From time immemorial people seemed to have been calling him 'Margayya'. No one knew, except his father and mother, who were only dimly recollected by a few cronies in his ancestral village, that he had been named after the enchanting god Krishna. Everyone called him Margayya and thought that he had been called so at his naming ceremony. He himself must have forgotten his original name: he had gradually got into the habit of signing his name 'Margayya' even in legal documents. And what did it mean? It was purely derivative: 'Marga' meant 'The Way' and 'Ayya' was an honorific suffix: taken together it denoted one who showed the way. He showed the way out to those in financial trouble. And in all those villages that lay within a hundred-mile radius of Malgudi, was there anyone who could honestly declare that he was not in financial difficulties? The emergence of Margayya was an unexpected and incalculable offshoot of a co-operator's zeal. This statement will be better understood if we watch him in his setting a little more closely.

One of the proudest buildings in Malgudi was the Central Cooperative Land Mortgage Bank, which was built in the year 1914 and named after a famous Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Sir , who had been knighted for his devotion to Cooperation after he had, in fact, lost his voice explaining co-operative principles to peasants in the village at one end and to the officials in charge of the files at the Secretariat end. It was said that he died while serving on a Rural Indebtedness Sub-committee. After his death it was discovered that he had left all his savings for the construction of the bank. He now watched, from within a teak frame suspended on the central landing, all the comings and goings, and he was said to be responsible for occasional poltergeist phenomena, the rattling of paperweights, flying ledgers, and sounds like the brisk opening of folios, the banging of fists on a table, and so on evidenced by successive night watchmen. This could be easily understood, for the ghost of the Registrar had many reasons to feel sad and frustrated. All the principles of cooperation for which he had sacrificed his life were dissolving under his eyes, if he could look beyond the portals of the bank itself, right across the little stretch of lawn under the banyan tree, in whose shade Margayya sat and transacted his business. There was always a semi-circle of peasants sitting round him, and by their attitude and expression one might easily guess that they were suppliants. Margayya, though very much their junior (he was just forty-two), commanded the respect of those who sat before him. He was to them a wizard who enabled them to draw unlimited loans from the co-operative bank. If the purpose of the co-operative movement was the promotion of thrift and the elimination of middlemen, those two were just the objects that were defeated here under the banyan tree: Margayya didn't believe in advocating thrift: his living depended upon helping people to take loans from the bank opposite and from each other.

His tin box, a grey, discoloured, knobby affair, which was small enough to be carried under his arm, contained practically his entire equipment: a bottle of ink, a pen and a blotter, a small register whose pages carried an assortment of names and figures, and above all the most important item loan application forms of the co-operative bank. These last named were his greatest asset in life, and half his time was occupied in acquiring them. He had his own agency at work to provide him with these forms. When a customer came, the very first question Margayya asked was, 'Have you secured the application form?'

'No.'

'Then go into that building and bring one try and get one or two spare forms as well.' It was not always possible to secure more than one form, for the clerks there were very strict and perverse. They had no special reason to decline to give as many forms as were required except the impulse to refuse anything that is persistently asked for. All the same, Margayya managed to gather quite a lot of forms and kept them handy. They were taken out for use on special occasions. Sometimes a villager arrived who did not have a form and who could not succeed in acquiring one by asking for it in the bank. On such occasions Margayya charged a fee for the blank form itself, and then another for filling in the relevant details.

The clerks of the bank had their own methods of worrying the villagers. A villager who wanted to know his account had to ask for it at the counter and invariably the accounts clerk snapped back, 'Where is your passbook?' A passbook was a thing the villager could never keep his hand on. If it was not out of sight it was certain to be out of date. This placed the villager fully at the mercy of the clerk, who would say: 'You will have to wait till I get through all the work I have now on hand. I'm not being paid to look after only your business here.' And then the peasant would have to hang about for a day or two before getting an answer to his question, which would only be after placating the clerk with an offering in cash or kind.

