Malgudi Days

  He came again a week later. But it proved no better. She neither welcomed him nor asked him to leave. He suggested to her to come to the car; this time he had brought his small car. She declined his invitation. ‘After all, that woman was old enough to die,’ he reflected. ‘This fool is ruining her life . . .’

  He allowed four more weeks for the mourning period and visited her again, but found a big gathering in her house, overflowing into the street. She sat at the back of the little hall, holding up her thambura, and was singing to the audience as if it were an auditorium. A violinist and a drummer had volunteered to play the accompaniments. ‘She is frittering away her art,’ he thought. She said, ‘Come, sit down.’ He sat in a corner, listened for a while and slipped away unobtrusively . . . Again and again, he visited her and found, at all hours of the day, people around her, waiting for her music. News about her free music sessions spread, people thronged there in cars, bicycles and on foot. Varma of the Boardless brought a box of sweets wrapped in gilt paper, and handed it to Selvi silently and went away, having realized his ambition to approach his goddess with an offering. Selvi never spoke unnecessarily. She remained brooding and withdrawn all day, not noticing or minding anyone coming in or going out.

  Mohan thought he might be able to find her alone at least at night. At eleven o’clock one night he left his car in Market Road and walked to Vinayak Mudali Street. He called in softly through the door of Selvi’s house, ‘My dear, it’s me, I have to talk to you urgently. Please open the door, please,’ appealing desperately through the darkened house. Selvi opened a window shutter just a crack and said firmly, ‘Go away, it’s not proper to come here at this hour . . .’ Mohan turned back with a lump in his throat, swearing half-aloud, ‘Ungrateful wretch . . .’

  SECOND OPINION

  I stole in like a cat, unlocked my door, struck a match and lit a kerosene lantern. I had to make sure that I did not wake up my mother. Like a hunter stalking in a jungle, who is careful not to crackle the dry leaves underfoot, I took stealthy steps along the front passage to my room at the other end past a window in the hall. The moment I shut the door of my cubicle, I was lord of my own universe—which seemed to me boundless, although enclosing a space of only eight feet by ten. The sloping roof tiles harboured vermin of every type, cobwebs hung down like festoons, lizards ensconced behind ancient calendars on the walls darted up and down ambushing little creatures that crawled about, urging them on their evolutionary path. Every gnat at death was reborn a better creature, and ultimately, after a series of lives, became an ape and a human being, who merged ultimately in a supreme indivisible godhood. With such an outlook, a result of miscellaneous, half-understood reading, there could be no place for a spray or duster! I never allowed anyone to clean my room.

  I never touched the brass vessel left outside my door, containing my supper, unless I felt hungry. How could I ever feel hunger while all day I had been sipping coffee at the Boardless—although I didn’t have to spend a paisa on it. It just flowed my way. Varma generally ordered a cup for himself every two hours to make sure that his restaurant’s reputation was not being unmade in the kitchen. Invariably, he ordered for me, too, not only as an act of hospitality, but as a means of obtaining a ‘second opinion’, to quote my doctor. I’ll deviate a little to describe Dr Kishen of the M.M.C. (Malgudi Medical Centre). Those days when I believed in being useful at home, I used to take my mother, off and on, to see the doctor. Whatever disadvantage we might have had in inheriting that rambling old house, its location was certainly an asset. Kabir Street, running parallel to Market Road, had numerous connecting lanes; and one could always step across to reach the doctor or the vegetable market. M.M.C. was centrally situated, as Dr Kishen never failed to mention while examining your tongue or chest, when you couldn’t enter into an argument. ‘Do you see why there is greater rush here than at other places?—it’s because if you measure, you will find this is equidistant from anywhere in this city . . .’

