Sir Mirza’s call made me extremely uncomfortable. I had got on so far without meeting a minister or a Maharaja, and I hated the very idea. I did not even possess the right dress for visiting a dewan. A dhoti and a cotton jacket over it were my main outfit, and I had resisted the Western style of dressing for many years. My normal wear was stylish enough for my encounters along Sayyaji Rao Road. Nowadays, young people, hippies and non-hippies alike, have accustomed us to indifferent clothes and styles, but those were times when any doorman would turn you back if you were not properly dressed. I attempted to back out of this engagement, but Purna would not hear of it. He almost bound, gagged, and dragged me on, to the presence of Sir Mirza, tutoring me all along the way on how to impress him. “Don’t fail to explain how the Indo-Saracenic tradition seems to be continued in the present-day buildings of Mysore, of course tempered and modified by contemporary needs.” He came up to the threshold of Sir Mirza’s chamber talking in whispers. I heard him say, “Also explain how the Chamundi Hill presiding over this city reminds one of the ancient Greek cities.” Sir Mirza loved Mysore City, had remodelled its buildings, boulevards, and avenues, and liked to hear a good word about it. I walked into his room in my dhoti, cotton coat, and a muffler around my neck, feeling uneasy, as if I had gone wrapped in a bath towel. In contrast to me, he was impeccably dressed in a silk suit and a black fur cap. He offered me a seat and put me at ease, enquiring about my literary activities in a general way without going into details. My prepared speech beginning, “The Indo-Saracenic . . . et cetera,” was in a mess, delivered piecemeal, in irrelevant fragments, whenever a pause occurred in Sir Mirza’s own speech. He was too polished to show any surprise, but gently assured me in the course of our conversation that if I wished to join the publicity department he would take me in. I declined the offer and expressed only a wish to write on Mysore.
Purna innocently believed that any magazine or newspaper editor in India would commission me to write on the Indo-Saracenic theme if ordered by Sir Mirza, who lost no time in writing his proposal to several editors, who, in their turn, politely welcomed his suggestion (Mysore government being the biggest advertisers of sandalwood soap and silk), but when approached put me off unceremoniously.
Finally, the government of Mysore commissioned me to write a travel book on Mysore. I was given a railway-pass for travelling within the state, a cash advance for expenses, and letters of introduction to various district officials asking them to give me “all facilities.” Mysore State, extending up to Bombay in the north, Madras in the south-east, and Kerala in the south, offered inexhaustible material for a travel-writer, being rich in rivers, mountain ranges, forests, and wild life, not to mention temples, monuments, and battle-scarred fortresses and ruins. By bus and train, I explored every nook and corner, listened attentively to the claims of the local enthusiast in any obscure mountain retreat or village lost in a bamboo jungle that here was to be found the earliest sculpture or civilization or the highest waterfall in the world, or that those footprints on a forest track were Rama’s, or that the golden tint to that lily pond was imparted by Sita when she plunged in for a cool bath. In every place everyone found token of a legendary hero or a mark left by the gods during a brief sojourn. Belur and Halebid temples, with their twelfth-century carvings, or the dungeons of Srirangapatnam, where in the seventeenth-century Tippu Sultan had kept his British prisoners, seemed modern in comparison. I climbed a peak of the Western Ghat to view the Arabian Sea coast, visible as a vibrant string of silver far off. And also I went down eight thousand feet underground to see a gold mine in Kolar, where the heat and pressure choked one’s breath out. I accomplished the full range of travel, leaving my wife and child back in Mysore City, and all through racked with anxiety for their welfare. Now and then, I found an excuse to cut short my tour programme and return home unexpectedly to satisfy myself that all was well. I did somehow get through it all in the end, came back to Mysore with an accumulation of notes and data, and settled down to write my book. I was supposed to make good use of gazetteers and bluebooks, but I found such reference work tedious and impossible, with the result that though my legendary tales and descriptions might beguile, the factual portions turned out to be unreliable. A friend in the Mysore Civil Service, who knew all parts of the state, marked in red the inaccuracies in my manuscript, and declared that the book should be kept away from any unwary traveller setting out to see the state. I believe I tried to save myself by appending “about” or “approximately” before every date or distance; with all that, I don’t think my book has seriously misguided anyone.
