He said, ‘All right, sir. I will go and get my granny’s blessing. I’ll be back early tomorrow.’
Haifa dozen times on the way he resolved to turn back and tell Mahatma Gandhi that he had seen Granny. How could he find out the truth, anyway? But he dismissed the thought as unpractical, though perhaps not so unworthy under the circumstances. Suppose Granny created a row, went into a faint or threatened to kill herself, and made enough noise to attract the neighbours who might come and lock him up in his house, refusing to let him out? Should he face this risk in order to tell Gandhiji that he had seen the obstinate old lady as ordered? Would it not be prudent like a sensible man to say that it had been done? Probably Granny would guess there was Bharati behind all this and disbelieve anything he might say about Mahatmaji. Or if she spoke insultingly about Mahatmaji, he couldn’t trust himself to listen patiently. He might do something for which he might feel sorry afterwards. He visualized himself suppressing his granny’s words with force and violence, but he remembered that it would not be right to act like that where the Mahatma was concerned. He would be upset to hear about it.
The thing to do was to turn the jutka back and tell the Mahatma that he had Granny’s blessings. But then, being a Mahatma, he might read his thoughts and send him back to Granny or he might cancel all his programme until he was assured that Granny had been seen or begin a fast until it was done. What made the Mahatma attach so much importance to Granny when he had so many things to mind? When he had the all-important task of driving the British out he ought to leave simple matters like Granny to be handled by himself. His thoughts were in a welter of confusion while he was in the jutka, but soon the horse turned into Kabir Street. He paid the fare without haggling and sent away the jutka quietly. He didn’t want his movements to become noticeable in the neighbourhood.
He found his granny in a semi-agreeable frame of mind. His prolonged absence seemed to have made her nervous, and she tried to be nice to him. She probably feared he would flounce out of the house if she attempted to talk to him in the manner of yesterday.
She merely said: ‘What a long time you have been away, my boy,’ attempting to keep out all trace of reproach from her tone. He pretended to settle down. He drew up the canvas chair he had bought for her and sat down under the hall lamp. His granny fussed about as if she had recovered someone long lost. She set before him a plateful of food fried in ghee, saying, ‘They sent this down from the lawyer’s house: the first birthday of his eighth son. They don’t seem to miss anything for any child.’
Sriram put a piece into his mouth, munched it, nodded his approval and said: ‘Yes, they have made it of pure ghee. Good people.’ He crunched it noisily.
Granny said: ‘I kept it for you, I knew you would like it. I was wondering how long I should keep it. You know I have no teeth. Who would want stuff like that when you are not here? Don’t eat all of it, you will not be able to eat your dinner.’
‘Oh, dinner! I’ve had my dinner, Granny.’
‘So soon!’
‘Yes, in the Ashram camp, we have to dine before seven usually. It’s the rule.’
‘What sort of a dinner can it be at seven!’ she cried in disappointment. ‘Come and eat again, you ought to be fit for a real dinner now.’
‘No, Granny. It is all regulated very strictly. We can’t do anything as we like. We have got to observe the rules in all matters. We get quite good food there.’
‘Have you got to pay for it?’ asked Granny.
‘Of course not,’ said Sriram. ‘What do you think, do you think Mahatmaji is running a hotel?’
‘Then why should they feed you?’
‘It’s because we belong there.’
‘Do they provide a lot of public feeding?’
Sriram lost his temper at this. He was appalled at Granny’s denseness. ‘I said they feed all of us who belong there, don’t you follow?’
‘Why should they feed you?’
‘It is because we are volunteers.’
‘Nice volunteers!’ cried Granny, threatening to return to her yesterday’s mood any second. ‘And what do they give you to eat?’
‘Chappatis, curd, and buttermilk and vegetables.’
‘I’m glad. I was afraid they might force you to eat egg and fowl.’
Sriram was horrified. ‘What do you take the Mahatma for! Do you know, he won’t even wear sandals made of the hide of slaughtered animals!’
