Indian Thought overwhelmed and frightened me—it had an orange wrapper with my name on it, with a spreading banyan tree and a full moon behind silhouetting a tramp lounging in its shade. I turned the pages and hoped my readers would find them edifying and illuminating. My own piece was some scrappy anecdote of one page, and right on the second page started a paper on “Probability,” a highly technical exposition in mathematics. I had to include it because it was the first paper to arrive when Sampath was clamouring to compose the first forme. It was included also because its author was a revered mathematics teacher who had helped me to pass a public examination. I could not refuse when he offered it for publication, but it made no sense to me. Page after page of speculation and a formula on heads and tails of a tossed coin—HTTHH or something like that. I had a hope that my readers might understand it better, but literally only one reader congratulated me on my discovery of this paper. All the others ignored it or wrote to me in exasperation. A humorous story called “Unveiling” translated into English from an Indian language, which I later discovered was only a P. G. Wodehouse story in an Indian garb. Somebody’s travels in Ladakh, an economic theory, a review by Paul Brunton of some mystic poems which baffled my understanding—an absolute hotchpotch, justifying the original title suggested by Purna, “Indian Thoughtless.” I brightened the second number with a deliberate effort—abandoned the orange cover with its silhouette of a tramp, and gave it some less ascetic appearance; included jokes and obiter dicta at page ends as space fillers. I soon realized that the fillers read better than the stuff occupying the main space on a page. What the journal was in my anticipation was a readable light magazine, every page alive with style and life, profundity with a light touch. What it actually turned out to be was a hotchpotch of heavy-weight academics and Wodehouse rehash—the sort of journal I would normally avoid.
I was soon to realize that the basis of my selection of articles for Indian Thought was not sound and in one instance even dishonest. I came to this conclusion when I read through in print a story of a mad dog living on filth. This dog had been a human being, a youth, in the previous incarnation, as narrated by the dog itself in the first person. The youth married, but went to bed with his newly-wed wife without going through a proper nuptial ceremony, and when discovered in the act felt guilty and committed suicide; was reborn as a street mongrel; one summer day in the heat of the sun, allayed his thirst by lapping up gutter water; went stark mad, attacked passers-by, and was clubbed to death. The story had a peculiar, pointless savagery which struck me as uproarious. It had been given to me by my newest landlord (the previous owner being dead), a young man who was setting out to be a writer, among other things. He did not approve of the half-yearly rental arrangement I had made with his predecessor, but demanded a monthly settlement, also an increase. The attack on Pearl Harbor and a mild air attack on Madras had created an exodus to the inland safety of Mysore. As a result, there was pressure on housing, and landlords generally tried to dislodge their existing tenants under various pretexts. My landlord also had caught the general trend, and began to drop in frequently from Bangalore to suggest that we vacate the house, ostensibly to enable him to carry out major repairs and modification. It was unthinkable at this stage. Our family had nowhere else to go, and we could not afford the latest scales of rent, even if we had found another suitable house. I was beginning to be haunted by visions of our family carrying rolls of bedding and trunks, trooping along the streets of Mysore, with the Great Dane on a leash, coming to rest in the open verandah of Sita Vilas Choultry—a public rest-house on Hundred Feet Road, where travellers and homeless persons congregated. This was a dreadful prospect to contemplate. My elder brother somehow would not take our landlord’s demands seriously. He just said, “No one can disturb us, don’t worry. Let us offer the young man a little increase of rent and we will be safe.” We offered a rise of ten rupees, which our landlord accepted; he left us in peace for a couple of months, but turned up again with the same story of having to remodel the house. I was the only one available to him for such discussions, my elder brother being away at his fertilizer factory morning till night, and my younger stuck in the palace office all day. The young man would drop in, take a seat, and start a discussion on houses in general and the problems of maintenance, always concluding, “We are obliged to remodel this house in the quickest time possible as we are anxious to move in here from Bangalore; we don’t feel that Bangalore is going to be safe any more with the Japanese planes coming up to Madras.”
I said, “Why, there is every chance of their coming to Mysore if they come as far as Bangalore, after all such a short distance!” He changed his tactics presently, and explained that he was starting an Epsom salt factory in Mysore, was expecting war contracts, and wanted his house urgently. We had lived in this house for many years now, and it seemed impossible to move out of it at the present time. While I was wondering how to placate this young man and gain time, during one of his visitations he took out of his pocket his story and began to read it to me. I was struck by the sheer insanity of the whole conception and swallowing my judgement said some complimentary things about it. He looked pleased and for once went away without any mention of his house, and there was no more pleasing sight for me than his receding brown-suited figure (he was always dressed in a full brown suit without tie). I felt happy to have sent him away so pleased.
