IN FATHER'S PRESENCE !!

DURING summer Malgudi was one of the most detested towns in South India.
Sometimes the heat went above a hundred and ten in the shade, and between
twelve and three any day in summer the dusty blanched roads were deserted.
Even donkeys and dogs, the most vagrant of animals, preferred to move to
the edge of the street, where cat-walks and minor projections from buildings cast a
sparse strip of shade, when the fierce sun tilted towards the west. But there is this
peculiarity about heat: it appears to affect only those that think of it. Swaminathan,
Mani and Rajam would have been surprised if anybody had taken the trouble to
prove to them that the Malgudi sun was unbearable. They found the noon and the
afternoon the most fascinating part of the day. The same sun that beat down on the
head of Mr. Hentel, the mill manager, and drove him to Kodaikanal, or on the
turban of Mr. Krishnan, the Executive Engineer, and made him complain that his
profession was one of the hardest, compelling him to wander in sun and storm,
beat down on Swaminathan's curly head, Mani's tough matted hair, and Rajam's
short wiry crop, and left them unmoved. The same sun that baked the earth so
much that even Mr. Retty, the most Indianised of the 'Europeans', who owned a
rice mill in the deserted bungalow outside the town (he was, by the way, the
mystery man of the place: nobody could say who he was or where he had come
from; he swore at his boy and at his customers in perfect Tamil and always moved
about in shirt, shorts, and sandalled feet) screamed one day when he forgetfully
took a step or two barefoot, the same sun made the three friends loathe to remain
under a roof.
They were sitting on a short culvert, half a mile outside the municipal limits,
on the Trunk Road. A streak of water ran under the culvert on a short stretch of sand, and mingled with Sarayu farther down. There was no tree where they sat,
and the sun struck their heads directly. On the sides of the road there were paddy
fields; but now all that remained was scorched stubble, vast stretches of stubble,
relieved here and there by clustering groves of mango or coco-nut. The Trunk
Road was deserted but for an occasional country cart lumbering along head for ten
minutes, if you want me to do it as a punishment. I only pretended to scratch
Swami to show the coachman's boy that I was his enemy.'
A jingling was now heard. A close mat-covered cart drawn by a white
bullock was coming down the road. When it had come within a yard of the culvert,
they rose, advanced, stood in a row, and shouted: 'Pull up the animal, will you?'
The cart driver was a little village boy.
'Stop the cart, you fool,' cried Rajam.
'If he does not stop, we shall arrest him and confiscate his cart.' This was
Swaminathan.
The cart driver said: 'Boys, why do you stop me?'
'Don't talk,' Mani commanded, and with a serious face went round the cart
and examined the wheels. He bent down and scrutinised the bottom of the cart:
'Hey, cart man, get down.'
'Boys, I must go,' pleaded the driver.
Whom do you address as "boys"?' asked Rajam menacingly. 'Don't you
know who we are?'
'We are the Government Police out to catch humbugs like you,' added
Swaminathan.
'I shall shoot you if you say a word,' said Rajam to the young driver.
Though the driver was incredulous, he felt that there must be something in what
they said.
Mani tapped a wheel and said: 'The culvert is weak, we can't let you go
over it unless you show us the pass.'
The cart driver jabbered: 'Please, sirs, let me--I have to be there.'
'Shut up,' Rajam commanded.
Swaminathan examined the animal and said: 'Come here.'
The cart driver was loath to get down. Mani dragged him from his seat and
gave him a push towards Swaminathan. Swaminathan scowled at him, and
pointing at the sides of the animal, asked: 'Why have you not washed the animal,
you blockhead?'
The villager replied timidly: 'I have washed the animal, sir.
'But why is this here?' Swaminathan asked, pointing at a brown patch.
'Oh, that! The animal has had it since its birth, sir.'
'Birth? Are you trying to teach me?' Swaminathan shouted and raised his
leg to kick the cart driver.
They showed signs of relenting.