It was under such circumstances that Margayya's help proved invaluable. He kept more or less parallel accounts of at least fifty of the members of the bank. What its red-tape obstructed, he cleared up by his own contrivance. He carried most of the figures in his head. He had only to sight a customer (for instance Mallanna of Koppal, as it now happened to be) to say at once: 'Oh! you have come back for a new loan, I suppose. If you pay seventy-five rupees more, you can again take three hundred rupees within a week! The bye-law allows a new loan when fifty per cent is paid up.'

'How can I burden myself with a further loan of three hundred, Margayya? It's unthinkable.'

Now would begin all the persuasiveness that was Margayya's stock-in-trade. He asked point blank, 'What difference is it going to make? Are you not already paying a monthly instalment of seventeen rupees eight annas? Are you or are you not?'

'Yes ... I'm paying. God knows how much I have to '

'I don't want all that,' Margayya said, cutting him short. 'I am not concerned with all that how you pay or what you do. You may perhaps pledge your life or your wife's saris. It is none of my concern: all that I want to know is whether you are paying an instalment now or not.'

'Yes, master, I do pay.'

'You will continue to pay the same thing, that is all. Call me a dog if they ask you for even one anna more. You fool, don't you see the difference? You pay seventeen rupees eight annas now for nothing, but under my present plan you will pay the same seventeen rupees eight annas but with another three hundred rupees in your purse. Don't you see the difference?'

'But what's the use of three hundred rupees, master?'

'Oh! I see, you don't see a use for it. All right, don't come to me again. I have no use for nincompoops like you. You are the sort of fellow who won't ' He elaborated a bawdy joke about him and his capacity, which made the atmosphere under the tree genial all round. The other villagers sitting around laughed. But Margayya assumed a stern look, and pretended to pass on to the next question in hand. He sat poring over some papers, with his spectacles uneasily poised over his nose. Those spectacles were a recent acquisition, the first indication that he was on the wrong side of forty. He resisted them as long as he could he hated the idea of growing old, but 'long-sight' does not wait for approval or welcome. You cannot hoodwink yourself or anyone else too long about it the strain of holding a piece of paper at arm's length while reading stretches the nerves of the forearm and invites comments from others. Margayya's wife laughed aloud one day and asked: 'Why don't you buy a pair of glasses like other young men of your age? Otherwise you will sprain your hand.' He acted upon this advice and obtained a pair of glasses mounted in silver from the V.N. Stores in the Market. He and the proprietor of the shop had been playmates once, and Margayya took the glasses on trial, and forgot to go that way again. He was accosted about it on the road occasionally by the rotund optician, who was snubbed by Margayya: 'Haven't you the elementary courtesy to know the time and place for such reminders?'

'Sorry, sorry,' the other hastened to apologize, 'I didn't intend to hurt or insult you.'

'What greater insult can a man face than this sort of thing? What will an onlooker think? I am busy from morning to night no time even for a cup of coffee in the afternoon! All right, it doesn't matter. Will you send someone to my house? I'm not able to use those glasses either. I wanted to come and exchange them if possible, but ' it trailed off into indefiniteness, and the optician went away once again and soon ceased to bother about it. It was one of his many bad debts, and very soon he changed his commodity; gradually his show-case began to display powder-puffs, scents, chocolate bars and the silver-rimmed glasses sat securely on Margayya's nose.

He now took off his spectacles and folded the sides as if disposing once and for all of the problem of Mallanna. He looked away at a man on his right and remarked: 'You may have to wait for a week more before I can take up your affair.'

'Brother, this is urgent, my daughter's marriage is coming off next month.'

