Malgudi Days (19 page)

His customers liked him. They said in admiration, ‘Is there another place where you can get coffee for six pies and four
chappatis
for an anna?' They sat around his tray, taking what they wanted. A dozen hands hovered about it every minute, because his customers were entitled to pick up, examine and accept their stuff after proper scrutiny.

Though so many hands were probing the lot, he knew exactly who was taking what: he knew by an extraordinary sense which of the
jutka
-drivers was picking up
chappatis
at a given moment; he could even mention his licence number; he knew that the stained hand nervously coming up was that of the youngster who polished the shoes of passers-by; and he knew exactly at what hour he would see the wrestler's arm searching for the perfect duck's egg, which would be knocked against the tray corner before consumption.

 

His custom was drawn from the population swarming the pavement: the boot-polish boys, for instance, who wandered to and fro with brush and polish in a bag, endlessly soliciting, ‘Polish, sir, polish!' Rama had a soft corner in his heart for the waifs. When he saw some fat customer haggling over the payment to one of these youngsters he felt like shouting, ‘Give the poor fellow a little more. Don't grudge it. If you pay an anna more he can have a
dosai
and a
chappati.
As it is, the poor fellow is on half-rations and remains half-starved all day.'

It rent his heart to see their hungry, hollow eyes; it pained him to note the rags they wore; and it made him very unhappy to see the tremendous eagerness with which they came to him, laying aside their brown bags. But what could he do? He could not run a charity show; that was impossible. He measured out their half-glass of coffee correct to the fraction of an inch, but they could cling to the glass as long as they liked.

The blind beggar, who whined for alms all day in front of the big hotel, brought him part of his collection at the end of the day and demanded refreshment . . . and the grass-selling women. He disliked serving women; their shrill, loud voices got on his nerves. These came to him after disposing of head-loads of grass satisfactorily. And that sly fellow with a limp who bought a packet of mixed fare every evening and carried it to a prostitute-like creature standing under a tree on the pavement opposite.

All the coppers that men and women of this part of the universe earned through their miscellaneous jobs ultimately came to him at the end of the day. He put all this money into a little cloth bag dangling from his neck under his shirt, and carried it home, soon after the night show had started at the theatre.

He lived in the second lane behind the market. His wife opened the door, throwing into the night air the scent of burnt oil which perpetually hung about their home. She snatched from his hands all his encumbrances, put her hand under his shirt to pull out his cloth bag and counted the cash immediately. They gloated over it. ‘Five rupees invested in the morning has brought us another five . . .' They ruminated on the exquisite mystery of this multiplication. She put back into his cloth bag the capital for further investment on the morrow, and carefully separated the gains and put them away in a little wooden box that she had brought from her parents' house years before.

After dinner, he tucked a betel leaf and tobacco in his cheek and slept on the
pyol
of his house, and had dreams of traffic constables bullying him to move on and health inspectors saying that he was spreading all kinds of disease and depopulating the city. But fortunately in actual life no one bothered him very seriously. He gave an occasional packet of his stuff to the traffic constable going off duty or to the health-department menial who might pass that way. The health officer no doubt came and said, ‘You must put all this under a glass lid, otherwise I shall destroy it all someday . . . Take care!' But he was a kindly man who did not pursue any matter but wondered in private, ‘How his customers survive his food, I can't understand! I suppose people build up a sort of immunity to such poisons, with all that dust blowing on it and the gutter behind . . .' Rama no doubt violated all the well-accepted canons of cleanliness and sanitation, but still his customers not only survived his fare but seemed actually to flourish on it, having consumed it for years without showing signs of being any the worse for it.

 

Rama's life could probably be considered a most satisfactory one, without agitation or heartburn of any kind. Why could it not go on forever, endlessly, till the universe itself cooled off and perished, when by any standard he could be proved to have led a life of pure effort? No one was hurt by his activity and money-making, and not many people could be said to have died of taking his stuff; there were no more casualties through his catering than, say, through the indifferent municipal administration.

But such security is unattainable in human existence. The gods grow jealous of too much contentment anywhere, and they show their displeasure all of a sudden. One night, when he arrived as usual at his spot, he found a babbling crowd at the corner where he normally sat. He said authoritatively, ‘Leave way, please.' But no one cared. It was the young shop-boy of the stationer's that plucked his sleeve and said, ‘They have been fighting over something since the evening . . .'

‘Over what?' asked Rama.