'Give the rascal a pass, and be done with him,' Rajam conceded
graciously. Swaminathan took out a pencil stub and a grubby pocket-book that he
always carried about him on principle. It was his habit to note down all sorts of
things: the number of cycles that passed him, the number of people going barefoot,
the number going with sandals or shoes on, and so forth.
He held the paper and pencil ready. Mani took hold of the rope of the
bullock, pushed it back, and turned it the other way round. The cart driver
protested. But Mani said: 'Don't worry. It has got to stand here. This is the
boundary.'
'I have to go this way, sir.'
'You can turn it round and go.'
What is your name?' asked Rajam.
'Karuppan,' answered the boy.
Swaminathan took it down.
'I don't know, sir.'
'You don't know? Swami, write a hundred,' said Rajaro 'No sir, no sir, I am
not a hundred.'
'Mind your business and hold your tongue. You are a hundred. I will kill you
if you say no. What is your bullock's name?'
'I don't know, sir.'
'Swami write "Karuppan" again.'
'Sir, that is my name, not the bullock's.'
They ignored this and Swaminathan wrote 'Karuppan' against the name of
the bullock.
'Where are you going?'
'Sethur.'
Swaminathan wrote it down.
'How long will you stay there?'
'It is my place, sir.'
'If that is so, what brought you here?'
'Our headman sent ten bags of coco-nut to the Railway Shed.'
Swaminathan entered every word in his note-book. Then all the three
signed the page, tore it off, gave it to the cart driver, and permitted him to start.
Much to Swaminathan's displeasure, his father's courts closed in the
second week of May, and father began to spend the afternoons at home.
Swaminathan feared that it might interfere with his afternoon rambles with Rajam
and Mani. And it did. On the very third day of his vacation, father commanded
Swaminathan, just as he was stepping out of the house: 'Swami, come here.'
Father was standing in the small courtyard, wearing a dhoti and a banian,
the dress, which, for its very homeliness, Swaminathan detested to see him in; it
indicated that he did not intend going out in the near future.
'Where are you going?'
'Nowhere.'
Where were you yesterday at this time?'
'Here.'
"You are lying. You were not here yesterday. And you are not going out
now.'
'That is right,' mother added, just appearing from some where, 'there is no
limit to his loafing in the sun. He will die of sunstroke if he keeps on like this.'
Father would have gone on even without mother's encouragement. But
now her words spurred him to action. Swaminathan was asked to follow him to his
'room' in his father's dressing-room.
'How many days is it since you have touched your books?' father asked as
he blew off the fine layer of dust on Swaminathan's books, and cleared the web
that an industrious spider was weaving between a corner of the table and the pile
of books.
Swaminathan viewed this question as a gross breach of promise.
'Should I read even when I have no school?'
'Do you think you have passed the B. A.?' father asked.
'I mean, father, when the school is closed, when there is no examination,
even then should I read?'
'What a question! You must read.'
'But, father, you said before the examinations that I needn't read after they
were over. Even Rajam does not read.'
As he uttered the last sentence, he tried to believe it; he clearly
remembered Rajam's complaining bitterly of a home tutor who came and pestered
him for two hours a day thrice a week. Father was apparently deaf to
Swaminathan's remarks. He stood over Swaminathan and set him to dust his
books and clean his table. Swaminathan vigorously started blowing off the dust
from the book covers. He caught the spider carefully, and took it to the window to throw it out. He held it outside the window and watched it for a while. It was
swinging from a strand that gleamed in a hundred delicate tints.
'Look sharp! Do you want a whole day to throw out the spider?' father
asked. Swaminathan suddenly realised that he might have the spider as his pet
and that it would be a criminal waste to throw it out. He secretly slipped it into his
pocket and, after shaking an empty hand outside the window, returned to his duty
at the desk.
'Look at the way you have kept your English Text! Are you not ashamed of
yourself?' Swaminathan picked up the oily red-bound Fourth Reader, opened it,
and banged together the covers, in order to shake off the dust, and then robbed
violently the oily covers with his palm.
'Get a piece of cloth, boy. That is not the way to clean things. Get a piece
of cloth, Swami,' father said, half kindly and half impatiently.