  After his equidistant observation, he’d invariably conclude an examination with, ‘. . . such is my diagnosis, go for a second opinion if you like . . .’ Varma was also likeminded, I suppose. He seemed to be very unsure of the quality of his own coffee even after tasting it, and always wanted my confirmation. And then in the course of the day others dropped in, the six o’clock group, which occupied a corner in the hall and over coffee exchanged all the town gossip, and always insisted that I join them, with the result that when I came home at night, I had no appetite for the contents of the brass tiffin-box.

  Early morning a young servant came to take away the vessel for washing. She was about ten years old, with sparkling eyes set in tan-coloured rotund cheeks, with whitest teeth, and a pigtail terminating in a red ribbon. I was fond of her, and wished I were a painter and could execute a world’s masterpiece on canvas. She knew that she was my favourite and could approach my room with impunity. She would lift the vessel and cry out, ‘Oh, untouched?’

  ‘Hush,’ I’d say, ‘not so loudly . . .’ She would smile mischievously and say, ‘Oh, oh!’ and I knew the next minute it would become world news. In a short while my mother would appear at my door to demand an explanation, and to say, ‘If this sort of thing goes on, I don’t know where it is going to take us . . . I sliced cucumber specially for you, and you don’t hesitate to throw it away . . . At least mention your likes and dislikes. You won’t do even that, but just reject.’ I didn’t mind what she said as long as she remained on the threshold and did not step into my room. I sat on my mat, leaning back on the wall and listened impassively to whatever she said, reflecting how difficult it was to practise one’s philosophy of detachment; Siddhartha did wisely in slipping away at midnight when others were asleep, to seek illumination. In my own way I, too, was seeking illumination, but continued to remain in bondage. The common roof, the married state (ultimately, of course), every kind of inheritance and every bit of possession acted as a deadly tentacle. Following this realization, the first thing I abandoned was furniture and, in a manner of speaking, also the common roof of the main house, since my cubicle was detached. It was not at all easy.

  Our father’s house had many mansions and apparently was designed for a milling crowd. Our front door opened on Kabir Street and our back door on the river Sarayu, which flowed down rather tamely at some distance from our house although you could hear it roaring along wildly in spate when it rained on Mempi Hills. It was all right as a vision to open the little door at our back yard, and sit at the edge of the flowing river to listen to its music; but now the back door had practically sealed itself firmly along the grooves with the dust and rust of decades, and the river had become inaccessible, owing to thorns and wild vegetation choking the path. I have heard my mother describe how in her younger days they had treated the river as a part of the home, every house in Kabir Street having access to it through a back door, how they bathed and washed and took water in pots, and how the men sat on its sandbank at dusk and dawn for their prayers. That was before wells were dug in every house. ‘The river used to be much nearer to us in those days,’ she would assert; ‘it’s somehow moved away so far out. When wells were dug people became lazy and neglected the river; and no wonder she has drawn herself away; though in those days you could touch the water if you stretched your arm through the back door. But have you noticed how at Ellaman Street, even today, the river nestles closer to the houses, since they care for it and cherish it. They have built steps and treat her with respect. They never fail to light and float the lamps in Karthik month . . . Whereas in our street people are lazy and indifferent. In those days, I begged your father not to dig a well, which encouraged others also . . .’ She could never forgive the well-diggers.

  ‘But, Mother, it’s the same water of the river that we are getting in the well . . .’

  ‘What does that mean? How?’ And then I had to explain to her the concept of the underground water table; carried away by its poetry and philosophy, I would conclude, ‘You see, under t
he earth it’s all one big sheet of water, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of cubic feet, all connected; a big connected water sheet, just as you say Brahman is all-pervading in this form and that in the universe—’ She would cut me short with, ‘I don’t know what has come over you, I talk of a simple matter like water and you go on talking like a prophet . . .’

  In those days I spent a great deal of my time sitting in the back portion of our home, which had an open courtyard with a corridor running along the kitchen, store and dining room, where my mother spent most of her time. In those days I had nothing much to do except sit down, leaning on the pillar, and attempt to enlighten my mother’s mind on modern ways. But she was impervious to my theories. We were poles apart. Not only on the river, but on every question, she held a view which, as a rational being, I could never accept.