‘Over something . . .' the boy said. ‘People say someone was stabbed near the Sales Tax Office when he was distributing notices about some votes or something. It may be a private quarrel. But who cares? Let them fight who want a fight.'

Someone said, ‘How dare you speak like that about us?'

Everyone turned to look at this man sourly. Someone in that crowd remarked, ‘Can't a man speak . . . ?'

His neighbour slapped him for it. Rama stood there with his load about him, looking on helplessly. This one slap was enough to set off a fuse. Another man hit another man, and then another hit another, and someone started a cry, ‘Down with . . .'

‘Ah, it is as we suspected, preplanned and organized to crush us,' another section cried.

People shouted, soda-water bottles were used as missiles. Everyone hit everyone else. A set of persons suddenly entered all the shops and demanded that these be closed. ‘Why?' asked the shop-men.

‘How can you have the heart to do business when . . . ?'

The restraints of civilized existence were suddenly abandoned. Everyone seemed to be angry with everyone else. Within an hour the whole scene looked like a battlefield. Of course the police came to the spot presently, but this made matters worse, since it provided another side to the fight. The police had a threefold task: of maintaining law and order and also maintaining themselves intact and protecting some party whom they believed to be injured. Shops that were not closed were looted.

The cinema house suddenly emptied itself of its crowd, which rushed out to enter the fray at various points. People with knives ran about, people with bloodstains groaned and shouted, ambulance vans moved here and there. The police used
lathis
and tear gas, and finally opened fire. Many people died. The public said that the casualties were three thousand, but the official communiqué maintained that only five were injured and four and a quarter killed in the police firing. At midnight Rama emerged from his hiding place under a culvert and went home.

The next day Rama told his wife, ‘I won't take out the usual quantity. I doubt if there will be anyone there. God knows what devil has seized all those folk! They are ready to kill each other for some votes . . .' His instinct was right. There were more policemen than public on Market Road and his corner was strongly guarded. He had to set up his shop on a farther spot indicated by a police officer.

Matters returned to normal in about ten days, when all the papers clamoured for a full public inquiry into this or that: whether the firing was justified and what precautions were taken by the police to prevent this flare-up and so on. Rama watched the unfolding of contemporary history through the shouts of newsboys, and in due course tried to return to his corner. The moment he set up his tray and took his seat, a couple of young men wearing badges came to him and said, ‘You can't have your shop here.'

‘Why not, sir?'

‘This is a holy spot on which our leader fell that day. The police aimed their guns at his heart. We are erecting a monument here. This is our place; the Municipality have handed this corner to us.'

 

Very soon this spot was cordoned off, with some congregation or the other always there. Money-boxes jingled for collections and people dropped coins. Rama knew better than anyone else how good the place was for attracting money. They collected enough to set up a memorial stone and, with an ornamental fencing and flower pots, entirely transformed the spot.

Austere, serious-looking persons arrived there and spoke among themselves. Rama had to move nearly two hundred yards away, far into the lane. It meant that he went out of the range of vision of his customers. He fell on their blind spot. The cinema crowd emerging from the theatre poured away from him; the
jutka
-drivers who generally left their vehicles on the roadside for a moment while the traffic constable showed indulgence and snatched a mouthful found it inconvenient to come so far; the boot-boys patronized a fellow on the opposite footpath, the scraggy pretender, whose fortunes seemed to be rising.

Nowadays Rama prepared a limited quantity of snacks for sale, but even then he had to carry back remnants; he consumed some of it himself, and the rest, on his wife's advice, he warmed up and brought out for sale again next day. One or two who tasted the stuff reacted badly and spread the rumour that Rama's quality was not what it used to be. One night, when he went home with just two annas in his bag, he sat up on the
pyol
and announced to his wife, ‘I believe our business is finished. Let us not think of it any more.'

He put away his pans and trays and his lamp, and prepared himself for a life of retirement. When all his savings were exhausted he went to one Restaurant Kohinoor, from which loudspeakers shrieked all day, and queued up for a job. For twenty rupees a month he waited eight hours a day on the tables. People came and went, the radio music frayed his nerves, but he stuck on; he had to. When some customer ordered him about too rudely, he said, ‘Gently, brother. I was once a hotel-owner myself.' And with that piece of reminiscence he attained great satisfaction.

