The Painter of Signs Read online

  The bangle-seller looked up from a wrist without letting it go and said, “Cash” is too red ... It’ll put people off.’

  ’But that’s how you wanted it.’

  The bangle-seller did not answer this point but concentrated his attention on a plump wrist - massaging it down to suit the circumstance of a bangle. The woman enjoyed it and moaned with delicious pain. Raman watched the scene for some moments and commented within himself: Dalliance and flirtation. I now realize why this chap is persisting in this fragile trade - if a couple of well-aimed pebbles are flung into the shop he will be ruined. Why don’t you employ a couple of girls for this job, leaving yourself free to discuss business with sign-board painters?

  It was difficult to get in a word with this man, and Raman felt irritated and humiliated. ‘Why don’t you pay my bill? You asked me to come for it today,’ he said over the babble and the squealings of women.

  ’I don’t like the red in “cash”; you must change it.’

  ’But you wanted it that way.’

  ’Not so red. My customers won’t like it.’ He turned to a girl waiting to be attended and asked, ‘Do you like that?’ She giggled, turned away her head, and shook with laughter. He urged, ‘Come on, say what you have on your mind.’ The village girl murmured coyly, ‘I like only blue colour.’

  Very attractive, seductive scene, but no money in it for me, Raman reflected. At the same moment, he was seized with a ridiculous feeling, holding up his handiwork for all to see, as if he were auctioning his sign-board to a set of ecstatic females.

  ’Why is your shop so crowded today?’ he could not help asking.

  The man replied, ‘This is the season. Pongal coming, it’s auspicious for women to renew their bangles. They come from far and near. They know they’ll have the best selections here — both glass and plastic,’ and he looked around beamingly for approval.

  Raman asked curtly, ‘Are you paying me now or not?’

  ’Yes, if you change that colour to blue.’

  ’Don’t you understand that if you want strict cash dealing in your shop and “cash” in blue, people may laugh at you? They won’t take you seriously. Now in the present colour, they can’t escape, they can’t miss your idea. I can’t write a new board.’ The bangle-seller was unmoved. It looked as though the man were backing out. ‘If you don’t want it, why did you order this board?’ There was no answer. The man let go a slender wrist and stood up menacingly. He wanted to show off as a hero before his admiring customers. Raman was surprised at the turn of events, and backed away slightly. The man looked muscular. Raman said, ‘If you don’t want it, you don’t want, that’s all,’ and quietly retreated from the shop with the sign-board under his arm.

  Made a mistake in accepting this custom, he said to himself He took his cycle off its stand at the western arch of the market with his mind preoccupied. Three days’ labour lost ... and that lawyer! Sometimes it’s a bad day all through in every way.

  Market Road was crowded and active as ever. This was the hour at which the goods train arrived, and all kinds of barrels, packages, and bags were unloaded at the railway station, and then piled up on the bullock-carts, which lumbered along to the godowns behind the market. As he cycled down avoiding the country carts, Raman wondered for a moment whether he should not try and sell the board to some other shopkeeper. This sign-board, with its flaming injunction to pay cash, should appeal to anyone. He saw the owner of Bhandari Stores standing at his door, and slowed down. A wafer-thin man with a waxed moustache so finely pointed and turned parallel to the earth that if you stepped too close it might puncture your eyes, who claimed to have come down from Rajasthan and settled here many generations ago, and was a good friend, speaking a sort of quaint Tamil which generally fascinated Raman. The man hailed him and asked, ‘Busy day?’

  ’Yes, of course,’ Raman said, hopping off his saddle. He went into the shop and held up the sign-board. ‘How do you like this?’ he asked.

  The businessman became cautious and said, ‘No business for me unless I give credit. God knows what trouble it is getting back my money.’

  ’You must sell strictly for cash,’ Raman repeated, the flaming message drumming in his brain.

  ’I wish I could,’ said the man, ‘but that will be possible only in the next world.’

  Raman understood it’d be no use canvassing here, and bantered, ’Shall I add “also for credit” in green letters? That might please the customers.’