'Your daughter's marriage! I have to find you the money for it, but the moment my service is done, you will forget me. You will not need your Margayya any more?' The other made several deprecating noises, as a protestation of his loyalty. He was a villager called Kanda who had come walking from his village fifteen miles away. He owned about twenty acres of land and a house and cattle, but all of it was tied up in mortgages most through Margayya's advice and assistance. He was a gambler and drank heavily, and he always asked for money on the pretext of having to marry his daughters, of whom he had a good number. Margayya preferred not to know what happened to all the money, but helped him to borrow as much as he wanted. 'The only course now left is for you to take a joint-loan, but the difficulty will be to find someone as a partner.' He looked round at the gathering before him and asked, 'All of you are members of the Co-operative Society. Can't someone help a fellow creature?' Most of them shook their heads. One of them remarked, 'How can you ask for our joint-signature? It's risky to do it even for one's own brother.'

'It's most risky between brothers,' added Margayya. 'But I'm not suggesting it for brothers now. I am only suggesting it between human beings.' They all laughed and understood that he was referring to an elder brother of his with whom he was known to be on throat-cutting terms. He prepared to deliver a speech: 'Here is a great man, a big man, you cannot find a more important man round about Somanur. He has lands, cattle, yes, he's a big man in every way. No doubt, he has certain habits: no use shutting our eyes to it: but I guarantee he will get over them. He must have a joint-loan because he needs at least five hundred rupees immediately to see him through his daughter's marriage. You know how it is with the dowry system ' Everybody made a sympathetic noise and shook their heads. 'Very bad, very bad. Why should we criticize what our ancestors have brought into existence?' someone asked.

'Why not?' another protested.

'Some people are ruined by the dowry.'

'Why do you say some people?' Margayya asked. 'Why am I here? Three daughters were born to my father. Five cart-loads of paddy came to us every half year, from the fields. We just heaped them up on the floor of the hall, we had five halls to our house; but where has it all gone? To the three daughters. By the time my father found husbands for them there was nothing left for us to eat at home!'

'But is it not said that a man who begets a son is blessed in three lives, because he gives away the greatest treasure on earth?' said someone.

'And how much more blessed is he that gives away three daughters? He is blessed no doubt, but he also becomes a bankrupt,' Margayya said.

The talk thus went on and on, round and round, always touching practical politics again at some point or other. Margayya put his spectacles on, looked fixedly at Mallanna, and said: 'Come and sit near me.' The villager moved up. Margayya told the gathering, 'We have to talk privately.' And they all looked away and pretended not to hear although all their attention was concentrated on the whispering that now started between the two. Margayya said: 'It's going to be impossible for Kanda to get a joint-loan, but he ought to be ready to accept whatever is available. I know you can help him and help yourself you will lose nothing. In fact, you will gain a little interest. You will clear half your present loan by paying seventy-five rupees and apply for a fresh one. Since you don't want it, give it to Kanda. He will pay you seven and a half per cent. You give the four and a half per cent to that father-in-law' (Margayya always referred to the Co-operative Bank with a fresh sobriquet) 'and take the three per cent yourself. He will pay back the instalments to you. I will collect and give them to you.' Mallanna took time to grasp all the intricacies of this proposition, and then asked: 'Suppose he doesn't?' Margayya looked horrified at this doubt. 'What is there to be afraid of when I am here?' At this one of the men who were supposed to be out of earshot remarked: 'Ah, what is possible in this world without mutual trust?' Margayya added, 'Listen to him. He knows the world.'

The result of all this talk was that Mallanna agreed to the proposal. Margayya grew busy filling up a loan application form with all the details of Mallanna's heritage, etc. He read it out aloud, seized hold of Mallanna's left thumb, pressed it on a small ink pad he carried in his box and pressed it again on the application form and endorsed it. He took out of the box seventy-five rupees in cash, and handed them to Mallanna with: 'Why should I trust you with this without a scrap of paper? Now credit this to your account and halve your loan; and then present that application.'

'If they refuse to take it?'

'Why should they refuse? They have got to accept it. You are a shareholder, and they have got to accept your application. It's not their grandfather's money that they are giving you but your own. Bye-law ' He quoted the bye-law, and encouraged by it, the other got up and moved on.