Granny was seized with a fit of laughter. Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Won’t wear sandals!’ she cried in uncontrollable laughter. ‘Never heard of such a thing before! How do they manage it? By peeling off the skin of animals before they are slaughtered, is that it?’
‘Shut up, Granny!’ cried Sriram in a great rage. ‘What an irresponsible gossip you are! I never thought you could be so bad!’
Granny for the first time noticed a fiery earnestness in her grandson, and gathered herself up. She said: ‘Oh! He is your God, is he?’
‘Yes, he is, and I won’t hear anyone speak lightly of him.’
‘What else can I know, a poor ignorant hag like me! Do I read the newspapers? Do I listen to lectures? Am I told what is what by anyone? How should I know anything about that man Gandhi!’
‘He is not a man; he is a Mahatma!’ cried Sriram.
‘What do you know about a Mahatma, anyway?’ asked Granny.
Sriram fidgeted and rocked himself in his chair in great anger. He had not come prepared to face a situation of this kind. He had been only prepared to face a granny who might show sullenness at his absence, create difficulties for him when he wanted to go away and exhibit more sorrow and rage than levity. But here she was absolutely reckless, frivolous, and without the slightest sense of responsibility or respect. This was a situation which he had not anticipated, and he had no technique to meet it. It was no use, he realized, showing righteous indignation: that would only tickle the old lady more and more, and when the time came for him to take her permission and go, she might become too intractable. She might call in the neighbours, and make fun of him. He decided that he must change his tactics. Suddenly springing up he asked: ‘Granny, have you had your food? I am keeping you away from it, talking like this!’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, almost on the point of giggling. ‘How many years is it since I had a mouthful of food at night – must be nearly twenty years. You couldn’t have seen me in your lifetime eating at night.’
There was such a ring of pride in her voice that Sriram felt impelled to say: ‘There is nothing extraordinary in it. Anybody might be without food.’ He wanted to add, ‘The Mahatma has fasted for so many days on end, and so often,’ but suppressed it. The old lady however had no need of being told anything. She added at once, ‘No! When Mahatma Gandhi fasts, everybody talks about it.’
‘And when you fast at nights only, nobody notices it, and that is all the difference between you and Gandhiji?’ She was struck by the sharp manner in which he spoke.
She asked: ‘Do you want your dinner?’
‘Yes, just to please you, that is all. I am not hungry, I told you that. And this stuff is good, made of good ghee. You may tell them so. I’ve eaten a great quantity of it and I’m not hungry.’
Granny came back to her original mood after all these unexpected transitions. She said: ‘You must eat your dinner, my boy,’ very earnestly. She bustled about again as if for a distinguished visitor. She pulled a dining leaf out of a bundle in the kitchen rack, spread it on the floor, sprinkled a little water on it, and drew the bronze rice pot nearer, and sat down in order to be able to serve him without getting up again. The little lamp wavered in its holder. He ate in silence, took a drink of water out of the good old brass tumbler that was by his side; he cast a glance at the old bronze vessel out of which rice had been served to him for years. He suddenly felt depressed at the sight of it all. He was oppressed with the thought that he was leaving these old associations, that this was really a farewell party. He was going into an unknow
n life right from here. God knew what was in store for him. He felt very gloomy at the thought of it all. He knew it would be no good ever talking to his granny about his plans, or the Mahatma or Bharati. All that was completely beyond her comprehension. She would understand only edibles and dinner and fasting at night in order to impress a neighbour with her austerity. No use talking to her about anything. Best to leave in the morning without any fuss. He had obeyed Mahatmaji’s mandate to the extent of seeing her and speaking to her. The Mahatma should be satisfied and not expect him to be able to bring about a conversion in the old lady’s outlook, enough to earn her blessing.