  The man catching only the word ‘green’ and paying no attention to the rest of the sentence replied, ‘Green will be better.’ He took a second look at the sign-board and said, ‘This red is too much, sir. The customer must not feel upset.’

  Raman suppressed all the offensive remarks that came to his head. People really needed to be educated in good taste. The man asked for green. Green! Good heavens, what was the world coming to! He feared that he might get into a fight if he stayed longer, mumbled a farewell, pushed off his bicycle, and was gone, with his mind in a turmoil. A number of things upset him — not the least of them being the thought that the world was peopled by persons who expected ’cash’ to be written in green. The fault is in the educational system and the political leadership, people who ought to mould the taste of the public and help their minds to grow were busy otherwise.

  He passed the town hall building. Noticed the fountain spraying up water today - rather a rare sight. He bicycled down the drive, leaned his cycle on the parapet, and stooped to splash cold water on his fevered brow, tucking the sign-board under his arm. Turning round, he noticed the Town Hall Professor (a local eccentric who appeared at the town hall fountain every evening, clad in a purple academic gown and harangued the public on a variety of matters), sitting cross-legged on the parapet, delivering a spiritual message to a small circle of listeners. He was saying, ‘Past is gone, present is going, and tomorrow is day after tomorrow’s yesterday. So why worry about anything? God is in all this. He is one and indivisible. He is in yesterday, tomorrow, and today. If you think it over properly, you will never sigh for anything coming or going.’He held up a small slip of paper, folded and gummed, and said, ‘Here is the message that will help you. This will cost you five paisa. Take it home and read it and your mind will be cleansed and illuminated. I’d give it away free, but I have to recover the actual cost.’A few persons came forward, gave him the money and bought the message. The Professor said, ‘Open it only in your home, before the gods in the puja room, and follow the injunction in it.’ He suddenly said to his audience, ‘See the message this young man is carrying - “Strictly Cash” - a message for the money-mad world. What is cash? What is strict?’

  Raman felt self-conscious and in his clumsiness held up the board for all to see. People studied it seriously and a general murmur broke out - all kinds of comments. Rather irritated, Raman asked, ’Does anyone want it? Fifteen rupees.’ He somehow felt that he was taking it out on the original bangle-seller by offering this to the public.

  The Professor said, ‘No credit. Strictly, strictly, strictly, cash, cash, cash! That is what the world is coming to.’

  Everyone looked at Raman jeeringly. He hated to have become the butt of all this jocularity. ‘hat’s wrong with it? How can we live without cash? How can we? How?’

  He could hardly be heard. They kept commenting in. a jumble. ’Don’t argue with the learned man. Are you wiser than he?’

  ’He is also giving it not free, but only for cash,’ said Raman.

  ’That’s true,’ murmured a group in support of him.

  The Professor was nonplussed only for a moment, but said smartly ’This is just nominal. Five paisa for such a profound message!’

  ’Why don’t you hang this on this parapet?’ asked Raman cynically.

  ’Yes, why not?’ said the Professor. He snatched it from Raman, leaned it against the fountain wall, and said, ‘I’ll take this as your payment.’ He held out the packet. ‘Take it home and follow the advice in it, you will be all
the better for it. You will find a change in your life.’ The transaction was too far gone for Raman to withdraw his offer. He brooded for a moment. He was amused at the thought that this sign-board was after all destined to decorate the town hall fountain. While he was lost in reflection, holding in his palm the piece of paper, the Professor went on repeating, ‘Yesterday was yesterday. Here is the solution to all your problems.’

  A drunkard elbowed his way through demanding to know what the packet contained. ‘Don’t think I am drunk. I know what’s what. You must tell me, great one! What does it contain? I never buy anything I don’t want to buy anything I don’t ... who can challenge me? Who saw me drink? Let every true son of his true father prove it. Is it your grandfather’s property? I say what I tell them ...’ He stood lightly rocking until the others pushed him aside and came forward to take the message. Raman felt it’d be useless to stay any longer. There was no chance of any improvement in the deal with the Professor. He abruptly withdrew and cycled homeward.

