After the despatch of the copy, I relaxed in my room; that was also the time when my wife could give me her company. I described to her the day’s events, such as traffic accidents, suicides, or crimes, which were the grist for my mill; then I sank into a siesta for an hour and was ready to go out again at four o’clock after a cup of coffee. This time it would be a visit to the magistrate’s court before closing time, to take down the judgement in a counterfeit case or murder conspiracy. On Saturday afternoons I sat at the municipal meeting, watching the city fathers wrangle over their obscure issues—all through the evening it would go on. In those days there were always a couple of lawyers on the council, and they never permitted the business to proceed beyond an examination of the procedure and the by-laws. No more than a couple of items in the voluminous agenda would be covered at the end of two hours. After a coffee break, I would suddenly clutch the agenda papers and leave, afflicted with a headache. Some days there would be academic matters to cover, a distinguished visitor lecturing at the university or a senate meeting. In those days there was a local League of Nations Union, which strove to establish peace in this world in its own way. The secretary of this union, who was a history professor, decreed that our reports should be scrutinized by him before we filed them. I resisted his order as an encroachment on the freedom of the press, and he threatened to disaccredit me as a correspondent (which would, in effect, only mean denying luncheon facilities) whereupon I declared that I would report him to our Journalists’ Association, pass a resolution against him, and syndicate it to all the world’s press and denounce him as an autocrat and enemy of freedom. He said, “Do you know that I have powers to smash you and your papers. . . .” I walked out of the union meeting in protest, and so did a couple of my colleagues. I began to ignore its activities and boycotted its functions. I realized soon that this did not affect the prospect of world peace either way, nor provoke my news-editor to question why I was not covering the League of Nations Union.
Murders were my stand-by. From Nanjangud or Chamarajnagar, at the extreme south of Mysore District, the police brought in a steady stream of murder cases. On such occasions, I let myself go. I hung about the mortuary for the post-mortem verdict and the first police report. As long as I used the expression “alleged” liberally, there was no danger of being hauled up for false reporting or contempt of court. I knew a lot of police officers, plain-clothes-men, and informers—apart from presidents and secretaries of various public bodies (including the Pinjarapole, a home for aged or disabled animals) who craved publicity and sought my favour. Quite a number of wedding invitations came to me from fond parents hoping for a report and a photograph of the bridal pair in the paper. I should have gladly given all the space available to whoever wanted it, but my news-editor, when he did not reject it outright, mutilated and decimated my copy. He compressed my most eloquent descriptions into two lines. What did I make out of it all? Our contract was that I would be paid three rupees and eight annas per column of twenty-one inches. I fancied that the news I sent would cover at least fifteen inches each day and fetch me at least seventy-five rupees a month, but thanks to the news-editor’s talent for abridgement, I had to crawl up each day by fractions of an inch. I measured my total “inchage” with a scale at the end of the month and sent my bill; and they would invariably doubt and disallow my measurements and send me some arbitrary amount, never more than thirty rupees, often less.
But I enjoyed this occupation, as I came in close contact with a variety of men and their activities, which was educative. It lasted for about one year, and might have gone on, perhaps indefinitely, but for a letter I sent to the editor, which soured our relationship. They had withheld my payment for three months, and I wrote to say, “I am a writer in contact with many newspapers and periodicals in America and England, who make their payments on precise dates; I am not used to delays in payments. . . .” To which the editor replied, “If you are eminent as you claim to be, you should not mind a slight delay on our part; if, on the other hand, you could realize that after all you are a correspondent eking out your income with such contributions as we chose to publish, your tone is unwarranted by your circumstances.” I resented the tone of their reply, and decided to give up this work as soon as I could afford it.