Swaminathan looked about and complained, 'I can't find any here, father.'
'Run and see.'
This was a welcome suggestion. Swaminathan hurried out. He first went to
his grandmother.
'Granny, get me a piece of cloth, quick.'
Where am I to go for a piece of cloth?'
'Where am I to go?' he asked peevishly and added quite irrelevantly, 'if one
has go t to read even during holidays, I don't see why holidays are given at all.'
'What is the matter?'
This was his opportunity to earn some sympathy. He almost wept as he
said: 'I don't know what Rajam and Mani will think, waiting for me there, if I keep on
fooling here. Granny, if father cannot find any work to do, why shouldn't he go and
sleep?'
Father shouted across the hall: 'Did you find the cloth?'
Swaminathan answered: 'Granny hasn't got it. I shall see if mother has.'
His mother was sitting in the back corridor on a mat, with the baby sleeping on her
lap. Swaminathan glared at her. Her advice to her husband a few minutes ago
rankled in his heart. 'You are a fine lady, mother,' he said in an undertone, 'why
don't you leave us, poor folk, alone?'
'What?' she asked, unconscious of the sarcasm, and having forgotten what
she had said to her husband a few minutes ago.
'You needn't have gone and carried tales against me. I don't know what I
have done to you.' He would have enjoyed prolonging this talk, but father was
waiting for the duster.
'Can you give me a piece of cloth?' he asked, coming to business.
'What cloth?'
'What cloth! How should I know? It seems I have got to tidy up those--
those books of mine. A fine way of spending the holidays!'
'I can't get any now.'
'Hmm. You can't, can't you?' He looked about. There was a piece of cloth
under the baby. In a flash, he stooped, rolled the baby over, pulled out the cloth,
and was off. He held his mother responsible for all his troubles, and disturbing the
baby and snatching its cloth gave him great relief.
With a fierce satisfaction he tilted the table and tipped all the things on it
over the floor, and then picked them up one by one, and arranged them on the
table. Father watched him: 'Is this how you arrange things? You have kept all the
light things at the bottom and the heavy ones on top. Take out those note-books.
Keep the Atlas at the bottom.' Mother came in with the baby in her arms and
complained to father, 'Look at that boy, he has taken the baby's cloth. Is there
nobody to control him, in this house? I wonder how long his school is going to be
kept closed.' Swaminathan continued his work with concentrated interest. Father was pleased to ignore mother's complaint; he merely pinched the sleeping baby's
cheeks, at which mother was annoyed and left the room.
Half an hour later Swaminathan sat in his father's room in a chair, with a
slate in his hand and pencil ready. Father held the arithmetic book open and
dictated: ' "Rama has ten mangoes with which he wants to earn fifteen annas.
Krishna wants only four mangoes. How much will Krishna have to pay?"'
Swaminathan gazed and gazed at this sum, and every time he read it, it
seemed to acquire a new meaning. He had the feeling of having stepped into a
fearful maze.... His mouth began to water at the thought of mangoes. He wondered
what made Rama fix fifteen annas for ten mangoes. What kind of a man was
Rama? Probably he was like Sankar. Somehow one couldn't help feeling that he
must have been like Sankar, with his ten mangoes and his iron determination to get
fifteen annas. If Rama was like Sankar, Krishna must have been like the Pea. Here
Swaminathan felt an unaccountable sympathy for Krishna.
'Have you done the sum?' father asked, looking over the newspaper he
was reading.
'Father, will you tell me if the mangoes were ripe?'
Father regarded him for a while and smothering a smile remarked: 'Do the
sum first. I will tell you whether the fruits were ripe or not, afterwards.'
Swaminathan felt utterly helpless. If only father would tell him whether
Rama was trying to sell ripe fruits or unripe ones! Of what avail would it be to tell
him afterwards? He felt strongly that the answer to this question contained the key
to the whole problem. It would be scandalous to expect fifteen annas for ten unripe
mangoes. But even if he did; it wouldn't be unlike Rama, whom Swaminathan was
steadily beginning to hate and invest with the darkest qualities.