  Reaching his room, he unfolded the piece of paper containing the Town Hall Professor’s message. On a ribbon-wide strip, it was written ‘This will pass,’ in three languages in addition to English. Four lines of minute writing in black ink; Raman admired the calligraphy. I must try to learn more about this calligraphist, he resolved. Will be more worth while, than writing sign-boards for rascally bangle-sellers. He studied the message, and its significance seemed to deepen while he brooded over it, giving him a feeling of perpetually gliding away from objects and moments. Losing all sense of stagnation, Raman felt suddenly light at heart.

  Raman could hear the sound of the grindstone coming from the back yard. Aunt must be busy making something, he thought, some flour, the first stage in planning some delicacy for the morrow. He felt a stab of sympathy for her. Morning till night, planning something for his delectation — for years, unwavering attention to his needs. She rarely asked him for anything in return, no demands whatever, went up to the store for replenishment of groceries. The Chettiar shop was her farthest horizon, westward at the corner of Ellaman Street and Market Road. The shopman sat in the midst of an array of sacks of rice and corn and a variety of sundries in little tin containers and bottles. His principle was to be able to say, ‘Yes, I have it,’ and pick up in that cavernous hall whatever a customer might ask for. If he did not have it, he’d always say, ‘I’m expecting a supply tomorrow. Come at about this time ...’ He had a philosophy that the Goddess of Wealth spurned a trader who gave a negative answer. His shop was in two halves - one contained the normal requirements of his customers, such as rice and pulses; and the other, inner one was stocked with an odd assortment - over one thousand different categories. ‘If someone wants an inch-square of the sole of a worn-out shoe, I’ll have it, or a rusty nail, or a clipping of the hair on a cat’s tail - I keep everything in stock, labelled and preserved. Sometimes people come to me with strange demands while attempting to make their own medicines, fumigations, or talismans, and I supply whatever they may want, never turning away anyone,’ he told Raman five years ago, when he had gone up to deliver his sign-board, one of his earliest professional engagements. The man wanted nothing more than CHETTIAR STORES - just one line on a small plank. All the white lettering was now faded and the black base was dust-covered, hardly distinguishable from the wall on which it was nailed. While bicycling up the street it hurt Raman’s eyes, and once he stopped to ask, ‘Why don’t I clean up and rewrite that sign?’ But the man was satisfied with the griminess of things. ‘No need to announce myself - my customers know it, and will always come to this Chettiar,’ he had said. His bare body merged with the dark interior of his shop. There was a rock-like permanence about the things there. Nothing changed — it had gone on like that for generation after generation, father giving place to son. Aunt visited this shop every day at some hour. Beyond the Chettiar shop was a shrine of Ganesha, which she visited every evening, and sat placidly with others in the corridor, listening to a pundit’s narration of the epics.

  All through the day Aunt lived in anticipation of the evening programme. The moment her day’s duties were over, she locked up the front door and disappeared. If Raman returned home earlier, he stopped by the temple gate and tried to catch her attention. Invariably, within ten minutes, Aunt would turn round and notice him; It’s telepathy, every time, he told himself. Stepping over the shoulders and heads of the assembly she would hold out the key to him, whispering, ‘Do you want me?’

  ‘No. Go back to your story.’

  ‘In the almirah, I’ve kept — ’ she would mention some food or drink. As he retreated from the portals of the temple, with the key, he would reflect, She thinks I starve all day, fears I shall fall down in a faint unless she nourishes — food is her fixation. The voice from the temple would now float on the air: ‘And when God came down ...’ Always bringing down God. On such easy terms with the Almighty!

  What an awful lonely home, he generally reflected, when entering his house, and before lighting up. It seemed particularly unwelcome at that hour, until he passed to the back yard where the river flowed softly and birds on the trees over the steps created a din before settling down for the night. Men sat around in groups, some walked along the sands; women were filling their pitchers or washing clothes along the river’s edge. Raman could watch it all over the wall. His back veranda, roofed with thatch, was his work-shed, where he kept his wooden planks, tools, and a kerosene lantern which he lit when working at night.