  Sometimes I felt harassed. Mother would not leave me in peace. I had my little cubicle in the western wing of the house across the hall. At the other end used to be my father’s room. He would sit there all day, as I thought, poring over books, of philosophy, one would suspect, considering the array of volumes on the shelves around him along the wall, in Sanskrit, Tamil and English; the Upanishads, with commentaries and interpretations by Shankara, Ramanuja and all the ‘world teachers’. There were books on Christianity and Plato and Socrates in gilt-edged volumes. I had no means of verifying how much use he made of them. His room was out of bounds to me. He always sat crosslegged on the floor, before a sloping teakwood desk, turning over the leaves of an enormous tome; in my state of ignorance, I imagined that the treasury of philosophy at his elbow was being exploited. But it was only later in life that I learnt that the mighty tomes on his desk were ledgers and all his hours were spent in adding, subtracting and multiplying figures. He had multifarious accounts to keep—payments to men from the village cultivating our paddy fields; loans to others on promissory notes; trust funds of some temple or a minor. All kinds of persons sat patiently on the pyol of the house, and entered his room when summoned; there would follow much talking, signing of papers and counting of cash taken out of the squat wrought-iron safe with imposing handles and a tricky locking system. It stood there three-foot high, and seemed to have become a part of my father’s personality. Out of it flowed cash and into it went documents. It was only after my father’s death that I managed to open the safe, after a good deal of trial and error. While examining the papers I discovered that the library of philosophy had been hypothecated to him by some poor academic soul who could never redeem it. But father had never disturbed the loaded shelves, except for dusting the books, since he wanted them to be in good condition when redeemed by their hapless owner. However, it was a godsend for me. I always sneaked into his room to look at their titles when he was away at the well for his bath, which kept him off long enough for me to examine the books. For a long time he would not let me handle them. ‘You wouldn’t know what they say,’ he said . . . At a later stage he relented, and allowed me to take one book at a time, with warnings and admonitions. ‘Don’t fold the covers back, but only half-open them, so that their backs are not creased—the books have to be returned in good condition, remember.’

  I selected, as he ordered, one book at a time. I loved the weight, feel and scent of every volume—some of them in a uniform series called the ‘Library of World Thought’. I sat up in my room leaning on a roll of bedding and pored over each volume. I cannot pretend that I understood everything I read. I had had no academic training or discipline, not having gone beyond Matriculation, which I never passed, even after three attempts. After Father’s death, I gave up, realizing suddenly it was silly to want to pass an examination. Who were they to test and declare me fit or unfit—for what? When this thought dawned, I stopped in my tracks in my fourth effort. I bundled and threw up into the loft all my class notes and examination books.

  The loft was in the central hall, a wide wooden panel below the ceiling. From a proper distance, aimed correctly, you could fling anything into it, to oblivion. One had to go up a ladder to reach it, and then move around hunchback fashion to pick up something or for spring-cleaning. But for years no one had been up in the loft, even though it continued to get filled from time to time. In those days, my mother could always find some sturdylimbed helper ready to go up to sweep and dust or pick up a vessel (all the utensils of brass and bronze she had brought in as a young bride decades ago were stored in the loft). Besides these, there were ledgers, disused lamps, broken furniture pieces, clothes in a trunk, mats, mattresses, blankets and what not. I dreaded her cleaning-up moods, as she always expected my participation. For some time I cooperated with her, but gradually began to avoid the task. She would often complain within my hearing, ‘When he was alive, how much service he could command within the twinkling of an eye . . . I had to breathe ever so lightly what I needed and he would accomplish it.’ When she stood there thus, with her arms akimbo and lecturing, I generally retreated. I shut the door of my room and held my breath until I could hear her footsteps die away. She was too restless to stay in one place, but moved about, peeping into various corners of the house. She would suddenly suspect that the servant girl might have fallen asleep somewhere in that vast acreage and go on a hunt for her. She was in a state of anxiety over one thing or another; if it was not the servant, it would be about the well in the back yard; she must run up to it and see if the rope over the pulley was properly drawn away and secured to the post, or whether it had slipped into the well through the girl’s carelessness. ‘If the rope falls into the well . . .’ and she would go into a detailed account of the consequences; how there was no one around, as they had had in the old days, who would run up and get a new rope or fetch the diver with his hooks and harpoons to retrieve the rope.