Granny was very old, probably eighty, ninety, or a hundred. He had never tried to ascertain her age correctly. And she would not understand new things. At dead of night, after assuring himself that Granny was fast asleep, he got up, scribbled a note to her by the night lamp, and placed it under the brass pot containing water on the window-sill, which she was bound to lift first thing in the morning. She could carry it to a neighbour and have it read to her if she had any difficulty in finding her glasses. Perhaps she might not like to have it read by the neighbours. She would always cry: ‘Sriram, my glasses, where are the wretched glasses gone?’ whenever anything came to her hand for reading, and it would be his duty to go to the cupboard, and fetch them. Now he performed the same duty in anticipation. He tip-toed to the almirah, took the glasses out of their case silently, and returned to the hall, leaving the spectacle case open, because it had a tendency to close with a loud clap. He placed the glasses beside his letter of farewell, silently opened the door, and stepped into the night.
PART TWO
He was an accredited member of the group, and in many villages he was glad to find himself fussed over and treated with respect by the villagers. They looked on him with wonder. He formed a trio with Bharati and Gorpad; and whenever the villagers wanted to know anything about the Mahatma, they came and spoke to him reverentially, and that gave him an opportunity to work off all the knowledge he had gathered in his contacts with Gorpad and Bharati. It was a way of learning the job while being on it. Till then he had no notion of village life. He had been born and bred in the township of Malgudi, and even there his idea of the bounds of the universe were confined to Kabir Street, Market Road, one or two other spots. Whenever he heard the word ‘villages’, his mental picture was always one of green coconut groves, long and numerous steps leading down to the large tank, with elegant village women coming up bearing pitchers, and the temple spire showing beyond the tank bund, low roofed houses with broad pyols, and mat-covered waggons moving about dragged by bulls with tinkling bells around their necks, the cartmen singing all the time. He owed his idea to the various Tamil films, which he had frequently seen at the Regal. But he saw nothing of the kind here. The reality was different. Some villages were hardly more than a cluster of huts. For the first time he was seeing actual villages, and on the first day at a village ten miles from Malgudi, he felt so bewildered that he asked Bharati secretly: ‘Where is the village?’
‘Which village?’
‘Why, any village,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t this look like a village to you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he replied. They had found time for a chat, after the Mahatma had retired for the evening.
‘What a pity,’ she said, ‘that it’s so. But learn, young man, this is really a village. I’m not lying. There are seven hundred thousand other villages more or less like this in our country.’
‘How do you know?’ he asked to prolong the conversation.
‘I learn from wise men,’ she said.
‘How wise?’ he asked.
She ignored his frivolity and started talking of their mission. They were out to survey the villages which had recently been affected by famine. It was a mission of mercy; Mahatmaji had set out to study the famine conditions at first hand, and to put courage and hope into the sufferers. It was a grim, melancholy undertaking. The Mahatma attached so much value to this tour that he had set aside all his other engagements. A distant war being fought in Europe, and one probably about to start in the Far East, had their repercussions here. Though not bombed, they still suffered from the war; one did not see A.R.P. signs or even a war poster, but small wayside stations acted as a vital link, a feeding channel, to a vast war reservoir in Western Europe. The waggons at the sidings carried away night and day timber cut in the Mempi forests, the corn grown here, and the able-bodied men who might have been working on their land.
However grim the surroundings might be, Sriram and Bharati seemed to notice nothing. They had a delight in each other’s company which mitigated the gloom of the surroundings. Gorpad alone looked oppressed with a sense of tragedy. He spoke less, retired early, mortified himself more and more. He said: ‘See what the British have done to our country: this famine is their manoeuvring to keep us in enslavement. They are plundering the forests and fields to keep their war machinery going, and the actual sufferer is this child,’ pointing at any village child who might chance to come that way, showing its ribs, naked and potbellied.
‘There is no food left in these villages,’ he cried passionately. ‘There is no one to look after them; who cares for them? Who is there to help them out of their difficulties? Everyone is engaged in this war. The profiteer has hoarded all the grain beyond the reach of these growers. The war machine buys it at any price. It’s too big a competitor for these poor folk.’