When the manuscript was ready, the dewan ordered the government press to print an edition under my direct supervision: paper, type, and binding to be chosen by me. The superintendent of the press seemed overwhelmed by the authority vested in me and became so attentive whenever I opened my mouth to say something that I found it embarrassing. It was becoming a difficult situation for me, since I knew nothing about the printing of books, but those who placed me in control of the government press must have assumed that an author of three novels published in England must, of course, be an expert in printing. Every afternoon, sitting there as an advisor to the superintendent, I had to manage a difficult conversation across his table.
“Do you approve of these types—Plantin twelve point or Baskerville ten point?” placing specimens reverently before me.
I looked at them casually and said, “Well . . . this one seems passable. . . .”
“Shall I order the matrices for this series?”
“Surely, go ahead, but you must see that they don’t delay. . . .” I had to advise, approve, and at the same time learn what on earth it was all about.
“These are samples of binding cloth. Walthomstow is the best of course, but we shall order whatever you choose, and this is thirty-six-pound featherweight paper. . . .”
I looked through the offerings gravely, disapproved a few on principle, and approved others. I also threw in a hint. “Let us keep as close to the get-up of The Dark Room as possible; the dewan liked it.”
At once the superintendent secured a copy of The Dark Room and went at it with measuring scale, callipers, and magnifying glass, after stripping off its jacket, binding, and spine. Cables were sent to England to ship the materials immediately. Not a moment to lose. No one paused to consider if there was any need for all this desperate rush. However, working at fever pitch, the press was able to deliver one thousand copies of my Mysore within six weeks.
I carried the first copy to Bangalore and presented it to the dewan at his office in the red secretariat. I had thought that my financial troubles were now at an end. Not only the writing of the book but the production of it in convincing form struck me as an achievement, although it was a responsibility undertaken ahead of experience. Sir Mirza glanced through a couple of pages of the book and murmured a thanks. He extended his hand across the table, and said, “Thank you again, it was good of you . . .” which seemed to mean now “Be off, young man, I have so much to do now. . . .” I was aghast. I had expected a cheque to be held out to me rather than a bare hand. When I left home I had budgeted so many items for the 1,200 rupees I was to get. I had asked my wife, “Do you want anything from Bangalore?” She was more realistic. “Let us first see the cash, and then we will decide how to spend it”—whereupon I had lost my temper and cried, “Always doubting! So much like your dear father!” She immediately protested. “Why talk of my father now?”
“Why not?” I cried wildly, and added, “I have discussed it all with Purna, and he has spoken to the dewan. Twelve hundred is not a big sum. Some foreign journalists demanded ten times that for the same proposition, but the dewan was keen on giving it to an Indian writer, and that is that.”
She would not share my optimism, and it angered me and led to arguments when I left. I promised my daughter when she followed me up to the gate, “If you are good I will get you . . .”
Now in the dewan’s office I respectfully stood
up and said, “Yes, sir, thank you. May I know when I may expect payment?”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, suppressing his astonishment at a writer’s sullying his thoughts with monetary notions. “What do you expect?”
“Twelve hundred,” I said. Purna had advised me to be specific while mentioning a figure.
“Very well,” said the dewan. “As you go down, see the chief secretary and tell him. He will help you.”
I walked into the chief secretary’s room with assurance. He was busy over the telephone and looked through me without either welcome or rejection. I stood at the edge of his table and, when he put down the telephone, proclaimed, “The dewan has sent me to see you.” I explained my mission.
He motioned me to a chair and asked, “Is there any paper about your demand? Did the dewan give you anything in writing?”
While I was wondering how best to answer, the chief secretary lost track of my case owing to the interruptions caused by the telephone, visitors, and his factotums bringing in papers. After an hour he looked at me again and said, “Please give a written requisition, otherwise we won’t be able to proceed.”