Money was a big worry. When a cheque was delayed, it caused all kinds of embarrassments for me. My budget was precisely framed. I had to find money to pay for my share of the expenses at home, also for face powder or soap that my wife would ask for. I grandly promised her even a sari, and bought her a green one on credit costing about sixty rupees, the shopman agreeing to take instalments of ten rupees on the fourth of every month. If I delayed, a bill-collector would appear on the morning of the sixth at our gate, demanding the instalment. He was a tall, gaunt man, with sunken cheeks and the expressionless face of a corpse. When I heard the clicking of the gate latch, I would tell myself, “Here it cometh, my lord,” echoing Hamlet. I rushed forward to stop him before my wife or anyone else could see him, and turned him back with soft words, promises, and a small tip for coffee; until I liquidated this debt, I felt guilty whenever I saw my wife in the green sari, as if I had given her a stolen present.
I continued to send in my reports of the turbulent city of Mysore, and off and on received a cheque from The Justice. But I voluntarily stopped this work on the day I received a cable from my friend Purna, who was now at Oxford: “Novel taken. Graham Greene responsible.” My friend and neighbour Purna, who used to hop over the wall and come to listen to my reading of Swami and Friends, had left in August 1931 for Oxford, promising to find a publisher for my book while he was there. When I had completed the novel, I faithfully despatched it to Allen and Unwin and when it was returned, to another publisher and then another. I had got used to getting back my manuscript with unfailing regularity once every six weeks—two weeks onward journey, two weeks sojourn on a publisher’s desk, and two weeks homeward journey with a rejection slip pinned to it; all in all it provided me with six weeks of hope! I had got used to this as an almost mechanical process and had shed all emotions surrounding a rejection. The last publisher to return it to me was Dent, and I had advised them in my covering letter to forward the manuscript when rejected to Purna at Exeter College, Oxford. I sent a parallel letter to Purna advising him to weight the manuscript with a stone and drown it in the Thames. Purna, however, seems to have spent much of his time visiting London and carrying the manuscript from publisher to publisher. After trying them all, he wrote to me, “To the Thames? No need to hurry. May be never. Do not despair.” This went on while I was spinning out measurable news for The Justice. Graham Greene was living in Oxford at that time. Purna, by some instinct, approached him and gave him my manuscript. An introduction thus begun established a personal interest and a friendship between us that continues to this day. Graham Greene recommended my novel to Hamish Hamilton, who accepted it immediately.
Purna’s cable made me gasp with joy and surprise. I saw myself in a new role as a novelist. I could see the relief in my wife’s face, although she did not want to be too demonstrative about it. The first thing I did on receiving the cable was to write to The Justice that I would not be able to supply them any more news from Mysore, although the advance from the novel was twenty pounds (less fifty per cent tax).
Swami and Friends was published in the October of 1935. A few reviews were enthusiastic, but it had no sales; it appeared in the company of record-breaking best-sellers such as Man the Unknown and Inside Europe, and was simply flushed out of sight in the deluge. So much so that Hamish Hamilton rejected his option on my next novel, The Bachelor of Arts, with the words, “Swami and Friends was a sad failure. I don’t think Chandran [The Bachelor of Arts] is going to do any better. I hope someone will prove me wrong some day.” Twenty years later I met Hamish Hamilton in London at a party in the office of The Spectator, where Graham Greene had taken me. It was a very interesting and cordial meeting. Egged on by Greene, Hamilton remembered his comments on
my literary future, joked at his own expense, and then remarked, “Remember, I was your first publisher, and I always feel happy at the thought of it.” Next morning he sent me a copy of his Majority, which has extracts to celebrate thirty years of his publishing firm, generously inscribed for me.
Thanks again to Graham Greene’s recommendation, The Bachelor of Arts was published by Nelson, fulfilling a fancy I had entertained several years before when a Nelson representative had come from Edinburgh to see my father about the supply of books for our high-school library. I had confided to this salesman, “If I write a book, will you ask your company to publish it?” “Undoubtedly,” he had said and given me his card.