It is impossible to describe more clearly than this Margayya's activity under the tree. He advanced a little loan (for interest) so that the little loan might wedge out another loan from the Cooperative Bank; which in its turn was passed on to someone in need for a higher interest. Margayya kept himself as the centre of all the complex transaction, and made all the parties concerned pay him for his services, the bank opposite him being involved in it willy-nilly. It was as strenuous a job as any other in the town and he felt that he deserved the difficult income he ground out of a couple of hundred rupees in his box, sitting there morning till evening. When the evening sun hit him on the nape of the neck he pulled down the lid of his box and locked it up, and his gathering understood that the financial wizard was closing his office for the day.

Margayya deposited the box under a bench in the front room of his house. His little son immediately came running out from the kitchen with a shout: 'Appa! ' and gripped his hand, asking: 'What have you brought today?' Margayya hoisted him up on his shoulder: 'Well, tomorrow, I will buy you a new engine, a small engine.' The child was pleased to hear it. He asked, 'How small will the engine be? Will it be so tiny?' He indicated with his thumb and first finger a minute size. 'All right,' said Margayya and put him down. This was almost a daily ritual. The boy revelled in visions of miniature articles a tiny engine, tiny cows, tiny table, tiny everything, of the maximum size of a mustard seed. Margayya put him down and briskly removed his upper-cloth and shirt, picked up a towel that was hanging from a nail on the wall, and moved to the backyard. Beyond a small clump of banana trees, which waved their huge fan-like leaves in the darkness, there was a single well of crumbling masonry, with a pulley over its cross-bar. Margayya paused for a moment to admire the starry sky. Down below at his feet the earth was damp and marshy. All the drain-water of two houses flowed into the banana beds. It was a common backyard for his house and the one next door, which was his brother's. It was really a single house, but a partition wall divided it into two from the street to the backyard.

No. 14 D, Vinayak Street had been a famous land-mark, for it was the earliest house to be built in that area. Margayya's father was considered a hero for settling there in a lonely place where there was supposed to be no security for life or property. Moreover it was built on the fringe of a cremation ground, and often the glow of a burning pyre lit up its walls. After the death of the old man the brothers fell out, their wives fell out, and their children fell out. They could not tolerate the idea of even breathing the same air or being enclosed by the same walls. They got involved in litigation and partitioned everything that their father had left. Everything that could be cut in two with an axe or scissors or a knife was divided between them, and the other things were catalogued, numbered and then shared out. But one thing that could neither be numbered nor cut up was the backyard of the house with its single well. They could do nothing about it. It fell to Margayya's share, and he would willingly have seen his brother's family perish without water by closing it to them, but public opinion prevented the exercise of his right. People insisted that the well should remain common property, and so the dividing wall came up to it, and stopped there, the well acting as a blockade between the two brothers, but accessible from either side.

Now Margayya looked about for the small brass pot. He could not see it anywhere.

'Hey, little man!' he called out, 'where is the well-pot?' He liked to call his son out constantly. When he came home, he could not bear to be kept away from him even for a moment. He felt uneasy and irritated when the child did not answer his call. He saw the youngster stooping over the lamp, trying to thrust a piece of paper into the chimney. He watched him from the doorway. He suppressed the inclination to call him away and warn him. The child thrust a piece of paper into the lamp, and when it burned brightly he recoiled at the sudden spurt of fire. But when it blackened and burnt out he drew near the lamp again, gingerly putting his finger near the metal plate on the top. Before Margayya could stop him, he had touched it. He let out a shriek. Margayya was beside him in a moment. His shriek brought in Margayya's wife, who had gone to a neighbouring shop. She came rushing into the house with cries of 'What is it? What is it? What has happened?' Margayya felt embarrassed, like a man caught shirking a duty. He told his wife curtly, 'Why do you shout so much, as if a great calamity had befallen this household so that your sister-in-law in the neighbourhood may think how active we are, I suppose!'

'Sister-in-law how proud you are of your relatives!' Her further remarks could not be continued because of the howling set up by the child, whose burnt finger still remained unattended. At this the mother snatched him up from her husband's arms, and hugged him close to her, hurting him more, whereupon he shouted in a new key. Margayya tried to tear him out of his wife's arms, crying: 'Quick, get that ointment. Where is it? You can keep nothing in its place.'

