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.”
CHAPTER NINE
Sighing 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.
I lost sight of this girl suddenly—but found another, a little farther off, standing on the terrace of her home drying her hair—I noticed her at first on my way to the college, and then looked for her constantly on the way to and from; sure enough she would be there, a squat lumpy girl, but I loved her none the less. I think she was a flirt in her own way, ogling at every passer-by—not necessarily only me. I lost interest in her soon and bestowed it on another girl going to Maharani’s College, who used to give me a smile and pass on. All this love for someone was necessarily one-sided and unspoken. But it made no difference. It gave me a feeling of enrichment and purpose. Among an inner circle of friends we always discussed girls and indulged in lewd jokes and enjoyed it all immensely. The blind urge to love went to fantastic lengths—I even fell in love with a lady doctor who had come to attend my mother because she spoke a few words to me whenever I greeted her; she was a British lady well past middle age, stout and married. But I saw great possibilities in her and read a significance in every glance. Love, especially one-sided, can know no bounds, physical, racial, of age, or distance. My most impossible infatuation was for a penfriend I had in England; we exchanged letters every week. She sent me her photograph and I sent her mine. I kept her photo in my breast pocket and hoped she did likewise with mine—five thousand miles away; even if I wished to reach her, it would mean a P & O voyage of four weeks. I wrote impassioned love-letters which she rejected outright; she wrote back impersonal letters describing a holiday in Brighton or her latest collection of stamps. Although she protested against the tone of my letters, she never stopped writing, and that seemed to me a hopeful sign. I continued to send her my unmitigated love in every letter, and treasured her cold, impersonal replies and the scent of her stationery for years—until I was married, when I threw them over the wall.
After the false starts, the real thing occurred. In July 1933, I had gone to Coimbatore, escorting my elder sister, and then stayed on in her house. There was no reason why I should ever hurry away from one place to another. I was a free-lance writer and I could work wherever I might be at a particular time. One day, I saw a girl drawing water from the street-tap and immediately fell in love with her. Of course, I could not talk to her. I learned later that she had not even noticed me passing and repassing in front of her while she waited
to fill the brass vessels. I craved to get a clear, fixed, mental impression of her features, but I was handicapped by the time factor, as she would be available for staring at only until her vessels filled, when she would carry them off, and not come out again until the next water-filling time. I could not really stand and stare; whatever impression I had of her would be through a side-glance while passing the tap. I suffered from a continually melting vision. The only thing I was certain of was that I loved her, and I suffered the agonies of restraint imposed by the social conditions in which I lived. The tall headmaster, her father, was a friend of the family and often dropped in for a chat with the elders at home while on his way to the school, which was at a corner of our street. The headmaster, headmaster’s daughter, and the school were all within geographical reach and hailing distance, but the restraint imposed by the social code created barriers. I attempted to overcome them by befriending the headmaster. He was a book-lover and interested in literary matters, and we found many common subjects for talk. We got into the habit of meeting at his school after the school-hours and discussing the world, seated comfortably on a cool granite pyol in front of a little shrine of Ganesha in the school compound. One memorable evening, when the stars had come out, I interrupted some talk we were having on political matters to make a bold, blunt announcement of my affection for his daughter. He was taken aback, but did not show it. In answer to my proposal, he just turned to the god in the shrine and shut his eyes in a prayer. No one in our social condition could dare to proceed in the manner I had done. There were formalities to be observed, and any talk for a marriage proposal could proceed only between the elders of families. What I had done was unheard of. But the headmaster was sporting enough not to shut me up immediately. Our families were known to each other, and the class, community, and caste requirements were all right. He just said, “If God wills it,” and left it at that. He also said, “Marriages are made in Heaven, and who are we to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’?” After this he explained the difficulties. His wife and womenfolk at home were to be consulted, and my parents had to approve, and so on and so forth, and then the matching of horoscopes—this last became a great hurdle at the end. He came down to a practical level one day, by asking me what I proposed to do for a living. Luckily for me, at about that time a small piece that I had written (“How to Write an Indian Novel,” lampooning Western writers who visited India to gather material) had unexpectedly been accepted by Punch and brought me six guineas. This was my first prestige publication (the editor rejected everything I sent him subsequently) and it gave me a talking-point with my future father-in-law. I could draw a picture of my free-lance writing for London papers and magazines and explain to him that when my novel was finished it would bring in income all my life and fifty years after. He listened to me with apparent interest, without contradicting me, but off and on suggested, “I’m sure, if your father used his influence, he could fix you in a government job at Bangalore. Won’t he try?” This always upset me, and I immediately explained my economic philosophy: how I spurned the idea of earning more than was needed, which would be twenty rupees a month or, with a wife, forty rupees, and I expected my wife to share my philosophy. Not a very politic statement to make to the bewildered and hesitant father of a girl, but I became headstrong in my conviction. However, while it distressed the gentleman it did not materially affect my progress toward matrimony.
What really mattered was not my economic outlook, but my stars. My father-in-law, himself an adept at the study of horoscopes, had consultations with one or two other experts and came to the conclusion that my horoscope and the girl’s were incompatible. My horoscope had the Seventh House occupied by Mars, the Seventh House being the one that indicated matrimonial aspects. The astrological texts plainly stated that Mars in the Seventh House indicated nothing but disaster unless the partner’s horoscope also contained the same flaw, a case in which two wrongs make one right.