But I hadn’t suspected the danger lurking in this situation. When the brown suit slid into my study next time, about two weeks later, he produced from his pocket a typed copy of his story, at a moment when I was struggling to make up pages to meet Sampath’s demands. Sampath was becoming aggressive in regard to deadlines. He would keep sending me notes to say, “We are waiting to finish your formes before fulfilling other printing orders. We request you to co-operate with us and not put us to a loss or blame us later if we take up other work and are thus forced to delay yours.” This man, genial and informal in person, always sounded forbidding in correspondence, with his first-person plural. When I was in this predicament with Sampath’s messenger waiting at the door, the young landlord begged, “I will be so happy if you can print this story somewhere.” I didn’t want to lose a chance to place this boy under an obligation, and said point blank, “If you are so anxious to see your story in print, give it to me in writing that you will not disturb us at least for two years more, and there is your chance to see your story in print. Otherwise you may take it where you please.”
“Two years undisturbed . . . ! Impossible!” he cried and left in a huff. I felt that this was the end, and that we should gird ourselves for moving to Sita Vilas Choultry. That night the brown suit appeared again at my door. He looked careworn and as harried as myself. I asked coldly what his business was. As I had hardened myself for the migration to the public charity home, I felt I could at least have the pleasure of talking in the tone of my choice. He looked cowed by my manner and said, “Mr. Narayan, we are old friends. Let us compromise. Let us make it one year instead of two.” And I accepted his story, edited it, tried to make it sound less insane than it really was, and packed it off to the printer. When I read the story in the third number in cold print, I felt ashamed of myself as an editor; I felt I had prostituted my position for a domestic cause, and that my readers would be justified in stoning me at sight.
The fourth-quarter issue for October – November – December 1942 appeared in May 1943. Sampath, having had to print urgently an annual statement of a co-operative society and a Golden Jubilee Souvenir and twenty other items, had set aside my magazine. But he would not accept the blame for the delay. He said that I did not get him paper supplies in time, although lately he had assured me not to bother about such details any more as he had his own sources of supply. It had all become so nerve-racking that I decided to put an end to the publication with the fourth number. The journal had been financially self-supporting, but I felt that it was too much of a preoccupation and would kill me as a writer. My junior uncle, who wa
s now a prosperous car dealer at Madras with many hundreds of clients eating out of his hand, had proved a dextrous salesman for Indian Thought too. Every day he had been sending a dozen addresses of new subscribers. He recruited all sorts of persons into our fold; people who would never turn the leaves of a book were now made to pay for the highbrow journal issuing from Mysore. I think my uncle must have offered them a drink and forced them each to part with a year’s subscription. I had nearly a thousand subscribers on my list when I, or rather Sampath, decided to end the career of this journal.
Now I felt lighter at heart. No more worries about paper, printing, contributors, or subscribers. But it did not mean that my connection with the press had ended. I found Sampath a charming friend, always cheerful, bouncing with enthusiasm, full of plans (although not for printing jobs), and involved in a score of tasks not always concerning him. He specialized in the theatre, was a master of the dramatic arts, his office walls were covered with photographs of Sampath in various costumes and make-up and poses. He rehearsed his actors in his office, while galley proofs streamed down his desk untouched; he helped people in litigation by introducing them to his brother, an eminent lawyer; he found houses for those who needed that kind of help; he did everything zestfully except his printing job. He confessed, “You are welcome every day here if you like, you may treat this as your own office and meet people and write, but don’t ask me to print anything for you. . . . There should be no printing obligations between friends.” I took him at his word and spent morning and evening at his parlour. At Sampath’s I picked up a lot of printing jargon, many characters for my novels, and a general idea of the business of mankind in Mysore: all its citizens converging on the market at Sayyaji Rao Road every day, and being ultimately drawn to Sampath for a variety of reasons.
In a novel of mine Mr. Sampath became a film director. Today I find that the Sampath in real life too has become a very busy film personality, with a shooting schedule almost every day at studios in Mysore and Madras. Nor has he neglected his press work, which is still being turned out on his old treadle; he never made the mistake of actually expanding his equipment with double-cylinder or Heidelberg.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After I had closed down Indian Thought and point blank refused to look at anything he wrote, my young landlord became aggressive. So every morning I went out to search for a house. It was a difficult task, as our requirements were rather complicated—separate rooms for three brothers, their families, and a mother; also for Sheba, our huge Great Dane, who had to have a place outside the house to have her meat cooked, without the fumes from the meat pot polluting our strictly vegetarian atmosphere; a place for our old servant too, who was the only one who could go out and get the mutton and cook it. We had all these conveniences at Rama Vilas, and we looked for a replica in every house we searched. Every day the pressure from the young landlord was increasing; apparently he had now come to live in Mysore. He would stroll around our garden proprietorially, look up at the coconut trees and count and recount the nuts, just to emphasize his ownership. We watched him through the window without any agitation, although legally we were entitled to this produce. Coconuts were a small price to pay for the benefit of having a roof over our heads. I avoided him. Finally it came to the point that he addressed me by mail with a registered letter, demanding that I vacate the house within fifteen days.
My brother as ever remained unperturbed. “What if there is a notice? It is not so easy to throw out a tenant. We have been here for fourteen years, and any court will have to take that into consideration. They will have to concede us as least half a month for each year we have stayed, that way we will get at least seven months. . . .”
