Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma by R. K. Narayan Read Free Book Online

would find oneself senile or in the grave, with so little understood or realized. He felt depressed at the sight of his son: it seemed as though it was an hour ago that he was born, but already he was in Second Form, mugging history and geography and dreaming of cricket scores.
    ‘What exactly is it that you want to do?’ his brother asked him one day.
    ‘The answer is late in coming, but you will get it,’ Srinivas replied, feeling rather awkward. The question of a career seemed to him as embarrassing as a physiological detail. His brother was the head of the family, an advocate with a middling practice – a life of constant struggle with rustic clients and magistrates in that small town Talapur, where he had slipped into his position after his father’s death. His father had been an advocate in his time and had had a grand practice, acquired extensive property in the surrounding villages, and had become a very respectable citizen. The family tradition was that they should graduate at Malgudi in the AlbertMission College, spend two years in Madras for higher studies in the law, and then return each to his own room in their ancient sprawling house.
    This suited Srinivas up to a point. But he always felt suffocated in the atmosphere of that small town. His wife had to put up with endless misery at home through his ways, and his little son looked ragged. They put up with his ways for a considerable time before shooting the question at him. He remembered the day clearly even now. He had settled down in his room with a copy of an Upanishad in his hand. As he grew absorbed in it he forgot his surroundings. He wouldn’t demand anything more of life for a fortnight more, and then he observed his elder brother standing over him. He lowered the book, muttering ‘I didn’t hear you come in. Finished your court?’ And his brother asked: ‘What exactly is it that you wish to do in life?’ Srinivas flushed for a moment, but regained his composure and answered: ‘Don’t you see? There are ten principal Upanishads. I should like to complete the series. This is the third.’
    ‘You are past thirty-seven with a family of your own. Don’t imagine I am not willing to look after them, but they will be far happier if you think of doing something for their sake. They must not feel they are unwanted by you. Don’t think I wish to relieve myself of the responsibility.’ It was a fact: his elder brother looked after the entire family without making any distinction. ‘Such a question should not be fired at me again,’ he said to himself after his brother had left the room. He tried to get reabsorbed in the Upanishad he was reading. His mind echoed with the interview: perhaps something had been happening in the house. His mind wandered from one speculation to another; but he gathered it back to its task:
    ‘Knowing the self as without body among the embodied, the abiding among the transitory, great and all-pervading –’
    said the text before him. On reading it, all his domestic worries and all these questions of prestige seemed ridiculously petty. ‘My children,
my
family,
my
responsibility – must guard
my
prestige and do
my
duties to
my
family – Who am I? This is a far more serious problem than any I have known before. It is a big problem and I have to face it. Till I know who I am, how canI know what I should do? However, some sort of answer should be ready before my brother questions me again –’
    The solution appeared to him in a flash. He knew what he ought to do with himself. Within twenty-four hours he sat in the train for Malgudi, after sending away his wife and son to her parents’ house in the village.
    The old man came out of his prayer and said: ‘Would it be any use asking who you are?’
    ‘I’m from Talapur and I am starting a paper here –’
    ‘What for?’ asked the man suspiciously.
    ‘Just to make money,’ Srinivas replied with a deliberate cynicism which was lost on the old man. He looked