'You need not shout!' the wife answered, running about and rummaging in the cupboard. She grumbled: 'You can't look after him even for a second without letting him hurt himself 'You need not get hysterical about it, gentle lady, I had gone for a moment to the well.'

'Everyone gets tap-water in this town. We alone ' she began, attacking on a new front.

'All right, all right,' he said, curbing her, and turning his attention to the finger. 'You must never, never go near fire again, do you understand?'

'Will you buy me a little elephant tomorrow?' the child asked, his cheeks still wet with tears. By now they had discovered a little wooden crucible containing some black ointment in the cupboard, hidden behind a small basket containing loose cotton (which Margayya's wife twisted into wicks for the lamp in God's niche). She applied the ointment to the injured finger, and set the child roaring in a higher key. This time he said, 'I want a big peppermint.'

At night when the lights were put out and the sounds of Vinayak Street had quietened, Margayya said to his wife, lying on the other side of their sleeping child: 'Do you know poor boy! I could have prevented Balu from hurting himself. I just stood there and watched. I wanted to see what he would do alone by himself His wife made a noise of deprecation: 'It is as I suspected. You were at the bottom of the whole trouble. I don't know... I don't know... that boy is terribly mischievous ... and you are ... you are ...' She could not find the right word for it. Her instinct was full of foreboding, and she left the sentence unfinished. After a long pause she added: 'It's impossible to manage him during the afternoons. He constantly runs out of the house into the street. I don't have a moment's peace or rest.'

'Don't get cantankerous about such a small child,' said Margayya, who disliked all these adverse remarks about his son. It seemed to him such a pity that that small bundle of man curled beside him like a tiny pillow should be so talked about. His wife retorted: 'Yes, I wish you could stay at home and look after him instead of coming in the evening and dandling him for a moment after he has exhausted all his tricks.'

'Yes, gladly, provided you agree to go out and arrange loans for all those village idiots.'

The child levied an exacting penalty on his parents the next day for the little patch of burn on his finger. He held his finger upright and would not let anyone come near him. He refused to be put into a new shirt, refused food, refused to walk, and insisted on being carried about by his mother or father. Margayya examined the hurt finger and said: 'It looks all right, there seems to be nothing wrong there.'

'Don't say so,' screamed the boy in his own childish slang. 'I'm hurt. I want a peppermint.' Margayya was engaged all the morning in nursing his finger and plying him with peppermints. His wife remarked: 'He'll be ill with peppermints before you are done with him.'

'Why don't you look after him, then?' he asked.

'I won't go to mother,' screamed the boy. 'I will be with you.'

Margayya had some oddjobs to do while at home in the mornings. He went to the nearby Urban Stores and bought sugar or butter, he cut up the firewood into smaller sizes if his wife complained about it, or he opened his tin box and refreshed his memory by poring over the pages of his red-bound account-book. But today the boy would not let him do anything except fuss over him.

The child kept Margayya at home for over an hour beyond his usual time. He could leave for the Co-operative Bank only at midday, stealing out when, oblivious of his surroundings, the little fellow's attention was engaged in splashing about a bucket of water in the backyard. When the water was exhausted he looked all round and let out such an angry shout for his father that the people on the other side of the wall remarked to each other: 'This is the worst of begetting sons late in life! They pet them and spoil them and make them little monsters.' The lady on the other side of the wall could well say this because she was the mother often.

Margayya looked up as a shadow fell on his notebook. He saw a uniformed servant standing before him. It was Ami Doss, the head peon of the Co-operative Bank, an old Christian who had grown up with the institution. He had wrinkles round his eyes, and a white moustache and mild eyes. Margayya looked up at him and wondered what to do whether to treat him as a hostile visitor or as a friend. Instinctively he recoiled from anyone coming out of that building, where he knew he was being viewed as a public enemy. He hesitated for a moment, then looked up silently at the figure before him. 'Sit down, won't you, Arul Doss?' Arul Doss shot a glance over his shoulder at the office.