'Father, I cannot do the sum,' Swaminathan said, pushing away the slate.
'What is th e matter with you? You can't solve a simple problem in Simple
Proportion?'
'We are not taught this kind of thing in our school.'
'Get the slate here. I will make you give the answer now.'
Swaminathan waited with interest for the miracle to happen. Father studied
the sum for a second and asked: 'What is the price of ten mangoes?'
Swaminathan looked over the sum to find out which part of the sum
contained an answer to this question. 'I don't know.'
'You seem to be an extraordinary idiot. Now read the sum. Come on. How
much does Rama expect for ten mangoes?'
'Fifteen annas of course,' Swaminathan thought, but how could that be its
price, just price? It was very well for Rama to expect it in his avarice. But was it the
right price? And then there was the obscure point whether the mangoes were ripe
or not. If they were ripe, fifteen annas might not be an improbable price. If only he
could get more light on this point!
'How much does Rama want for his mangoes?'
'Fifteen annas,' replied Swaminathan without conviction.
Very good. How many mangoes does Krishna want?'
'Four.'
'What is the price of four?'
Father seemed to delight in torturing him. How could he know? How could
he know what that fool Krishna would pay?
'Look here, boy. I have half a mind to thrash you. What have you in your
head? Ten mangoes cost fifteen annas. What is the price of one? Come on. If you
don't say it--' His hand took Swaminathan's ear and gently twisted it. Swaminathan
could not open his mouth because he could not decide whether the solution lay in
the realm of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. The longer he
hesitated, the more violent the twist was becoming. In the end when father was
waiting with a scowl for an answer, he received only a squeal from his son. 'I am
not going to leave you till you tell me how much a single mango costs at fifteen annas for ten.' What was the matter with father? Swaminathan kept blinking. Where
was the urgency to know its price? Anyway, if father wanted so badly to know,
instead of harassing him, let him go to the market and find it out.
The whole brood of Ramas and Krishnas, with their endless transactions
with odd quantities of mangoes and fractions of money, were getting disgusting.
Father admitted defeat by declaring: 'One mango costs fifteen over ten
annas. Simplify it.'
Here he was being led to the most hideous regions of arithmetic, Fractions.
'Give me the slate, father. I will find it out.' He worked and found at the end of
fifteen minutes: 'The price of one mango is three over two annas.' He expected to
be contradicted any moment. But father said: 'Very good, simplify it further.' It was
plain sailing after that. Swaminathan announced at the end of half an hour's agony:
'Krishna must pay six annas,' and burst into tears.
At five o'clock when he was ready to start for the club, Swaminathan's
father felt sorry for having worried his son all the afternoon. 'Would you like to come
with me to the club, boy?' he asked when he saw Swaminathan sulking behind a
pillar with a woebegone face. Swaminathan answered by disappearing for a minute
and reappearing dressed in his coat and cap. Father surveyed him from head to
foot and remarked: 'Why can't you be a little more tidy?' Swaminathan writhed
awkwardly.
'Lakshmi,' father called, and said to mother when she came: 'there must be
a clean dress for the boy in the box. Give him something clean.'
'Please don't worry about it now. He is all right. Who is to open the box?
The keys are somewhere.... I have just mixed milk for the baby--' said mother.
'What has happened to all his dresses?'
'What dresses? You haven't bought a square inch of cloth since last
summer.'
What do you mean? What has happened to all the pieces of twill I bought a
few months ago?' he demanded vaguely, making a mental note at the same time,
to take the boy to the tailor on Wednesday evening. Swaminathan was relieved to
find his mother reluctant to get him a fresh dress, since he had an obscure dread
that his father would leave him behind and go away if he went in to change.
A car hooted in front of the house. Father snatched his tennis racket from a
table and rushed out, followed by Swaminathan. A gentleman, wearing a blazer
that appealed to Swaminathan, sat at the wheel, and said: 'Good evening,' with a
grin. Swaminathan was at first afraid that this person might refuse to take him in
the car. But his fears were dispelled by the gentleman's saying amiably: 'Hallo,
Srinivasan, are you bringing your boy to the club? Right 0!' Swaminathan sat in the
back seat while his father and his friend occupied the front.