I don’t know where he got this piece of law from. However, I was worried; and so every morning, I made it a mission to search for a suitable house, and I also contacted some housing brokers. I went about, street by street, looking for TO LET signs. We were determined that we should not move too far out of our present orbit. Our milk-suppliers, children’s schools, friends, contacts, and grocers were all here, and it would have been impossible to uproot ourselves completely and go out farther than Weavers Lines, Chamundi Extension, or Chamarajapuram. I examined at least two houses each day; houses became an obsession with me night and day. I felt it was degrading to live in a rented house and immediately applied to the City Trust Board for land.
Meanwhile, my landlord sent me another legal notice giving me ten days to vacate the house. I became desperate and went up to consult my friend Sampath as to what I should do now. He at once took me up a staircase to his brother’s law office and succinctly presented my case to him. His brother was a busy lawyer, a mighty-looking man whose very personality was reassuring. He looked through my papers and said, “I will deal with your landlord. Don’t worry.” However, my mother insisted that I should not take advantage of the legal position but give up the house and move elsewhere. I continued my search.
On my rounds one morning when I was passing down the third street from ours, I saw Professor Hiriyanna, a venerable man who taught Sanskrit and Indian philosophy at the university, standing at his gate, and I stopped by for a chat. Although he was very much my senior, we often met at his gate or a street corner and discussed books and publishers. He was negotiating with Allen and Unwin for the publication of his book on Indian philosophy, and felt confused by certain clauses in the publisher’s contract and consulted me about their meaning. This morning, while talking on general matters, I told him also about my housing worries.
“Why don’t you take that house?” he said, pointing at a big bungalow to his right. “It is my daughter’s, I think it is vacant. Rent and other details you will have to settle with her.”
It was a propitious moment. Within a week, we moved over to 963, Laxmipuram, only two streets away from our original habitat. It was a large house with a spacious compound, several rooms, and enough space for all of us and Sheba—above all the same neighbourhood as before.
In 1948, on the penultimate day of January, I plunged into house-building activities by turning the clod ceremoniously with a pickaxe on a plot of land allotted to me at Yadavagiri, situated on the northern outskirts of Mysore. The place was still undeveloped, but it was a highland giving a noble view over the landscape for miles around. We had selected this particular spot because of a frangipani tree standing on its edge in full bloom. In spite of the several aesthetic points in its favour, the place was desolate—miles away from where we lived, without a road, water supply, or electricity. The “foundation” ceremony was conducted with gusto and bonhomie, with distribution of sweets and puffed rice under the frangipani, organized expertly by the contractor, who with a measuring tape and white paint ran around marking the foundation lines. It was all very convincing and filled us with hope and visions.
But that was the best part of the business. After such a spectacular start the house made only limping progress for the next five years—for want of funds, cement, steel, timber, and above all because of constant friction between me and the building contractor, who kept up a perpetual demand for money without showing commensurate progress in the building. I managed to find the money by borrowing. Payments produced only a short-lived friendliness, for he would turn up again with fresh demands. He had an extraordinary system of drawing his bills, adding up a criss-cross of measurements, rates, and charges and producing a total figure before which whatever money I gave seemed a trifle and left him grumbling. “Unless I am paid for my work, I can’t really go on.” Whereupon I’d borrow again and try to propitiate him. It took a long time for me to realize the fact that his system of billing was of a visionary nature, much of the demand being for impalpable, unseen items, and that I ought to get rid of him. The house made no visible progress but my debts were mounting, and shuttling between Laxmipuram and Yadavagiri on foot, sometimes two trips in a day, to supervise construction had exhausted my strength and wrecked my nerves. Once again with the help of Sampath’s lawyer brother
, I had to initiate a process of arbitration before I could get rid of this contractor and engage another one.
Nearly five years after inauguration, my house was ready for occupation. The other members of the family could not yet move in, for the younger generation’s schools and colleges and my brothers’ offices were all around Laxmipuram. So I kept my Yadavagiri house as a retreat for writing. I divided my time between Laxmipuram and Yadavagiri, enjoying the company of the family in one and of my books and papers in the other.
I had designed a small study—a bay-room with eight windows affording me a view in every direction: the Chamundi Hill temple on the south, a variety of spires, turrets, and domes on the east, sheep and cows grazing in the meadows on all sides, railway trains cutting across the east-west slope. I had a neighbour in the next compound, and hint of another one half a mile away on rising ground in the west, where occasionally one could see a light at the window. I listened to the deep call of the woodcock in the still afternoons, and the cries of a variety of birds perching on the frangipani tree. Such perfection of surroundings, as I had already realized in my college days, was not conducive to study or writing. I spent long hours absorbed in the spectacle around and found it difficult to pull my thoughts back to writing. Subsequently I found it helpful to curtain off a large window beside my desk so that my eyes might fall on nothing more attractive than a grey drape, and thus I managed to write a thousand words a day and complete two novels and a number of short stories during the years of my isolation at Yadavagiri.