'He will not like it if he sees me dallying here. He, I mean the Secretary, asks you to come ' said Arul.

'Me!' Margayya could hardly believe his ears. 'The Secretary! What have I to do with your Secretary?'

'I don't know at all, but he said, "Go and tell Margayya to come here for a moment."'

On hearing this, Margayya became indignant. 'Go and tell them I am not their paid paid ' He was about to say 'servant', but he remembered in time, even in his mental stress, that the man standing before him was literally both paid and a servant, and thought it would be injudicious to say so now. So he left off the sentence abruptly and asked: 'Do they pay me to appear before them when they want me?'

'I don't know,' said this very loyal Co-operative man. 'He told me to tell you. The Secretary is no ordinary person, you know,' he added. 'He receives a salary of over five hundred rupees a month, an amount which you and I will probably not see even after a hundred years of service.' Now Margayya's blood was stirred. Many angry memories welled up in him of all the indignities that he had suffered at the hands of his brother, who cut him off with half a house, while he himself passed for a man of means, a respectable citizen. Margayya felt that the world treated him with contempt because he had no money. People thought they could order him about. He said to Arul Doss: 'Arul Doss, I don't know about you; you can speak for yourself. But you need not speak for me. You may not see a hundred rupees even after a hundred years of service, but I think I shall do so very soon and who knows, if your Secretary seeks any improvement of his position, he can come to me.'

Arul Doss took a few moments to understand, then swayed with laughter. Tears rolled down his cheeks. 'Well, I have been a servant in this department for twenty-nine years, but I've never heard a crazier proposal. All right, all right.' He was convulsed with laughter as he turned to go. Margayya looked at his back helplessly. He cast his eyes down and surveyed himself: perhaps he cut a ridiculous figure, with his dhoti going brown for lack of laundering and with his shirt collar frayed, and those awful silver spectacles. 'I hate these spectacles. I wish I could do without them.' But age, age who could help long-sight? 'If I wore gold spectacles, perhaps they would take me seriously and not order me about. Who is this Secretary to call me through the peon? I won't be ridiculed. I'm at least as good as they.' He called out: 'Look here, Arul Doss.' With a beaming face, Arul Doss turned round. 'Tell your Secretary that if he is a Secretary, I'm really the proprietor of a bank, and that he can come here and meet me if he has any business '

'Shall I repeat those very words?' Arul Doss asked, ready to burst out laughing again.

'Absolutely,' Margayya said. 'And another thing, if you find yourself thrown out of there, you can come to me for a job. I like you, you seem to be a hard-working, loyal fellow.' Further parleys were cut off because a couple of villagers came round for consultation, and started forming a semi-circle in front of Margayya. Though Arul Doss still lingered for a further joke, Margayya turned away abruptly, remarking: 'All right, you may go now.'

'Please,' said a peasant, 'be careful, sir. That Arul Doss is a bad fellow.'

'I'm also a bad fellow,' snapped Margayya.

'It's not that. They say that the Secretary just does what this fellow says. If we go in to get just one single form, he charges us two annas each time. Is that also a Government rule?' asked the peasant.

'Go away, you fools,' Margayya said. 'You are people who have no self-respect. As long as you are shareholders, you are masters of that bank. They are your paid servants.'

'Ah, is that so?' asked the peasant. And the group looked up at each other with amazement. Another man, who had a long blanket wrapped round his shoulder, a big cloth turban crowning his head, and wore shorts and was barefoot, said: 'We may be masters as you say, but who is going to obey us? If we go in, we have to do as they say. Otherwise, they won't give us money.'

'Whose money are they giving away?' asked Margayya. 'It is your own.'

'Margayya, we don't want all that. Why should we talk of other people?'

'True, true,' said one or two others approvingly.