He pushed across a sheet of paper on which I wrote, “As promised by the dewan, I shall be glad to accept . . . et cetera . . .”
The chief secretary studied my paper. “Did the dewan actually promise or promise to consider?”
I did not understand the subtle distinction, and merely said, “He promised that you would arrange the payment. Please make it urgent as I would like to go back to Mysore this evening.”
“Yes, yes, of course, by all means; you may go if you like, and you will hear from us in due course.”
He apparently dismissed me from his thoughts, but I stuck to my seat in the hope that he might still produce a cheque somehow. He left at lunchtime without any further word. I followed him out and asked, “Should I see you again?”
“Why not?” he replied vaguely, and was off. (I never saw him again, neither that afternoon, nor next day nor ever in my lifetime; he was always away or at a meeting and could not be approached.)
After waiting all that afternoon I thought that I might see Sir Mirza again and complain of his order not being carried out, but when I reached his office, I found the door shut. I was told that the dewan had left for a conference at Simla, a thousand miles away. I sought out Purna. He merely said, “Don’t worry,” and sent me on to see the publicity officer next morning, explaining, “Your payment will have to come only from the publicity department.” I sat all day in front of the publicity officer. Attendants were fetching stacks of paper and dumping them on his table. He rummaged through them every time only to say, “Your file has not yet come. . . .”
“Where from?” I asked.
“From the finance section.”
At six o’clock my papers arrived. By then I was exhausted watching the traffic of people and papers across his room. The publicity officer glanced through my file and pushed it across for my edification. My recent application was on top of a pile of letters, its margin marked in a variety of inks and handwritings, and all the preceding correspondence between me and the government were below. I read with a sort of poignant interest the marginal notes on my application for payment. “Financially unacceptable,” the finance department had said. Someone had queried, “Was there a contract?” It was answered by the legal section, “None. Government’s commitment limited to providing facilities for writing the book, vide D.O. dated . . .” A further query was, “Were quotations invited from other authors? What was the basis on which this particular author was selected for this commission?” I could not resist adding, on the marginal space available, my own reply to this particular question: “A bogus story arising from Mr. Somerset Maugham’s visit. You may ask if you please who was Somerset Maugham and if his name is also in the approved list of contractors.”
We cannot console ourselves with the thought that this happened three and a half decades ago. Bureaucracy is the same even today the world over. If I should make the mistake of accepting a government commission to write a book today, I am sure it would go through the same process of elucidation and final liquidation through self-defeating procedures.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In January 1939 my wife went to her parents’ home at Coimbatore for a holiday. It suited me, for the time being, since I had to be away too on business. Mysore was an excellent place to write in, but Madras was my market; I spent a month there and succeeded in selling the Tamil rights of The Dark Room to a serial publication, and managed a few other sales too. But the real achievement was a contract with The Hindu to write a sketch or a story every week for their Sunday columns, at the rate of thirty rupees apiece. I had also agreed to write features and talks for the All India Radio, and odd items for a film studio, such as scraps of dialogue scenes and “treatment” for the harebrained conceptions fancied by a film producer. When these arrangements were completed, I returned to Mysore.
