Read Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma for Free Online Page B

pay. I have one for seventy-five, one for thirty, fifty, ten, five, one. What is it you want?’
    ‘I will tell you presently. But perhaps you might first like to go home and dry yourself.’
    ‘Home! Home!’ he laughed. ‘I have no home. Didn’t I tell you that I am a
Sanyasi
, though I don’t wear ochre robes? Come,come with me. I live in a small room which a friend has given me.’ He went through the lane, pulled out a thin key knotted to his sacred thread, turned it in the lock and opened the door of a small room. It was roofed with old cobweb-covered tiles, with a window, one foot square, opening at the top of the wall; there was another window opening on the road. He stooped in through the narrow doorway. Srinivas followed him.
    ‘Sit down,’ said the old man. ‘You have to sit on the floor. I have not even a mat.’ Srinivas sat down, leaning against the wall. A few children from the main house came and stood by the doorway, looking in. The old man was spreading out his wet clothes on a cord tied across the wall. He opened a small wooden box and took out a dry
dhoti
and towel, a box containing ingredients for marking his forehead, and a rosary. He proceeded to decorate his forehead with a symbol, looking into a hand-mirror. The children stood in the doorway, blocking it. The old man turned from the mirror with a hiss. ‘Get away. What are you doing here? Do you think a fair is going on?’ The children turned and ran away, shouting mischievously, ‘Grandfather is angry.’ Srinivas felt hurt by the old man’s conduct. ‘Why are you hard upon those children?’
    ‘Because I don’t want them. Children are a bane. I must tell this fellow not to let them loose on me.’
    ‘They called you grandfather,’ Srinivas said.
    ‘They will call you uncle presently. How do you like it? I am only a tenant here. I hate all children. I have had enough trouble from my own children; I don’t want any more from strangers. Are you in the habit of praying?’
    Srinivas fumbled for a reply. ‘Not exactly –’
    ‘Well, I am. I am going to pray for about fifteen minutes. You will have to wait.’ Srinivas settled down. The other took out his beads, shut his eyes, his lips muttering. Srinivas watched him for a moment and felt bored. He sat looking out. Someone was passing in and out of the main house. Children were dashing to and fro. The old man said, without opening his eyes: ‘If you are a lover of children you have plenty to watch. All the children of the town seem to be concentrated in this street.’ After this he continued his silent prayers.
    Srinivas reflected: ‘Who will know I am here, cooped up in a cell with a monstrous old man? If I ceased to breathe at this moment, no one would know what had happend to me. My wife and son and brother –’ His thought went back to the home he had left behind. His elder brother could never understand what he was up to. ‘He has every right to think I am a fool,’ he reflected. ‘Man has no significance except as a wage-earner, as an economic unit, as a receptacle of responsibilities. But what can I do? I have a different notion of human beings. I have given their notions a fair trial.’ He thought of all those years when he had tried to fit in with one thing or another as others did, married like the rest, tried to balance the family budget and build up a bank balance. Agriculture, apprenticeship in a bank, teaching, law – he gave everything a trial once, but with every passing month he felt the excruciating pain of losing time. The passage of time depressed him. The ruthlessness with which it flowed on – a swift and continuous movement; his own feeling of letting it go helplessly, of engaging all his hours in a trivial round of actions, at home and outside. Every New Year’s Day he felt depressed and unhappy. All around he felt there were signs that a vast inundation was moving onward, carrying the individual before it, and before knowing where one was, one