The car whizzed along. Swaminathan was elated and wished that some of
his friends could see him then. The car slid into a gate and came to a stop amidst
half a dozen other cars.
He watched his father playing tennis, and came to the conclusion that he
was the best player in all the three courts that were laid side by side. Swaminathan
found that whenever his father hit the ball, his opponents were unable to receive it
and so let it go and strike the screen. He also found that the picker's life was one of
grave risks. | Swaminathan fell into a pleasant state of mind. The very fact that he
was allowed to be present there and watch the play gave him a sense of
importance. He would have something to say to his friends tomorrow. He slowly
moved and stood near the screen behind his father. Before stationing himself
there, he wondered for a moment if the little fellow in khaki dress might not object.
But the little fellow was busy picking up balls and throwing them at the players.
Swaminathan stayed there for about ten minutes. His father's actions were clearer
to watch from behind, and the twang of his racket when hitting the ball was very
pleasing to the ear.
For a change Swaminathan stood looking at the boy in khaki dress. As he
gazed, his expression changed. He blinked fast as if he disbelieved his eyes. It was
the coachman's son, only slightly transformed by the khaki dress! Now the boy had
turned and seen him. He grinned maliciously and hastily took out of his pocket a
penknife, and held it up. Swaminathan was seized with cold fear. He moved away
fast, unobtrusively, to his former place, which was at a safe distance from his
enemy. After the set when his father walked towards the building, Swaminathan
took care to walk a little in front of him and not behind, as he feared that he might
get a stab any minute in his back.
'Swami, don't go in front. You are getting between my legs.' Swaminathan
obeyed with a reluctant heart. He kept shooting glances sideways and behind. He
stooped and picked up a stone, a sharp stone, and held it ready for use if any
emergency should arise. The distance from the tennis court to the building was
about a dozen yards, but to Swaminathan it seemed to be a mile and a half.
He felt safe when he sat in a chair beside his father in the card-room. A
thick cloud of smoke floated in the air. Father was shuffling and throwing cards with
great zest. This was the safest place on earth. There was father and any number of
his friends, and let the coachman's son try a hand if he liked. A little later
Swaminathan looked out of the window and felt disturbed at the sight of the stars. It
would be darker still by the time the card game was finished and father rose to go
home.
An hour later father rose from the table. Swaminathan was in a highly
nervous state when he got down the last steps of the building. There were
unknown dangers lurking m the darkness around. He was no doubt secure
between father and his friend. That thought was encouraging. But Swaminathan
felt at the same time that it would have been better if all the persons in the card-
room had escorted him to the car. He needed all the guarding he could get, and some more. Probably by this time the boy had gone out and brought a huge gang
of assassins and was waiting for him.
He could not walk in front as, in addition to getting between his father's
legs, he had no idea which way they had to go for the car. Following his father was
out of the question, as he might not reach the car at all. He walked in a peculiar
sidestep which enabled him to see before him and behind him simultaneously. The
distance was interminable. He decided to explain the danger to father and seek his
protection.
'Father.'
Well, boy?'
Swaminathan suddenly decided that his father had better not know
anything about the coachman's son, however serious the situation might be.
'What do you want, boy?' father asked again.
'Father, are we going home now?'
'Yes.'
'Walking?'
'No. The car is there, near the gate.'
When they came to the car, Swaminathan got in first and occupied the
centre of the back seat. He was still in suspense. Father's friend was taking time to
start the car. Swaminathan was sitting all alone in the back seat, very far behind
father and his friend. Even now, the coachman's son and his gang could easily pull
him out and finish him.
The car started. When its engine rumbled, it sounded to Swaminathan's
ears like the voice of a saviour. The car was outside the gate now and picked up
speed. Swaminathan lifted a corner of his dhoti and mopped his brow.