He liked the job very much. He was given a khaki uniform, a resplendent band across his shoulder and a short stick. He gripped the stick and sat down on a stool at the entrance to the office. And when his chief's car pulled up at the gate he stood at attention and gave a military salute.
The office consisted of a staff numbering over a hundred and as they trooped in and out every day he kept an eye on them. At the end of the day he awaited the footsteps of the General Manager coining down the stairs and rose stiffly and stood at attention, and after he left the hundreds of staff poured out. The doors were shut ; Singh carried his stool in, placed it under the staircase, and placed his stick across it. Then he came out and the main door was locked and sealed.
In this way he had spent twenty-five years of service, and then he begged to be pensioned off. He would not have thought of retirement yet, but for the fact that he found his sight and hearing playing tricks on him ; he could not catch the Manager's footsteps on the stairs, and it was hard to recognize him even at ten yards. He was ushered into the presence of the chief, who looked up for a moment from his papers and muttered : " We are very pleased with your work for us, and company will give you a pension of twelve rupees for your life.
This was the second occasion when the great man had spoken to him, the first being on the first day of his service. As he had stood at his post, the chief, entering the office just then, looked up for a moment and asked " Who are you? And he spoke again only on this day. Though so little was said, Singh felt electrified on both occasions by the words of his master.
In Singh's eyes the chief had acquired a sort of Godhood, and it would be quite adequate if a god spoke to one only once or twice in a lifetime. In moments of contemplation Singh's mind dwelt on the words of his master, and on his personality.
His life moved on smoothly. The pension together with what his wife earned by washing and sweeping in a couple of houses was quite sufficient for him. He ate his food, went out and met a few friends, slept, and spent some evenings sitting at a cigarette shop which his cousin owned. This tenor of life was disturbed on the first of every month when he donned his old khaki suit, walked to his old office, and salaamed the Accountant at the counter and received his pension.
Sometimes if it was closing he waited on the roadside for the General Manager to come down, and saluted him as he got into his car. There was a lot of time all around him, an immense sea of leisure. In this state he made a new discovery about himself, that he could make fascinating models out of clay and wood dust.
The discovery came suddenly, when one day a child in the neighbourhood brought to him its little doll for repair. He not only repaired it but made a new thing of it. This discovery pleased him so much that he very soon became absorbed in it.
His backyard gave him a plentiful supply of pliant clay, and the carpenter's shop next to his cousin's cigarette shop sawdust. He purchased paint for a few annas. And lo! He sat there in the front part of his home, bent over his clay, and brought into existence a miniature universe ; all the colours of life were there, all the forms and creatures, but of the size of his middle finger ; whole villages and towns were there, all the persons he had seen passing before his office when he was sentry there that beggar woman coming at midday, and that cucumber vendor ; he had the eye of a cartoonist for human faces.
Everything went down into clay. It was a wonderful miniature re- flection of the world ; and he mounted them neatly on thin wooden slices, which enhanced their attractive- ness.
He kept these in his cousin's shop and they attracted huge crowds every day and sold very briskly. More than the sales Singh felt an ecstasy when he saw admiring crowds clustering around his handiwork.
On his next pension day he carried to his office a street scene which he ranked as his best , and handed it over the counter to the Accountant with the request : " Give this to the Sahib, please! It created a sensation in the office and disturbed the routine of office working for nearly half an hour. On the next pension day he carried another model children at play and handed it over the counter. He made it a convention to carry on every pension day an offering for his master, and each time his greatest reward was the Accountant's stock reply to his question : " What did the Sahib say?
A model of his office frontage with himself at his post, a car at the entrance, and the chief getting down : this composite model was so realistic that while he sat looking at it, he seemed to be carried back to his office days. He passed it over the counter on his pension day and it created a very great sensation in the office. A sudden fear seized Singh and he asked : " The master won't be angry, I hope?
A week later when he was sitting on the fyol kneading clay, the postman came and said : " A registered letter for you. Now a registered letter! This was his first registered letter. Please take it back. I don't want it," said Singh. Shall I say 'Refused'? Singh seemed to have no option but to scrawl his signature and receive the packet.
He sat gloomily gazing at the floor. His wife who had gone out and just returned saw him in this condition and asked : "What is it? He said: "How should I know. Perhaps our ruin. His wife watched him for a moment, went in to attend to some domestic duty and returned, still found him in the same condition, and asked : " Why not open it and see, ask someone to read it?
It cannot be opened. They have perhaps written that my pension is stopped, and God knows what else the Sahib has said. I will never show my face there again. That must also have reached the Sahib's ears. He lost taste for food, wandered about unkempt, with his hair standing up like a halo an unaccustomed sight, his years in military service having given him a habitual tidiness.