The next few weeks were a trying period for me. The headmaster would have none of me. In very gentle terms he expressed his rejection of me, as also his resignation to such a fate, since he seemed to have been secretly in my favour. I lost the taste for food and company, and lay sulking in a corner of my sister’s house on a gloomy easy chair. My mood was noticed by others with sympathy. I think I enjoyed a certain amount of self-dramatization and did all that one does when “crossed in hopeless love.” I avoided going out in the direction of the street-tap, I avoided the headmaster and his school. Late in the evening when it became dark, I went out for a brisk walk, with my head bowed in thought, looking neither left nor right, but totally wrapped up in my own gloomy reflections, just enough initiative left to smoke two Gold Flake cigarettes and return home. My sister, being my hostess, tried to cheer me up in various ways. My pensive pose got on her nerves. At this period I remember writing a play; it kept me busy all the afternoon. The play was called The Home of Thunder —a frightful tragedy in which all the principal characters are struck dead by lightning on a tower open to the skies, the play ending with a clap of thunder. It was a highly philosophical play examining the ideas of love, resignation, and death, the writing of which diverted my mind a great deal. I had great hopes for its future, and in due course sent it round to all kinds of producers and directors in every part of the civilized world. I had forgotten all about its existence till a few months ago, again when David Higham’s office discovered and returned the manuscript while clearing out old papers.
The evil of my stars soon became a matter of discussion among the headmaster’s astrological group. He sought me out and sent me here and there to meet his colleagues and talk it over with them and bring him their opinions and conclusions; finally he sent me along to meet an old man, living not far from us in the back of a coconut garden. His name was, strangely, “Chellappa-sir,” I don’t know why—perhaps he was a retired teacher—and he was said to be an expert. I went to his house and explained my mission. He snapped at me, “What do you want me to do? Am I Brahma to change your stars?” He looked angry for some inexplicable reason. “Go and tell that headmaster one thing. I don’t care whether his daughter gets married or not; I’ll hold on to my views. I have spoken to that man again and again, but still he is full of doubts. If he knows better astrology than I do, he should not trouble me like this. If he listens to reason, he should go ahead and fix a date for the wedding, that’s all. I see no harm in it. He hasn’t noticed the moon’s position in his daughter’s horoscope, which neutralizes the Mars. But that man expects me to give him a guarantee that Mars will not harm his daughter’s life. I can give no such guarantee. I am not Brahma.” He raised his voice to a shrieking pitch and repeated, “I do not care whether that man’s daughter is married or not. . . .”
In spite of all these fluctuations and hurdles, my marriage came off in a few months, celebrated with all the pomp, show, festivity, exchange of gifts, and the overcrowding, that my parents desired and expected.
Soon after my marriage, my father became bed-ridden with a paralytic stroke, and most of my mother’s time was spent at his side upstairs. The new entrant into the family, my wife, Rajam, was her deputy downstairs, managing my three younger brothers, who were still at school, a cook in the kitchen, a general servant, and a gigantic black-and-white Great Dane acquired by my elder brother, who was a dog-lover. She kept an eye on the stores, replenishing the food-stuffs and guarding them from being squandered or stolen by the cook. Rajam was less than twenty, but managed the housekeeping expertly and earned my mother’s praise. She got on excellently with my brothers. This was one advantage of a joint family system—one had plenty of company at home. Yet with all the group life, there was still enough privacy for me and my wife. We had a room for ourselves and when we retired into it, we were in an idyllic world of our own. Within six months, she proved such an adept at housekeeping that my mother left her in complete charge, and we found the time to exchange pleasantries and intimacies only when she took a little time off during the day and came to m
y room or at night after everyone had retired and the kitchen door was shut. Presently I did not find too much time to spend at home either.
In order to stabilize my income I became a newspaper reporter. My business would be to gather Mysore city news and send it daily to a newspaper published in Madras called The Justice. The daily was intended to promote the cause of the non-Brahmin who suffered from the domination of the minority Brahmin class in public life, government service, and education. Though The Justice was a propagandist paper against the Brahmin class, it somehow did not mind having me as its correspondent in Mysore. I left home at about nine in the morning and went out news-hunting through the bazaar and market-place—all on foot. I hung about law courts, police stations, and the municipal building, and tried to make up at least ten inches of news each day before lunchtime. I returned home at one o’clock, bolted down a lunch, sat down at my typewriter, and typed the news items with appropriate headings. I now had an old Remington portable (the double-barrelled one having been given away for twenty rupees, off-setting the bill for cigarettes and sweets at a shop), which was a present from my younger sister. It took me an hour or more to type the items, and then I signed and sealed the report in an envelope, and rushed it to the Chamarajapuram post office before the postal clearance at 2:20 p.m. If my youngest brother (Laxman, now a famous cartoonist) was available, he would be ready, with one foot on the pedal of his bicycle, to ride off to the post office for a tiny fee of a copper for each trip; but when he wasn’t there, I practically sprinted along with my press copy. There was really no need to rush like that since most of the news items could wait or need not be published at all; but we were in a competitive society; I feared that other Madras papers like The Mail or The Hindu, whose correspondents had telephone and telegraph facilities, might get ahead of me. But those correspondents were lofty and did not care for the items I valued.