Encouraged by this, the peasant said: 'We should not talk about others unnecessarily.' He lowered his voice and said: 'If they hear it they may '

Margayya's blood rushed to his head: 'You get away from here,' he thundered. 'I don't want to have anything to do with people without self-respect, who don't know their importance and strength. What better words can we expect from someone like you who wraps himself in that coarse blanket at this time of the day? What better stuff can we expect from a head weighed down by so many folds of a dirty turban?' The peasant was somewhat cowed by Margayya's manner. He mumbled: 'I didn't mean to offend you, sir. If I did would I be here?'

'That's all right. No further unnecessary talk. If you have any business, tell me. Otherwise get out of here. Before dusk I have to attend to so many people. You are not the only one who has business with me.'

'I want a small loan, sir,' began the peasant. 'I want to know how much more I have to pay to clear the balance loan.'

'Why don't you go in there and ask your Arul Doss?'

'Oh, they are all very bad, unhelpful people, sir; that's why I never like to go there, but come to you first. Why do we come to you, sir, of all persons in this big city? It's because you know our joys and sorrows and our troubles, our difficulties and '

'All right, all right,' Margayya said, cutting him short, yet greatly mollified by his manner. 'I know what you are trying to say. Don't I?' He looked round at his clients. And they shook their heads approvingly, making appropriate sounds with their tongues, in order to please him.

After all these bouts he settled down to business. He had a busy day: filling up forms, writing applications, writing even petitions unconnected with money business for one or two clients, talking, arguing, and calculating. He was nearly hoarse by the time the sun's rays touched him on the nape of his neck, and the shadows of the banyan tree fell on the drive leading to the Co-operative Bank. He started to close his office. He put back his writing-pad, neatly folded up some pieces of paper on which he had noted figures, scrutinized again the little register, counted some cash, and checked some receipts. He arranged all these back in the small tin box, laid a few sheets of loan application forms flat on top of them so as to prevent their creasing, restored to its corner the ink-bottle, and laid beside it the red wooden pen. Everything in its place. He hated, more than anything else, having to fumble for his papers or stationery; and a disordered box was as hateful to him as the thought of Arul Doss. His mind was oppressed with thoughts of Arul Doss. He felt insulted and sore. What right had he or anyone to insult or browbeat him? What had he done that they themselves did not do? He would teach this Arul Doss a lesson no matter at what cost ...

At this moment he heard a step approaching, and looking up saw a man, wearing a brown suit, standing before him. His hands were in his pockets, and behind him at a respectable distance stood Arul Doss. The man looked very smart, with a hat on his head; a very tidy young man who looked 'as if he had just come from Europe', Margayya reflected. Looking at him, he felt himself to be such a contrast with his brown dhoti, torn shirt, and the absurd little tuft under the black cap. 'No wonder they treat me as they do,' he said to himself. 'Perhaps I should have exercised greater care in my speech. God knows what that Arul Doss has reported ... I should not have spoken. This fellow looks as if he could do anything.' Margayya looked at Arul Doss, and shuddered, noting the wicked gleam in his eye. He soon recovered his self-possession: 'I am not a baby to worry about these things. What can anybody do to me?' He resolutely fixed his gaze on the hard knobs on his box, gave its contents a final pat, and was about to draw down the lid when the other man suddenly stooped, thrust his hand inside and picked out a handful of papers, demanding: 'How did you come by these? These are our application forms!'

Margayya checked the indignation that was rising within him: 'Put them back, will you? What right have you to put your hand into my box? You look like an educated man. Don't you know that ordinary simple law?' In his indignation he lost for a moment all fear. Arul Doss came forward and said, 'Take care how you speak. He is our Secretary. He will hand you over to the police.'

'Stop your nonsense, you earth-worm! Things have come to this, have they, when every earth-worm pretends that it is a cobra and tries to sway its hood ... I will nip off your head as well as your tail, if you start any of your tricks with me. Take care. Get out of my way.'

