“We won’t have to fear anything more; it is our good fortune that this great soul should have come to live in our midst.”
“But he has disappeared today. Wonder if he has left us for good.”
“It would be our misfortune if he went away.”
“His clothes are still all there in the hall.”
“He has no fears.”
“The food I brought yesterday has been eaten.”
“Leave there what you have brought now; he is sure to come back from his outing and feel hungry.” Raju felt grateful to this man for his sentiment.
“Do you know sometimes these Yogis can travel to the Himalayas just by a thought?”
“I don’t think he is that kind of Yogi,” said another.
“Who can say? Appearances are sometimes misleading,” said someone. They then moved off to their usual seat and sat there. For a long time Raju could hear them talking among themselves. After a while they left. Raju could hear them splashing the water with their feet. “Let us go before it gets too dark. They say that there is an old crocodile in this part of the river.”
“A boy known to me was held up by his ankle once, at this very spot.”
“What happened, then?”
“He was dragged down, next day. . . .”
Raju could hear their voices far off. He cautiously peeped out of his hiding. He could see their shadowy figures on the other bank. He waited till they vanished altogether from sight. He went in and lit a lamp. He was hungry. They had left his food wrapped in a banana leaf on the pedestal of the old stone image. Raju was filled with gratitude and prayed that Velan might never come to the stage of thinking that he was too good for food and that he subsisted on atoms from the air.
With his mind made up he prepared himself to meet Velan and his friends in the evening. He sat as usual on the stone slab with beatitude and calm in his face. The thing that had really bothered him was that he might sound too brilliant in everything he said. He had observed silence as a precaution. But that fear was now gone. He decided to look as brilliant as he could manage, let drop gems of thought from his lips, assume all the radiance available, and afford them all the guidance they required without stint. He decided to arrange the stage for the display with more thoroughness. With this view he transferred his seat to the inner hall of the temple. It gave one a better background. He sat there at about the time he expected Velan and others to arrive. He anticipated their arrival with a certain excitement. He composed his features and pose to receive them.
The sun was setting. Its tint touched the wall with pink. The tops of the coconut trees around were aflame. The bird-cries went up in a crescendo before dying down for the night. Darkness fell. Still there was no sign of Velan or anyone. They did not come that night. He was left foodless; that was not the main worry, he still had a few bananas. Suppose they never came again? What was to happen? He became panicky. All night he lay worrying. All his old fears returned. If he returned to the town he would have to get his house back from the man to whom he had mortgaged it. He would have to fight for a living space in his own home or find the cash to redeem it.
He debated whether to step across the river, walk into the village, and search for Velan. It didn’t seem a dignified thing to do. It might make him look cheap, and they might ignore him altogether.
He saw a boy grazing his sheep on the opposite bank. He clapped his hands and cried, “Come here.” He went down the steps and cried across the water, “I am the new priest of this temple, boy, come here. I have a plantain for you. Come and take it.” He flourished it, feeling that this was perhaps a gamble; it was the last piece of fruit in his store and might presently be gone, as might the boy, and Velan might never know how badly he was wanted, while he, Raju, lay starving there until they found his bleached bones in the temple and added them to the ruins around. With these thoughts he flourished the banana. The boy was attracted by it and soon came across the water. He was short and was wet up to his ears. Raju said, “Take off your turban and dry yourself, boy.”
“I am not afraid of water,” he said.
“You should not be so wet.”
The boy held out his hand for the plantain and said, “I can swim. I always swim.”
“But I have never seen you here before,” Raju said.
“I don’t come here. I go farther down and swim.”
“Why don’t you come here?”
“This is a crocodile place,” he said.
“But I have never seen any crocodile.”
“You will sometime,” the boy said. “My sheep generally graze over there. I came to see if a man was here.”
“Why?”
“My uncle asked me to watch. He said, ‘Drive your sheep before that temple and see if a man is there.’ That is why I came here today.”
Raju gave the boy the banana and said, “Tell your uncle that the man is back here and tell him to come here this evening.”
He did not wait to ask who the uncle was. Whoever he might be, he was welcome. The boy peeled the plantain, swallowed it whole, and started munching the peel also. “Why do you eat the peel? It will make you sick,” Raju said.
“No, it won’t,” the boy replied. He seemed to be a resolute boy who knew his mind.
Raju vaguely advised, “You must be a good boy. Now be off. Tell your uncle—”
The boy was off, after cautioning him, “Keep an eye on those till I get back.” He indicated his flock on the opposite slope.
CHAPTER THREE
One fine day, beyond the tamarind tree the station building was ready. The steel tracks gleamed in the sun; the signal posts stood with their red and green stripes and their colorful lamps; and our world was neatly divided into this side of the railway line and that side. Everything was ready. All our spare hours were spent in walking along the railway track up to the culvert half a mile away. We paced up and down our platform, a gold mohur sapling was planted in the railway yard. We passed through the corridor, peeping into the room meant for the stationmaster.