His wife lost all peace of mind and became miserable about him. He stood at the cross-roads, clutching the letter in his hand.
He kept asking everyone he came across : " Tell me, what there is in this? As he entered the gate he observed dozens of cars parked along the drive, and a Gurkha watchman at the gate. Some people were sitting on sofas reading books and journals.
They turned and threw a brief look at him and resumed their studies. As Singh stood uncertainly at the doorway, an assistant came up and asked : " What do you want? But Singh replied : " They said you could tell me what's inside without opening it " The assistant asked : " Where do you come from? I knew trouble was coming " There were tears on his cheeks. The assistant looked at him curiously as scores of others had done before, smiled, and said : " Go home and rest. You are not all right. Go, go home.
The assistant took it in his hand, examined it and said : " Shall I open it? There was a look of terror in his eyes. The assembly looked up from their pages and watched him with mild amusement in their eyes.
The assistant kindly put his arms on his shoulder and led him out. I tell you are not all right. That's it, is that it? He now understood the looks that people threw at him. He laughed. He felt a curious relief at this realization.
Every little action of his for the last so many days seemed mad ; particularly the doll- making. He wanted to fly. He swung his arms up and down and ran on with a whoop. He ran through the Market Road. When people stood about and watched he cried : " Hey, don't laugh at a mad man, for who knows, you will also be mad when you come to make clay dolls," and charged into their midst with a war cry. When he saw children coming out of a school, he felt it would be nice to amuse their young hearts by behaving like a tiger.
So he fell on his hands and kneels and crawled up to them with a growl. He went home in a terrifying condition. His wife who was grinding chilly in the backyard looked up and asked : " What is this? He could not answer because he choked with mirth as he said : " Fancy what has happened!
Ranged on the floor was his latest handiwork. After his last visit to the office he had been engaged in making a model village. It was a resplendent group ; a dun road, red tiles, green coconut trees swaying, and the colour of the sarees of the village women carrying water pots. He derived the inspiration for it from a memory of his own village days.
It was the most enjoyable piece of work that he had so far undertaken. He lived in a kind of ecstasy while doing it. A memento of my father's village," he declared. He raised his foot and stamped everything down into a multi-coloured jam. They were still half wet. He saw a donkey grazing in the street.
It is a nice village. This was a quieter outing. He strode on at an even pace, breathing deeply, with the clay helmet on, out of which peeped his grey hair, his arms locked behind, his fingers clutching the fateful letter, his face tilted towards the sky. He walked down the Market Road, with a feeling that he was the sole occupant of this globe : his madness had given him a sense of limitless freedom, strength and buoyancy.
The remarks and jeers of the crowds gaping at him did not in the least touch him. While he walked thus, his eye fell on the bulb of a tall street lamp : " Bulb of the size of a Papaya fruit! It had been a long cherished desire in him to fling a stone at it ; now he felt, in his joyous and free condition, that he was free from the trammels of convention and need not push back any inclination.
He picked up a pebble and threw it with good aim. The shattering noise of glass was as music to his ears. A policeman put his hand on his shoulder : " Why did you do it? The constable said : " Come to the station. He paused, tilted his head to the side and remarked : " This road is not straight He found that everything was wrong about them.
They seemed to need some advice in the matter. He stopped in the middle of the road, stretched out his arms and shouted : " Halt! One of the cyclists who resumed, jumped off the saddle again and came towards him with : " Why! It is Singh, Singh, what fancy dress is this? What is the matter? Singh clicked his heels and gave a salute : " Excuse me sir, didn't intend to stop you.
You may pass. He recognized it although it was mud-stained and crumpled. Do not speak of it. A big crowd gathered to watch this scene. Singh pressed the letter to his eyes. He beat his brow, and wailed : " Tell me, sir, am I mad or not? Singh fell at his feet and said with tears choking his voice : " You are a god, sir, to say that I am not mad.
I am so happy to hear it. As they handed him the envelope they asked : " What toys are you making now? Never again. It is no occupation for a sane man. I wandered up and down the country probing, exploring, and digging, in search of antiquities, a most interesting occupation, although cynics sometimes called us " grave-diggers.
I had a master who was a famous archaeologist called Doctor something or other. He was a superb, timeless being, who lived a thousand years behind the times, and who wanted neither food nor roof nor riches if only he was allowed to gaze on undisturbed at an old coin or chip of a burial urn.