‘Why does he say all that to me?’ Sriram reflected while impatiently waiting to be left alone with Bharati. ‘I’m not responsible for it. ‘Gorpad was an iron man and could be trusted to leave them alone because he had something else to do; and when his back was turned, their eyes met and they giggled at the memory of all the sad, bad matters they had just heard or noticed.
Sriram’s idea of a village was nowhere to be seen. Hungry, parched men and women with skin stretched over their bones, bare earth, dry ponds, and miserable tattered thatched roofing over crumbling mud walls, streets full of pits and loose sand, unattractive dry fields – that was a village. Sriram could hardly believe he was within twenty miles of Malgudi and civilization. Here pigs and dogs lounged in dry gutters. Everything in these parts had the appearance of a dry gutter. Sriram wondered how people ever managed to go on living in such places. He wanted to stop and ask everyone: ‘How long are you going to be here? Won’t you return to Malgudi or somewhere else? Have you got to be here for ever?’
The Mahatma defeated the calculation of officials by refusing to give a programme of his tour, and by visiting unexpected places. The officials politely asked him to tell them where he wished to go. He merely replied: ‘Everywhere if I can’ or ‘I wish I knew.’
‘But we’d like to make proper arrangements.’
‘For me? Don’t trouble yourself. I can sleep in any hut. I can live where others are living. I don’t think I shall demand many luxuries. Don’t worry. We can look after ourselves. I’m not a guest here; I’m a host. Why don’t you join us, as our guest?’ He said this to the District Collector. ‘We will promise to look after you, giving you all the comforts that you may want.’
Quite a band of officials followed him about on his tour. Mahatma Gandhi toured the villages mostly on foot. He halted wherever he liked. He stationed himself at the lowliest hut in the village if it was available, or in a temple corridor, or in the open air. For hours he walked silently, holding his staff and supporting his arm on one or other of his disciples. Often he stopped on the way to speak to a peasant cutting a tree or digging a field.
Sriram felt it unnecessary to know which village they were passing at a particular time. All were alike: it was the same routine. Gandhiji’s personal life went on as if he had been stationary in one place; the others adjusted themselves to it. He met the local village men and women, spoke to them about God, comforted the ailing, advised those who sought his guidance. He spoke to them about spinning, the war, Britain, and religion. He met them in their huts, spoke to them unde
r the village banyan tree (no village was so bare yet that it was without its banyan tree). He trudged his way through ploughed fields, he climbed hard rocky places, through mud and slush, but always with the happiest look, and no place seemed too small for his attention.
Gandhiji’s tour was drawing to an end. He was to board a train at Koppal, a tiny station at the foot of the Mempi Hills. The Mahatma wanted his arrival and departure to be kept a secret, and except a couple of officials deputed to see him off, there were no outsiders on the platform. The station-master, a small man with a Kaiser-like moustache, who wore a green lace-edged turban and dhoti, had, with the help of his porter, dragged a huge antique chair on to the platform. He had tidied up his children, six of them in a row, and made them stand quietly aside in the shade of a Gold Mohur tree in bloom. He had to act as Mahatmaji’s host in between tapping various messages. He had begged Mahatmaji to occupy the chair on the platform. ‘I can stand as well as anyone else,’ said the Mahatma, looking around at his followers. Sriram noted the sadness in the other’s face, and urged him, ‘Please take your seat, Bapuji,’ and the Mahatma sat down, his followers standing around. The little station-master was excited and agitated and beads of perspiration ran down his eyelids. Beyond the railway line there was a row of hills, standing against purple skies. The station-master panted for breath, and constantly nudged and instructed his children to behave themselves although they were all the time standing stiffly as if on a drill parade.
Mahatmaji said: ‘Station Masterji, why don’t you let them run about and play as they like? Why do you constrain them?’
‘I’m not constraining them, master. It’s their habit,’ he said with the hope of impressing the visitor with the training of his children.