One day we were all given a holiday. “The train comes to our town today,” people said excitedly. The station was decorated with festoons and bunting. A piper was playing, bands were banging away. Coconuts were broken on the railway track, and an engine steamed in, pulling a couple of cars. Many of the important folk of the town were there. The Collector and the Police Superintendent and the Municipal Chairman, and many of the local tradesmen, who flourished green invitation cards in their hands, were assembled at the station. The police guarded the platform and did not allow the crowds in. I felt cheated by this. I felt indignant that anyone should prohibit my entry to the platform. I squeezed myself through the railings at the farthest end, and by the time the engine arrived I was there to receive it. I was probably so small that no one noticed my presence.
Tables were laid and official gentlemen sat around refreshing themselves, and then several men got up and lectured. I was aware only of the word “Malgudi” recurring in their speeches. There was a clapping of hands. The band struck up, the engine whistled, the bell rang, the guard blew his whistle, and the men who had been consuming refreshments climbed into the train. I was half inclined to follow their example, but there were many policemen to stop me. The train moved and was soon out of sight. A big crowd was now allowed to come onto the platform. My father’s shop had record sales that day.
By the time a stationmaster and a porter were installed in their little stone house at the back of the station, facing our house, my father had become so prosperous that he acquired a jutka and a horse in order to go to the town and do his shopping.
My mother had been apathetic. “Why should you have all this additional bother in this household, horse and horse gram and all that, while the buffalo pair is a sufficient bother?”
He did not answer her in any detail, just swept off her objections with, “You know nothing about these things. I have so much to do every day in the town. I have to visit the bank so often.” He utte
red the word “bank” with a proud emphasis, but it did not impress my mother.
And so there was an addition of a thatch-roofed shed to our yard, in which a brown pony was tied up, and my father had picked up a groom to look after it. We became the talk of the town with this horse and carriage, but my mother never reconciled herself to it. She viewed it as an extraordinary vanity on my father’s part and no amount of explanation from him ever convinced her otherwise. Her view was that my father had overestimated his business, and she nagged him whenever he was found at home and the horse and carriage were not put to proper use. She expected him to be always going round the streets in his vehicle. He had not more than an hour’s job any day in the town and he always came back in time to attend to his shop, which he was now leaving in charge of a friend for a few hours in the day. My mother was developing into a successful nagger, I suppose, for my father was losing much of his aggressiveness and was becoming very apologetic about his return home whenever the horse and the carriage were left unused under the tamarind tree. “You take it and go to the market, if you like,” he often said, but my mother spurned the offer, explaining, “Where should I go every day? Someday it may be useful for going to the temple on a Friday. But ought you to maintain an extravagant turnout all through the year, just for a possible visit to the temple? Horse gram and grass, do you know what they cost?” Fortunately, it did not prove such a liability after all. Worn out by Mother’s persistent opposition, my father seriously considered disposing of the horse and (a fantastic proposal) converting the carriage into a single bullock cart with a “bow spring” mounted over the wheel, which a blacksmith of his acquaintance at the market gate had promised to do for him.
The groom who minded the horse laughed at the idea and said that it was an impossible proposition, convincing my father that the blacksmith would reduce the carriage to a piece of furniture fit for lounging under the tamarind tree. “You could as well listen to a promise to turn the horse into a bullock!” he said, and then he made a proposal which appealed to my father’s business instinct. “Let me ply it for hire in the market. All gram and grass my charge—only let me use your shed. I will hand you two rupees a day and one rupee a month for the use of the shed, and anything I earn over two rupees should be mine.”
This was a delightful solution. My father had the use of the carriage whenever he wanted it, and earned a sum for it each day, and no liabilities. As the days passed, the driver came along and pleaded lack of engagements. A great deal of argument went on in the front part of my house, in semidarkness, between my father and the driver as my father tried to exact his two rupees. Finally my mother too joined in, saying, “Don’t trust these fellows. Today with all that festival crowd, he says he has not made any money. How can we believe him?”
My mother was convinced that the cart-driver drank his earnings. My father retorted, “What if he drinks? It is none of our business.”
Every day this went on. Every night the man stood under the tree and cringed and begged for remission. It was evident that he was misappropriating our funds. For within a few weeks the man came and said, “This horse is growing bony and will not run properly, and is becoming wrong-headed. It is better we sell it off soon and take another, because all the passengers who get into this jutka complain and pay less at the end because of the discomfort suffered. And the springs over the wheels must also be changed.” The man was constantly suggesting that the turnout had better be sold off and a new one taken. Whenever he said it within my mother’s hearing she lost her temper and shouted at him, saying that one horse and carriage were sufficient expense. This reduced my father to viewing the whole arrangement as a hopeless liability, until the man hinted that he had an offer of seventy rupees for both horse and carriage. My father managed to raise this to seventy-five and finally the man brought the cash and drove off the turnout himself. Evidently he had saved a lot of our own money for this enterprise. Anyway, we were glad to be rid of the thing. This was a nicely calculated transaction, for as soon as the trains began to arrive regularly at our station we found our jutka doing a brisk business carrying passengers to the town.