He had torn up the earth in almost all parts of India and had brought to light very valuable information concerning the history and outlook of people of remote centuries. His monographs on each of his excavations filled several shelves in all the important libraries. And then, as our good fortune would have it, he received an inspiration that Malgudi district was eminently diggable. I am not competent to explain how he got this idea, but there it was.
Word was brought to me that the great man was staying in the dak bungalow and was in need of an assistant. Within an hour of hearing it I stood before the great man. He was sitting on the floor with the most crazy collection of articles in front of him pots and beads and useless coins and palm leaves, all of them rusty and decaying.
He had a lens by his side, through which he looked at these articles and made notes. He asked me : " What do you know of the archaeological factors of your district?
Honestly I didn't know there was any archaeology in our place. He looked at me through his old spectacles, and I realized that my living depended upon my answer. I mustered up all the knowledge of elementary history I had acquired in my boyhood, and replied : " Well, nothing has so far been done in any methodical manner, although now and then we come across some ignorant villagers ploughing up old unusual bits of pottery and metal.
He engaged me on the spot at fifty rupees a month, and my main business was to follow him about and help him. I had my wits alive, and within a month I was in a position to lead him by the hand. Not the slightest object escaped my notice. I picked up everything I saw, cleaned and polished it, and held it up for his opinion. Most times, I am sorry to confess, they were useless bits of stuff of known origin namely, our own times.
But I am glad to say that once I scored a hit. We camped one week-end at Siral a village sixty miles from the town. It is a lovely ancient place, consisting of a hundred houses. Sarayu River winds its way along the northern boundary of the village. The river here is broader than it is anywhere else in the district. On the other bank of the river we have the beginnings of a magnificent jungle of bamboo and teak.
The most modern structure in the place was a small two- roomed inspection lodge. The doctor occupied one room and I the other. We were scouting the surroundings for a mound under which was supposed to be a buried city.
This discovery was going to push the earliest known civilization three centuries farther back and rival Mohenjadaro in antiquity. We might be pardoned if we set about our business with some intensity. Our doctor some- how seemed to possess an inexplicable feeling of rivalry with the discoverers of Mohenjadaro and such other places. His greatest desire was to have a monopoly of the earliest known civilization and place it where he chose.
This seemed to me a slight weak- ness in his nature, but pardonable in a great man, who had done so much else in life. This is all beside the point. Let me get on with the story. One day I had gone to the river for a bathe. It was an exhilarating evening ; I had done a good day's work, assisting the doctor to clean up and study a piece of stained glass picked up in a field outside the village.
The doctor kept gazing at this glass all day. He constantly shook his head and said : " This is easily the most important piece of work which has come under my notice. This bit of glass you see is not ordinary archaeological stuff, but a very important link. This piece of glass is really Florentian, which went out of vogue in A. How did this come here?
It is not found anywhere else in the world. If the identity of this is established properly we may ultimately have a great deal to say about the early Roman Empire and this part of India.
This will revolutionize our whole knowledge of history. He trembled with excitement and lost all taste for food. He kept on muttering : " We must tread warily and not overlook the slightest evidence. Keep your eyes open. We are on the eve of great discoveries. I was in this state when I plunged into the waters of Sarayu that evening. I am a good diver. As I went down my hand struck against a hard object in the sandy bed.
Feeling with my fingers, I found it to be a stone image. When I came to the surface again I came up bearing that image with me. Dripping with water, I sat on the river step, without even drying myself, and examined the image. He keenly examined it by our tin lantern. It was a stone image a foot high, which had acquired a glass- like smoothness, having been under water for years.
It had an arm, an eye, the nose, and the mouth missing. There were a few details of ornament and drapery which the doctor examined with special care. It was 3 a. An hour later the doctor peeped in at my doorway and announced : " This is a Roman statue. How it came to be found in these parts is an historical fact we have to wrest from evidence. It is going to give an entirely new turn to Indian history. Papers were read before historical associations and conferences.
I came to be looked upon as a sort of saviour of Indian history. For the doctor insisted upon giving me my due share of fame.
University honours came my way. I was offered lucrative positions here and there. It would be out' of place to go into the details that led to this conclusion : but you need have no doubt that the doctor had excellent reasons for it. Besides the study of the image itself he went through some Roman texts which mentioned South India.
For the next few months we toured about a great deal lecturing on this subject and demonstrating. I went with my doctor to Madras and started work on a monograph on the subject. It was to be a monumental work covering over a thousand pages of demy size, full of photographs and sketches. You can understand why it should be so big when I tell you that it was going to be a combined work on early Roman history, Indian history, archaeology, and epigraphy. My name was going to appear as the joint author of the work.