Change after February 1937. My father lived up to the last date of the month, as if to satisfy a technical need, and died leaving us to draw his pension for the full month. That was all the resources we were left with. My father had never believed in savings, property, and such things.
Now we feared a total economic collapse. But we managed. My elder brother, now back from Madras, as an experiment had opened a small shop in a new extension and called it National Provision Stores. Seenu had a government job and moved off to Bangalore. Mine was still a pure gamble. Sometimes I wished that I had not given up The Justice, but I was sustained by the gambler’s inexhaustible hope and a Micawberish anticipation of something turning up. With a second novel published and a daughter added to the family, life seemed to be not so bad. Short stories were being accepted in India as well as abroad—Graham Greene helping me in London. So after all my claim to the editor of The Justice about contacts with London editors was being fulfilled, although it had, perhaps, been premature. The great gods who could view the past, present, and future as one bloc would have realized I had not been false!
My brother and I shared the household expenses. He looked after the supplies and miscellaneous items of expenditure, and I had to see that the house rent was paid; all aspects of shelter were to be my responsibility. “Rama Vilas,” in which we lived, was to be retained at any cost; there could be no question of our moving to another house. Fortunately our house-owner lived in Bangalore and only came down to Mysore once a month to collect the rent. I told him once, “The rent is my responsibility. I have no fixed income. If my books sell, the royalty will come in only in December and June. So please permit me to settle the rent once every six months, although I will pay into your bank account whatever amount I’m able to earn meanwhile.” He was good enough to accept this arrangement. Now I had a scrappy, fitful income from various sources. In addition to other items I had to find money for baby-food, gripe-water, and toys. I did a variety of writing: humorous article every week for a Merry Magazine at ten rupees a week; a most taxing experience for me—to perform a thousand-word literary clowning week after week. I had also begun my third novel, The Dark Room. I took a pad and pen and disappeared every morning for three hours. I found it impossible to write at home now—there were far too many worrying distractions, and also the baby. She was just a little over a year old, and I found it impossible to remain at my desk when she was around, since my wife often left her in my care while she was busy in the kitchen or in the garden gathering flowers for my mother’s daily worship. I had also a routine duty to carry my daughter to let her watch the pink bougainvillaea flowers over the compound wall of Reverend Sawday’s bungalow at the corner. She would gaze at the bunch of flowers for about ten minutes with rapt attention, and then I would have to lift her up to give her a glimpse of a white terrier that barked and frisked about inside the Reverend’s compound. Only then would I be free to deposit her at home and leave.
Before sending me out, my wife would give me a cup of coffee and sometimes whisper a warning: “Don’t make a fuss. Not enough coffee powder at home. Get some at the store when you return.” I set out to do my writing at the College Union, where the secretary had given me a room. I shut myself in for three hours, gazed on the green football field outside, across the street, and spun out the fate of Savitri—the heroine of The Dark Room. I was somehow obsessed with a philosophy of Woman as opposed to Man, her constant oppressor. This must have been an early testament of the “Women’s Lib” movement. Man assigned her a secondary place and kept her there with such subtlety and cunning that she herself began to lose all notion of her independence, her individuality, stature, and strength. A wife in an orthodox milieu of Indian society was an ideal victim of such circumstances. My novel dealt with her, with this philosophy broadly in the background. I wrote nearly a thousand words before I went back home for lunch, exhausted, but also feeling triumphant at having done my quota of work for the day.
The Dark Room, once again read and approved by Graham Greene, was published by Macmillan in 1938. I had the unique experience of having a new publisher for each book. One book, one publisher—and then perhaps he said to himself, “Hands off this writer.” Hamish Hamilton, then Nelson, now Macmillan.