My mother had come out to watch the operation and taunted him. “With this stock you think of buying motor cars and whatnot.” He had not at any time proposed buying a motor car, but she liked to nag him.
Father said, rather weakly, “Why drag in all that now?” He was ruminating. “I shall need at least another five hundred rupees’ worth of articles to fill up all this space.”
The stationmaster, an old man wearing a green turban round his head and silver-rimmed spectacles, came along to survey the shop. My father became extremely deferential at the sight of him. Behind him stood Karia the porter in his blue shirt and turban. My mother withdrew unobtrusively and went back home. The stationmaster viewed the shop from a distance with his head on one side as if he were an artist viewing a handiwork. The porter, ever faithful, followed his example, keeping himself in readiness to agree with whatever he might say. The stationmaster said, “Fill up all that space—otherwise the ATS might come round and ask questions, poking his nose into all our affairs. It has not been easy to give you this shop. . . .”
My father sat me in the shop and went over to the town to make the purchases. “Don’t display too much rice and other stuff—keep the other shop for such things,” advised the stationmaster. “Railway passengers won’t be asking for tamarind and lentils during the journey.” My father implicitly accepted his directions. The stationmaster was his palpable God now and he cheerfully obeyed all his commands. And so presently there hung down from nails in my father’s other shop bigger bunches of bananas, stacks of Mempu oranges, huge troughs of fried stuff, and colorful peppermints and sweets in glass containers, loaves of bread, and buns. The display was most appetizing, and he had loaded several racks with packets of cigarettes. He had to anticipate the demand of every kind of traveler and provide for it.
He left me in charge of his hut shop. His old customers came down to gossip and shop, as had been their habit. But they found me unequal to it. I found it tedious to listen to their talk of litigation and irrigation. I was not old enough to appreciate all their problems and the subtleties of their transactions. I listened to them without response, and soon they discovered that I was no good companion for them. They left me in peace and wandered off to the other shop, seeking my father’s company. But they found it untenable. They felt strange there. It was too sophisticated a surrounding for them.
Very soon, unobtrusively, my father was back in his seat at the hut shop, leaving me to handle the business in the new shop. As soon as a certain bridge off Malgudi was ready, regular service began on our rails; it was thrilling to watch the activities of the stationmaster and the blue-shirted porter as they “received” and “line-cleared” two whole trains each day, the noon train from Madras and the evening one from Trichy. I became very active indeed in the shop. As you might have guessed, all this business expansion in our family helped me achieve a very desirable end—the dropping off of my school unobtrusively.
CHAPTER FOUR
The banana worked a miracle. The boy went from house to house, announcing that the saint was back at his post. Men, women, and children arrived in a great mass. All that they wanted was to be allowed to look at him and watch the radiance on his face. The children stood around and gazed in awe. Raju tried to manage the situation, by pinching a few cheeks and saying some inanities, or even indulging in baby-talk in order to soften the awkwardness of the situation. He went up to young boys and asked, “What are you studying?” in the manner of big men he had seen in cities. But it was stupid to imitate that question here, because the boys giggled, looked at one another, and said, “No school for us.”
“What do you do all day?” he asked, without any real interest in their problems.
One of the elders interposed to say, “We cannot send our boys to the school as you do in towns; they have to take the cattle out for grazing.”
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bsp; Raju clicked his tongue in disapproval. He shook his head. The gathering looked pained and anxious. Raju explained grandly, “Boys must read, first. They must, of course, help their parents, but they must also find the time to study.” He added on an inspiration, “If they cannot find the time to read during the day, why should they not gather in the evenings and learn?”
“Where?” asked someone.
“Maybe here.” Raju added, pointing at the vast hall. “Maybe you could ask one of your masters. Is there no schoolmaster in your midst?”
“Yes, yes,” several voices cried in unison.
“Ask him to see me,” Raju commanded authoritatively, with the air of a president summoning a defaulting assistant master.
Next afternoon a timid man, who wore a short tuft with a turban over it, turned up at the temple hall. Raju had just finished his repast and was enjoying a siesta in the hall, stretching himself on its cool granite floor. The timid man stood beside an ancient pillar and cleared his throat. Raju opened his eyes and looked at him blankly. It was not the custom there, in that society, to ask who or why, when so many came and went. Raju flourished an arm to indicate to the other to sit down and resumed his sleep. When he awoke later, he saw the man sitting close to him.
“I’m the teacher,” the man said, and in the muddled state of half-sleep Raju’s old fears of schoolteachers returned: he forgot for a split second that he had left all those years behind. He sat up.
The master was rather surprised. He said, “Don’t disturb yourself. I can wait.”
“That’s all right,” said Raju, recovering his composure and understanding his surroundings better. “You are the schoolmaster?” he asked patronizingly. He brooded for a moment, then asked in a general way, “How is everything?”