I said, “Yes, I will,” out of consideration, but with no conviction that I would or could ever be interested in Kamban; we were poles apart. I was a realistic fiction-writer in English, and Tamil language or literature was not my concern. My third novel,
The Dark Room
, was just out in London; and when I was leaving Mysore, the postman had handed me an envelope from my press-cutting agency containing all the first reviews, which were most enthusiastic. There was no reason why I should now perform a literary atavism by studying Tamil. So I rejected his advice as being the fancy of a dying man. Strangely enough, three decades later, this advice, having lain dormant, was heeded. I had totally forgotten my half-hearted promise, but in 1968 I became interested in Kamban, spent three years in reading his 10,500 stanzas, and found it such a delightful experience that I felt impelled to write a prose narrative of the
Ramayana
based on Kamban as a second volume to a work of Indian mythology. Strangely, I had completely forgotten the words of my uncle, until Marshall Best, my editor at the Viking Press in New York, asked just before I left for India if I had anyone in mind to whom I wished to dedicate the book. We had completed all the editorial work on my manuscript, and it was ready to be sent off to the printer. I suddenly recollected my uncle's injunction. I wrote out the dedication and handed it to Marshall at Kennedy Airport, where he had come to see me off.

My free-lance efforts at Madras bore fruit to the extent that I was given a book to review. Its title was
Development of Maritime Laws in 17th-Century England
. A most unattractive book, but I struggled through its pages and wrote a brief note on it, and though not paid for, it afforded me the thrill of seeing my words in print for the first time. The same journal also accepted a short story and paid ten rupees less money-order charges. My first year's income from writing was thus about nine rupees and twelve annas (about a dollar and a quarter). In the second year there was a slight improvement, as
The Hindu
took a story and sent me eighteen rupees (less money-order charges); in the year following, a children's story brought me thirty rupees. I handed this cheque to my father and he was delighted. He remarked, “Your first and last cheque, I suppose!” I objected to his saying “last” and he at once apologized. “I don't know what made me say ‘last.' Don't mind it.”

S
ighing over a pretty face and form seen on a balcony, or from across the street, or in a crowd, longing for love—in a social condition in which, at least in those days, boys and girls were segregated and one never spoke to anyone but a sister—I had to pass through a phase of impossible love-sickness. Perhaps the great quantity of fiction I read prepared my mind to fall in love with all and sundry—all one-sided, of course. Any girl who lifted her eyes and seemed to notice me became at once my sweetheart, till someone else took her place. Thus I had become devoted to a girl in a green sari with a pale oval face, passing down our street when we were living at Bojjanna Lines. She lived in the next street, the sister-in-law of an engineer, and I would have missed anything in the day rather than miss a glimpse of her. Sometimes I followed her quietly, like a slave, until she reached her gate and disappeared into her house without bestowing a single glance in my direction. I longed for some engineering business that might warrant a visit to her brother-in-law and then a gradual development of an acquaintance, the relationship maturing until I could freely propose to her, a la Victoria Cross or Marie Corelli. I was obsessed with her night and day, and I had no doubt that she would receive the impact of my thoughts, as Marie Corelli had taught me to believe that true love recognized no boundaries or barriers.