  It was a sore trial for me each day. I could not stand her. Her voice got on my nerves while she harangued, reprimanded or bawled at the servant girl. I shut and bolted the door of my room. I wanted peace of mind to go through the book in hand, Life of Ramakrishna, passages from Max Müller, Plato’s Republic —it was a privilege to be able to be a participant in their thoughts. I felt thrilled to be battling with their statements and wresting a meaning out of them. Whatever they might have meant, they all seemed to hold forth the glory of the soul, which made me survey myself top to toe and say, ‘Sambu, who are you? You are not the creature with a prickly stubble on the chin, scar on the kneecap, with toenail splitting and turning blue . . . you are actually made of finer stuff.’ I imagined myself able to steer my way through the traffic of constellations in the firmament, in the interstellar spaces, and along the Milky Way; it enabled me to overlook the drab walls around me and the uninspiring spectacles outside the window opening on Kabir Street. Into this, shattering my vision, would come hard knocks on my door. Mother would be standing there crying, ‘Why do you have to close this door? Who is there in this house to disturb you or anyone? Not like those days . . . Whom are you trying to shut out?’ I could only look on passively. I was aware that she was ready for a battle, but I had not based my life on a war-footing yet. She looked terrifying with her grey unkempt hair standing like a halo around her head, her eyes spitting fire. I felt nervous, the slightest wrong move could spark off a conflagration.

  I don’t know what came over her six months after her husband’s death. At the first shock of bereavement she remained subdued. For months and months she spoke little, spent much of her time in the puja room, meditating and chanting holy verse in an undertone. She went about the business of running the house without any fuss, never noticing anything too closely. She left me very much alone, though hinting from time to time that I should study and pass my B.A. In those days, some of the flotsam and jetsam who had been thriving indefinitely on my father’s hospitality were still occupying various portions of my house. As long as they were all there, Mother kept herself in the background and behaved like a gentle person. Probably she had a code as to how she should behave in the presence of hangers-on. When I got the last of them
out—that was the mad engineer, who had sought shelter from his brothers scheming to poison him and who finally had to be bundled off with the help of neighbours and the driver of the ambulance van—she began to breathe freely and probably felt that the stage had been cleared for her benefit. Following it, her first hostile act was to shut my father’s room and put a lock on the door. I was aghast when I realized that access to the books was cut off. As she spent most of her time in the middle block of the house, I had to be running after her, begging for the key if I wished to see a book. At first, she would not yield. ‘Read your school books first and pass your examination,’ she said. ‘Time enough for you to read those big books, after you get your degree. Anyway, you won’t understand them. Do you know what your father used to say? He said that he could not make them out himself! What do you say to that?’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Did he at any time try? He always sat with his back to them.’ She grew angry at this remark. ‘Don’t laugh at your elders, who have nurtured you,’ she would say and move off dramatically to end the conversation. I had to follow her, begging, ‘The key, please, Mother . . .’ I was young enough in those days not to feel discouraged. Finally she would say, ‘Don’t mess up the books. You are so persistent—if you could have shown half this persistence in your studies!’ I hated her at such moments. Why should she attach importance to examinations and degrees? Traditional and habitual manner of thought. Her sister’s sons at Madras were all graduates, and she felt humiliated in family circles when they compared my performance. Before I finally gave up studies, whenever the Matriculation results were announced she would scream, ‘You have failed again! You fool! You are a disgrace . . .’