I realized that here was my future fame, position, and perhaps some money too. The doctor left me in entire charge of this work and went away to Upper India to continue a piece of work which he had already been doing. I sat in a large library the whole day, examining, investigating, studying, and writing. I became a fairly important person in learned societies.
I worked from seven in the morning to eleven in the evening almost without a break, and throughout the day I had visits from people interested in the discovery. Papers and journals contained paragraphs now and then "Archaeologist assistant working on monograph. And then there came a time when the press could announce : " Monograph on which has been working for months now will be ready for publication in ten days. It is expected that this is going to make the richest contribution to Indian history.
My eyes were nearly gone. I looked forward to the end of the work ; and then as my doctor wrote : " You can have a holiday for three months in any hill station you like and forget the whole business It was at this stage that I had to visit Siral once again. I left my work at that and hurried to the village.
I plunged into the river and came up. I sat on the river step, still dripping with water, noting down figures, when a stranger came and sat near me. We fell to talking, and I told him about my work, in the hope of drawing out further facts. He was a rustic, and he listened to me without emotion. At the end of my narration he remained peculiarly moody and asked me to repeat facts about the image.
He com- pressed his lips and asked : " Where do you say it came from? He stood still, puzzled, and I amplified : " Where the European people live " " I don't know about that but if it is the image which you found in these parts I can tell you something about it.
It is without nose and arm, isn't it? He said : " Follow me, if you want to know anything more about this image. We reached a hamlet a mile off. He stopped in front of a little shrine and said : " That image belonged to this temple.
We had to go stooping into it because of its narrow doorway and low roof. At the inner sanctum there was an image of Mari with a garland of yellow chrysanthemums around her neck, lit by a faint wick lamp. On one side of the sanctum doorway stood a dwarapalaka doorkeeper a winged creature a foot high. My friend pointed at the image and said : " This formed a pair with the one you picked up, and it used to adorn that side of the doorway.
I noticed a pedestal without anything on it. A doubt seized me. He brought down the wick lamp ; I examined by its flickering light the dwarapalaka. This image was exactly like the image I had found, but without its injuries. You see that hillock? Its stone is made into images all over the world, and at its foot is a village where they make images.
I went over to the village and sat up night and day for two months and , got the pair done. I watched them take shape before my eyes. And then we collected about fifty rupees and gave it to him. We wanted to improve this temple.
I sat down on the temple step. I thought you'd be pleased to know these things," he said, watching me. For this we went to the court and had the priest dismissed and fined.
He cannot come near the temple now. We spent one thousand rupees in lawyer fees alone ; we were prepared to spend all our fortune if only to see that priest removed. It went up to Malgudi court we got a vakil from Madras. Morning till night he was drinking, and he performed all the puja in that condition. We did not know what to do with him. We just tolerated him, hoping that some day the goddess would teach him a lesson.
We did not like to be too harsh, since he was a poor fellow, and he went about his duties quietly. But when we added these two dwarapalakas at the doorway he got a queer notion in his head.
He used to say that the two doorkeepers constantly harried him by staring at him wherever he went. He said that their look pricked him in the neck. This went on for months. In course of time he began to shudder whenever he had to pass these doorkeepers. It was an acute moment of suspense for him when he had to cross that pair and get into the sanctum. Gradually he complained that if he ever took his eyes off these figures they butted him from behind, kicked him, and pulled his hair, and so forth.
He was afraid to look anywhere else and walked on cautiously with his eyes on the images. But if he had his eyes on one, the other knocked him from behind. He showed us bruises and scratches sometimes. We declared we might treat his complaints seriously if he ever went into the shrine without a drop of drink in him. In course of time he started to seek his own remedy.
He carried a small mallet with him, and whenever he got a knock he returned the blow ; it fell on a nose today, on an arm tomorrow, and on an ear another day. We didn't notice his handiwork for months. Judging from the mallet blows, the image on the left side seems to have been the greater offender. Next morning he declared he saw it walk off and plunge into the river. He must have felt that this would serve as a lesson to the other image if it should be thinking of any trick.
But the other image never got its chance. For we dragged the priest before a law court and had him sent away. It took time for me to recover. I asked : " Didn't you have to pick up the image from the water and show it to the judge? I did not know till this moment where exactly it could be found. The doctor had just returned for a short stay. I told him everything. He was furious. I didn't know what to say. I mumbled : "I am so sorry, sir. We stood frowning at the roaring fire for a moment, and then he asked, pointing at the image : " And what will you do with it?