Now, I found life at home impossible without my wife and child around, and tried to spend my time outside. Leaving early in the morning, I sauntered down Vani Vilas Road, at old Agrahar slowed my steps in order to pray briefly to Ganesha installed under a peepul tree on the roadside; the scent of jasmine sold on the foot-path, and of sandalwood from manufacturers of incense sticks in the neighbourhood, wafted in the air. Sometimes I was trapped by the frying smell emanating from a little restaurant tucked away in a lane off the main road, where I ate a dosai, washed it down with coffee, and, lighting a cigarette, resumed my walk. I was careful with money, never spending more than a rupee a day. All morning I wandered. At every turn I found a character fit to go into a story. While walking, ideas were conceived and developed, or sometimes lost through the interludes on the way. One could not traverse the main artery of Mysore, Sayyaji Rao Road, without stopping every few steps to talk to a friend. Mysore is not only reminiscent of an old Greek city in its physical features, but the habits of its citizens are also very Hellenic. Vital issues, including philosophical and political analyses, were examined and settled by people (at least in those days) on the promenades of Mysore. You came across long-lost faces and stopped to enquire what had happened between then and now. If Socrates or Plato were alive, he would have felt at home in Sayyaji Rao Road and carried on his dialogues at the statue square. Apart from such profound encounters, it was also possible that you would run into a man who owed you money or the plumber who had been dodging you, or you could even block your lawyer’s path for a consultation. With such interruptions it was possible that ideas got scattered and the thread of a story got lost. However, I generally kept my subject in mind and, returning home, sat at my desk and wrote till the evening. On Wednesdays I had to mail my story for The Hindu. The ideal I had in mind was to write and work on it well in advance, and post it smoothly on Wednesday; but it never worked out that way. A touch of desperation to catch the deadline seemed to be an important element in the final shaping of a story. Invariably I was engaged till the last possible minute in working on it, and then I had to carry the packet, to the railway station almost at a run, and shove it into the mail van. It had to reach the editor’s table on Thursday morning, when the Sunday page was to be made up.
My working programme was disrupted on any day I realized that my wife had not written a letter on the due date. She always gave me her solemn word that she would drop me a note at least once a week to say that she and the child were keeping well, but she could never keep this promise. I generally expected her letter on Monday afternoon, allowed a couple of days’ margin, and felt anxious if there was still no letter on Wednesday. No reason for this state, as I was fully aware that she was not a letter-writing sort. At the beginning of our married life, when we were occasionally separated, a few blue note-papers passed between us, and if I delayed an acknowledgement, she would again write to me in a tone of grave anxiety; but nowadays she had become too casual, and kept me on tenterhooks. I would constantly be on the point of sending off a telegram to say,
“How are you? Why no letter?” But she was opposed to the extravagance of a telegram. Once or twice when I did send one she resented it as being too dramatic, and embarrassing before her brothers and sisters. I had to content myself with urgent importuning letters, also threatening to send a telegram if she defaulted. Ultimately she would write and lighten my mind for at least another week, but no longer than a week. On another Wednesday the problem would start all over again, somehow exactly on the day when my story should be in the mail. I have always found story-writing and letter-writing incompatible. I don’t know how other writers feel about it, but I find it easier to write a story than a letter, and if I am bogged down in letters, I become desperate for fear that I may miss my day’s schedule. On Wednesdays, I also attempted to draft a brief note or telegram, and as a consequence floundered in my composition for The Hindu. If the editor of The Hindu sometimes found my story difficult to pass, the responsibility must be traced to the missing letter from Coimbatore. Now, looking back, it seems absurd to have placed so much value on exchange of letters. We were not newly-weds to need constant reiteration of mutual love, nor was there any occasion for letters, as the absence of any news must be construed as the best news. This would be a healthy, robust, and commonsense attitude, and it came naturally to my wife, but was beyond me. I was prone to anxious speculations—whether the child might be down with sickness, leaving the mother no time to write, or whether the mother herself might be laid up and feeling too weak to lift a pen. I would be on the verge of sending a wire to ask if she needed my presence and help. In retrospect, it seems to have been such a futile preoccupation, especially in view of what was coming in the next few months. I hardly realized that the present state of loneliness was only a foretaste.
Unable to stand it any longer, I finally wrote to my wife urging her to come back immediately. She wrote back to say that she would return at the end of the month, after meeting her sister, who was expected from Rangoon, on February 20. She was very fond of that sister, and planned to spend a few days in her company before coming back to Mysore. I felt disappointed and wrote an immediate letter advising her not to extend her stay. She replied rather tersely, “It is important that I see my sister, as it may not be possible to spend any time with her again.” I tossed the letter on my desk, commenting, “These sisters, and their endless arrangements!” My mother, who was in the verandah, as was her practice, reading a weekly magazine, saw me start out in a rage. I wished to escape the lonely shell of my room and went out to meet some friends, my intimates, who would say comforting things whenever they learnt of my miseries. My mother looked up from her magazine and asked, “Has your wife written? When is she coming?”