  Must design and finish that piece of work for the Family Planning, Raman told himself one evening. He took down a plank from the wall, ran his fingers over it. Too smooth, the base white will run off, he reflected. Plane it a little rough. He took out the little plane, ran it over, and ran his finger along and felt its surface. He took out a can of paint, dipped the brush in, laid a couple of strokes along the plank’s surface, and put it away to dry, leaning it against the wall with the painted side towards the wall. Don’t want more stucco effect, enough trouble with that lawyer. He took from his pocket a piece of paper and studied the message on it. He didn’t wish to risk a mistake and then have endless correspondence and arguments at the time of the settlement of bills. He studied the message closely. ‘Family Planning Centre. Free Advice.’ Population! Population! What a worry! Why not offer a bonus for those who remain single - like himself? No marriage means no children - no, not necessarily no children! The town hall veranda and the pavements around the market, the no-man’s lands of Malgudi, swarmed with children of all sizes, from toddlers to four-footers, dust-covered, ragged - a visible development in five years. At this rate, they would overrun the globe - no harm; though they looked famished, their brown or dark skin shone with health and their liquid eyes sparkled with life. Where did they come from? Who noticed the wedding ceremonies of their parents? Or who were their parents? Perhaps there was nothing wrong in their coming into the world. They had as much right to be here as anyone else, more mouths to feed - all right, find more stuff for the mouths, that’s all. One thing leads to another. Raman’s thoughts went on to the production of food, lands lying fallow, and so forth. He told himself: I am not doing the right thing in carrying on with this sign-board painting. I took it up because I loved calligraphy; loved letters, their shape and stance and shade. But no one cares for it, no one notices these values. Like that bangle-seller and the lawyer and the other, who demand their own style and won’t pay otherwise. Compromise, compromise; and now this family planner wants - God knows what - black and white, or white and black, shaded or plain? A job anyone could do, even that hack who works for Jayaraj.

  But the job had come to him. They might order more if this turned out all right.

  His thoughts hovered around the person who had commissioned this work. She called herself just Daisy. She was a slender girl in a sari. No one could say who was her husband or father or brother, or where she came from — a sudden descent on Malgudi. Daisy! What a name for someone who looked so very Indian, traditional,
and gentle! One would expect a person on this job to be somewhat matronly, like the Mother Superior in the convent - large, broad-faced, towering over others, an executive type who could with a flourish of her arms order people about. But this girl looked like a minor dancer. He felt he ought to know more about her. He could not observe her too closely at their first meeting in her office situated in the New Block on Market Road. While she sat behind her desk, he had had no means of judging her nether half; he kept thinking that perhaps if she got up she would look tall and broad-based.

  The town’s busybody, Veerappa, owned the New Block and rented it out to offices. He had been Raman’s friend in their college days and occasionally met him at The Boardless; now he was responsible for introducing him to Daisy of the Family Planning Centre. But he had proved obtrusive and talkative during the meeting, would not give a moment’s respite for Raman to study the woman properly. Raman had liked Daisy’s voice, thought it was a little masculine, and he would have preferred to listen to it without interruption, but Veerappa thrust himself forward and chattered continuously. Raman would have liked to sit looking at her, to judge her build and personality, but this man constantly nudged him and distracted his attention with his, ‘Look, see here,’ and ‘You know what,’ etc.... Raman had invented problems in order to be able to ply her with questions; but it was this chap who butted in and answered them.

  ‘What’s the over-all length?’ Raman asked, but before he could complete his question, Veerappa answered, ‘That you know best. I’m sure the lady is going to leave it to you.’

  Raman wanted to stop to ask, Why is she calling herself Daisy? Daisy What? But he lacked the courage. He was sure if the question were put, Veerappa would give some answer promptly. Who was her protector, and what happened to him, that this slender creature should be left to tackle the population problems of this nation single-handed?’ Was her complexion dusky or fair, eyes round or touched up? What shape of nose did she have? These were some of the important points that Raman wished to clear up. He felt that sign-board painting was after all proving worth while. It was an important link in society, among various types of people and their activities. But for sign-boards, people would wallow in isolation, no one would know what another was doing or what was happening.