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

for the moment to finish the work on hand, and reached out for a tablet on which to note down his points.
    Srinivas decided to spend the next day completely at home. The day after the issue of the journal must be a holiday. ‘I must remember I’m a family man,’ he told himself. Next morning he surprised his wife by lying on in bed. His wife woke him up at seven-thirty. ‘Don’t you have to get up?’
    ‘No, my dear sir!’ he said. ‘It is a holiday. I won’t go near the office today.’ She let out a quiet little cry of happiness. ‘Will you be at home all day?’
    ‘Absolutely.’ She called: ‘Ramu, Ramu,’ and their little son came in from somewhere. ‘What is it, Mother?’
    ‘Your father is not going to his office today.’
    ‘Why, Father?’ he asked, looking at him dubiously. Srinivas had no ready answer to give. He was really very pleased to see the effect of his decision. ‘Well, now run off; I will sleep for half an hour more and then you will know.’
    The boy picked up his top and string and ran out again. Srinivas shut his eyes and let himself drown in the luxury of inactivity. Mixed sounds reached him – his wife in the kitchen, his son’s voice far off, arguing with a friend, the clamour of assertions and appeals at the water-tap, a pedlar woman crying ‘Brinjals and greens’ in the street – all these sounds mingled and wove into each other. Following each one to its root and source, one could trace it to a human aspiration and outlook. ‘The vegetable-seller is crying because in her background is her home and children whose welfare is moulded by the amount of brinjals she is able to scatter into society, and there now somebody is calling her and haggling with her. Some old man very fond of them, some schoolboy making a wry face over the brinjal, diversity of tastes, the housewife striking the greatest measure of agreement, and managing thus – seeing in the crier a welcome solution to her problems of house-keeping, and now trying to give away as little of her money as possible in exchange – therein lies her greatest satisfaction. What great human forces meet and come to grips with each other between every sunrise and sunset!’ Srinivas was filled with great wonder at the multitudinousness and vastness of the whole picture of life that this presented; tracing each noise to its source and to its conclusion back and forth, one got a picture, which was too huge even to contemplate. The vastness and infiniteness of it stirred Srinivas deeply. ‘That’s clearly too big, even for contemplation,’ he remarked to himself, ‘because it is in that total picture we perceive God. Nothing else in creation can ever assume such proportions and diversity. This indeed ought to be religion. Alas,how I wish I could convey a particle of this experience to my readers. There are certain thoughts which are strangled by expression. If only people could realize what immense schemes they are components of!’ At this moment he heard over everything else a woman’s voice saying: ‘I will kill that dirty dog if he comes near the tap again.’
    ‘If you speak about my son’s dog I will break your pot,’ another voice cried. ‘Get away both – I’ve been here for half an hour for a glass of water.’ Now they formed to him a very different picture. A man’s voice ordered: ‘I will remove this tap if you are all going to –’ It was the voice of the old landlord and quietened the people. One heard only the noise of water falling in a pot. Next moment the old man appeared in the doorway, peeped in and called: ‘Mister Srinivas. Oh, still sleeping? Not keeping well?’ He walked up to Srinivas lying in bed and stood over him: ‘I thought you would be getting ready to go out.’ He sat down on the floor, beside his bed, and said: ‘I tell you, I sometimes feel I ought to lock up all my houses and send away all those people. They seem to be so unworthy of any consideration.’
    ‘What consideration