After all, you picked it up from the water that piece of nonsense! I had never seen him in such a rage before. I wrapped the image in a piece of brown paper, carried it to the seashore, and flung it far into the sea. I hope it is still rolling about at the bottom of the Bay of Bengal. I only hope it won't get into some large fish and come back to the study table! Later a brief message appeared in all the important papers : " 'The manuscript on which Doctor and assistant were engaged has been destroyed, and the work will be suspended.
THE BLIND DOG IT was not a very impressive or high-class dog ; it was one of those commonplace dogs one sees everywhere colour of white and dust, tail mutilated at a young age by God knows whom, born in the street, and bred on the leavings and garbage of the market-place.
He had spotty eyes and undistinguished carriage and needless pugnacity. Before he was two years old he had earned the scars of a hundred fights on his body. When he needed rest on hot afternoons he lay curled up under the culvert at the eastern gate of the market.
In the evenings he set out on his daily rounds, loafed in the surrounding streets and lanes, engaged himself in skirmishes, picked up edibles on the roadside, and was back at the market gate by nightfall. This life went on for three years. And then occurred a change in his life.
A beggar, blind of both eyes, appeared at the market gate. An old woman led him up there early in the morning, seated him at the gate, and came up again at midday with some food, gathered his coins, and took him home at night.
The dog was sleeping near by. He was stirred by the smell of food. He got up, came out of his shelter, and stood before the blind man, wagging his tail and gazing expectantly at the bowl, as he was eating his sparse meal. The blind man swept his arms about and asked : " Who is there? The blind man stroked its coat gently tail to ear and said : " What a beauty you are.
Come with me " He threw a handful of food which the dog ate gratefully. It was perhaps an auspicious moment for starting a friendship. They met every day there, and the dog cut off much of its rambling to sit up beside the blind man and watch him receive alms morning to evening.
In course of time observing him, the dog understood that the passers-by must give a coin, and whoever went away without dropping a coin was chased by the dog ; he tugged the edge of their clothes by his teeth and pulled them back to the old man at the gate and let go only after something was dropped in his bowl.
Among those who frequented this place was a village urchin, who had the mischief of a devil in him. He liked to tease the blind man by calling him names and by trying to pick up the coins in his bowl. The blind man helplessly shouted and cried and whirled his staff.
On Thursdays this boy appeared at the gate, carrying on his head a basket loaded with cucumber or plantain. Every Thursday afternoon it was a crisis in the blind man's life. A seller of bright coloured but doubtful perfumes with his wares mounted on a wheeled platform, a man who spread out cheap story-books on a gunny sack, another man who carried coloured ribbons on an elaborate frame these were the people who usually gathered under the same arch.
On a Thursday when the young man appeared at the Eastern gate one of them remarked, " Blind fellow! Here comes your scourge " "Oh, God, is this Thursday? He swept his arms about and called : " Dog, dog, come here, where are you? He stroked his head and muttered : " Don't let that little rascal " At this very moment the boy came up with a leer on his face.
Still pretending you have no eyes. If you are really blind, you should not know this either " He stopped, his hand moving towards the bowl. The dog sprang on him and snapped his jaws on wrist. The boy extricated his hand and ran for his life. The dog bounded up behind him and chased him out of the market. One evening at the usual time the old woman failed to turn up, and the blind man waited at the gate, worrying as the evening grew into night. As he sat fretting there, a neighbour came up and said : " Sami, don't wait for the old woman.
She will not come again. She died this afternoon " The blind man lost the only home he had, and the only person who cared for him in this world. The ribbon-vendor suggested : " Here, take this white tape " He held a length of the white cord which he had been selling " I will give this to you free of cost. Tie it to the dog and let him lead you about if he is really so fond of you " Life for the dog took a new turn now.
He came to take the place of the old woman. He lost his freedom completely. His world came to be circumscribed by the limits of the white cord which the ribbon-vendor had spared. He had to forget wholesale all his old life all his old haunts. He simply had to stay on for ever at the end of that string. When he saw other dogs, friends or foes, instinctively he sprang up, tugging the string, and this invariably earned him a kick from his master. He ceased to take notice of other dogs, even if they came up and growled at his side.
If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to fiction, short stories lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Narayan Free Download pages Author R.
Narayan Submitted by: Jane Kivik. Read Online Download. What readers are saying What do you think? Write your own comment on this book! Write your own comment on this author! Book list 2 books. Sort books: Title Year Rating. In Mr. Sampath, a newspaper man tries to keep his paper afloat in the face of social and economic changes sweeping India.
Narayan writes of youth and young adulthood in the semiautobiographical Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. Show more. But before he can blink twice, she drops dead in the local grocery market.
Now he's stuck with her ghost, and her little dog, too. Townie girls and summer boys just don't mix, and she's learned that the hard way. What do you think?
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