CHAPTER TEN
Macmillan had produced The Dark Room attractively. The reviews were favourable. I was buoyed up by them but my wife did not share my optimism. She preferred to await the royalty statement, and when it did arrive, it revealed an “Unearned Advance” (the advance was £40 less tax) rather than a cheque. I dashed off a letter to Macmillan suggesting that they should have made the existence of the book better known to the public. Their depots in India had no copies, and the literary pages of newspapers and magazines carried no advertisements. I had naïvely expected the publishers to seize upon the reviews and splash the quotes all over. Macmillan replied that they had advertised the book as best they could under the circumstances (what did it mean?). Their message typed in purple copying ink, and pressed out, possibly, on a wet sheet of paper, looked jittery and cheerless.
Presently, I had to set aside my principles and settle down to hackwork. At this time my friend Purna, who had introduced my Swami and Friends to Graham Greene at Oxford, was on the personal staff of Sir Mirza Ismail, the dewan (Prime Minister) of Mysore, and was in touch with the “state guests” coming to Mysore. At this time Mr. Somerset Maugham was staying in one of the Maharaja’s mansions. He was attended on by the Maharaja’s private secretary, Sir Charles Todhunter, an encrusted British administrator who had made it his mission in life to keep Indians properly occupied and out of mischief. It was his belief that what the Indian urgently needed was not political freedom but social graces. With this aim, he patronized Child Welfare, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Good-Manners League, and other innocuous institutions calculated to wean away the natives from mischief. The names Gandhi or Nehru were taboo in his presence. Sir Charles believed that, properly handled, Indians could shape into useful citizens, as proved by the terrified and efficient clerks he had in his establishment. My brother Seenu was one of them, having been spotted by Sir Charles at Bangalore and roped in. While Sir Charles kept his dogs, cats, and ducks sheltered in the main building, he housed his clerks in a derelict unventilated barnyard, under a smoky, verminous tile roof, at the farthest corner of the compound, and summoned them to his presence with a buzzer. He glared at them over his narrow spectacles, thumped his huge fist on the desk, and drove them to slave for him twelve hours a day by sheer bullying. His main job was to see that the Maharaja did not lose his loyalty to the British Crown or establish any industry which might affect British interests. To question this man on literary matters would seem incongruous at any time. Yet Somerset Maugham seems to have done so. At a banquet arranged in his honour (although I cannot believe that either the Maharaja or his private secretary would have seen a novel by Maugham or anyone) Maugham asked, “How is it that I haven’t seen anywhere the famous writer living in this city—Narayan?”
Sir Charles turned to his assistant in consternation. “Find out if there is a famous writer in Mysore. Consult the university vice-chancellor, if necessary.”
After due investigation Maugham was told, “There is no novelist in Mysore. We may, however, find you one in Bangalore” (at a s
afe distance of one hundred miles). The honoured guest looked displeased and declared that his entire trip now seemed to him a waste.
Although I don’t fully believe this story (imagined by someone and passed on from person to person), I suspect that Purna may have asked Somerset Maugham on some occasion, “Have you read The Dark Room?”
“I shall look for it in London when I go back.”
“Would you like to meet Narayan?”
“I am afraid there is no time now, but do give him my compliments.” (Later Maugham read The Dark Room and did write to me.)
Then Purna may have told this story to someone, with a slight exaggeration, and, passing the round in official circles, it developed into a full-fledged apocrypha and eventually reached Sir Mirza Ismail’s ears. Sir Mirza, perhaps not wishing to share Todhunter’s reputation, invited me to meet him at his Mysore residence, called “Lake View,” overlooking Kukanahalli Tank. This was an unexpected offshoot of Maugham’s visit.
As if to substantiate my theory that fiction outlasts fact, the original story is still current after nearly forty years! Occasionally I come across some ancient raconteur retailing his own version: “It seems P. G. Wodehouse when he came to Mysore, as a state guest, demanded to meet R. K. Narayan and lost his temper when Todhunter said there was no such person in the city! And he left in a huff, declaring that he could not accept the hospitality of such an ignorant host.” Or sometimes another name may be substituted for Maugham’s: H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, or John Gunther.