Kannan sat at the door of his hut and watched the village go its way. Sami the oil-monger was coming up the street driving his ox before him. He remarked while passing, ‘This is your idling day, is it? Why don't you come to the Mantapam this afternoon? ' Some more people passed, but Kannan hardly noticed anyone. The oil-monger's words had thrown him into a dream. The Mantapam was an ancient pillared structure, with all its masonry cracking and crumbling down on the tank bund. It served as a clubhouse for Kannan and his friends, who gathered there on an afternoon and pursued the game of dice with considerable intensity and fury. Kannan loved not only the game but also the muddy smell of the place, the sky seen through the cracking arches and the far-off hillocks. He hummed a little tune to himself at the thought of the Mantapam.

He knew people would call him an idler for sitting there at his door and sunning himself. But he didn't care. He would not go to work; there was no one to goad him out of the house—his wife being still away. It was with a quiet joy that he put her into a bullock cart and saw her off a few days ago. He hoped her parents would insist on her staying on at least ten days more, though it meant a wrench for him to be parted from his little son. But Kannan accepted it as an inevitable price to pay for his wife's absence. He reflected, ‘If she were here, would she let me rest like this?' He would have to be climbing coconut trees, clearing their tops of beetles and other pests, plucking down coconuts, haggling with miserly tree-owners, and earning his rupee a day. Now he celebrated his wife's absence by staying at home most of the day. But the worst of it was that he had not a quarter of an anna anywhere about him and he wouldn't see a coin unless he climbed some trees for it today. He stretched his legs and arms and brooded how it would feel to go up a tree now. Of course the ten trees in the back yard of that big house needed attention: that work awaited him anytime he cared to go there. But it was impossible. His limbs felt stiff and unwieldy and seemed good only for the visit to the Mantapam. But what was the use of going there empty-handed? If only he had four annas on hand, he could probably return home with a rupee in the evening. But that woman! He felt indignant at the thought of his wife, who did not seem to think that he deserved to keep an anna of his hard-earned cash about him. Without four annas to call one's own! He had been drudging and earning for years now, ever since . . . He gave up the attempt to think it out, since it took him into the realm of numbers, and numbers were complex and elusive except when one rolled the dice and counted cash.

An idea struck him and he suddenly rose to his feet and turned in. In a corner there was a large tin trunk, painted black years ago—the most substantial possession of that household. It was his wife's. He sat down before it and stared at the lock hopelessly. It was a cast-iron lock with sharp edges. He took hold of it and tugged at it, and, much to his surprise, it came off. ‘God is kind to me,' he told himself, and threw open the lid. He beheld his wife's prized possessions there: a few jackets and two or three saris, one of which he had bought her as a young bridegroom. He was surprised that she should still preserve it though it was . . . it was . . . he checked himself at the threshold of numbers once again. ‘She can preserve it because she is too niggardly to wear it, I suppose!' he remarked and laughed, pleased at this malicious conclusion. He threw aside the clothes impatiently and searched for a little wooden box in which she usually kept her cash. He found it empty but for a smooth worn-out copper just left there for luck. ‘Where is all the cash gone?' he asked angrily. He brooded, ‘She must have taken every anna for her brother or someone there. Here I slave all the day, only to benefit her brother, is it? . . . Next time I see her brother, I will wring his neck,' he said to himself with considerable satisfaction. Rummaging further he caught sight of a cigarette tin in a corner of the box. He shook it. It jingled satisfactorily with coins. He felt tender at the sight of it. It was his little son's, a red cigarette tin. He remembered how the little fellow had picked it from the rubbish dump behind the travellers' bungalow and come running, clutching it to his bosom. The boy had played with the red tin a whole day in the street, filling it with dust and emptying it. And then Kannan had suggested he make a money-box of it, the young fellow protesting against it vigorously. But Kannan argued with him elaborately; and became so persuasive that his son presently accepted the proposition with enthusiasm. ‘When the box is full I will buy a motorcar like that boy in the big house. I must also have a mouth-harmonium and a green pencil.' Kannan laughed uproariously on hearing his son's plans. He took the tin to the blacksmith, sealed its lid with lead and had a slit cut on it—just wide enough to admit a coin. It became a treasure for the young fellow, and he often held it aloft to his father for him to drop a copper in. The boy quite often asked with a puckered brow, ‘Father, is it full? When can I open it?' He always kept it in his mother's trunk, safely tucked away amidst the folds of her saris, and would not rest till he saw the trunk properly locked up again. Watching him, Kannan often remarked proudly, ‘Very careful boy. He will do big things. We must send him to a school in the town.'