Arul Doss was cowed. He withdrew a little, but he was not to be dismissed so easily. He began: 'He is our Secretary '

'That's all right. It's written all over him,' yelled Margayya. 'What else can he be? He can speak for himself, can't he? You keep away, you miserable ten-rupee earner. I want none of your impertinence here. If you want an old piece of cloth, torn or used, come to me.' The Secretary seemed to watch all this with detachment. Arul Doss fretted inwardly, tried to be officious, but had to withdraw because the Secretary himself ordered him away. 'You go over there,' he said, indicating a spot far off. Arul Doss moved reluctantly away. Margayya felt triumphant, and turned his attention to the man before him. 'Secretary, you will put back that paper or I will call the police now.'

'Yes, I want to call the police myself. You are in possession of something that belongs to our office.'

'No, it belongs to the shareholders.'

'Are you a shareholder?'

'Yes, more than that '

'Nonsense. Don't make false statements. You'll get into trouble. Reports have come to me of your activities. Here is my warning. If you are seen here again, you will find yourself in prison. Go ' He nodded to Ami Doss to come nearer, and held out to him the loan application forms. Arul Doss avidly seized them and carried them off like a trophy. The Secretary abruptly turned round and walked back to the porch of the building, where his car was waiting.

Presently Margayya bundled up his belongings and started homeward. With his box under his arm and his head bowed in thought he wandered down the Market Road. He paused for a moment at the entrance of the Regal Hair-Cutting Saloon, in whose doorway a huge looking glass was kept. He saw to his dismay that he was still wearing his spectacles. He pulled them off quickly, folded up their sides and put them into his pocket. He didn't feel flattered at the sight of his own reflection. 'I look like a wayside barber with this little miserable box under my arm. People probably expect me to open the lid and take out soap and a brush. No wonder the Secretary feels he can treat me as he likes. If I looked like him, would he have dared to snatch the papers from my box? I can't look like him. I am destined to look like a wayside barber, and that is my fate. I'm only fit for the company of those blanket-wrapped rustics.' He was thoroughly vexed with himself and his lot.

He moved to the side of the road, as cyclists rang their bells and dodged him; jutka-men shouted at him, and pedestrians collided against him. His mind was occupied with thoughts of his own miserableness. He felt himself shrinking. Two students emerged laughing and talking from the Bombay Anand Bhavan, their lips red with betel leaves. They stared at Margayya. 'They are laughing at me,' he thought. 'Perhaps they want to ask me to go with them to their rooms and give them a hair-cut!' He kept glancing over his shoulder at them, and caught them turning and glancing at him too, with a grin on their faces. Somebody driving by in a car of the latest model seemed to look at him for a fleeting second and Margayya fancied that he caught a glimpse of contempt in his eyes.... Now at the western end of Market Road he saw the V.N. Stores, with its owner standing at the door. 'He may put his hand into my pocket and snatch the glasses or compel me to give him a shave.' He side-stepped into Kabir Lane, and, feeling ashamed of the little box that he carried under his arm, wished he could fling it away, but his sense of possession would not let him. As he passed through the narrow Kabir Lane, with small houses abutting the road, people seemed to stare at him as if to say: 'Barber, come early tomorrow morning: you must be ready here before I go for my bath.' He hurried off. He reached Vinayak Street, raced up the steps of his house and flung the box unceremoniously under the bench. His wife was washing the child on the back veranda. At the sound of his arrival the little fellow let out a yell of joy, through the towel.

'What's happened to make you come back so early?' asked Margayya's wife.

'Early! Why, can't I come home when I please? I am nobody's slave.' She had tried to tidy herself up in the evening after the day's work. 'She looks ...' He noticed how plebeian she looked, with her faded jacket, her patched, discoloured sari and her anaemic eyes. 'How can anyone treat me respectfully when my wife is so indifferent-looking?' His son came up and clung to his hand: 'Father, what have you brought me today?' He picked him up on his arm. 'Can't you put him into a cleaner shirt?' he asked.

'He has only four,' his wife answered. 'And he has already soiled three today. I have been telling you to buy some clothes.'

'Don't start all that now. I am in no mood for lectures.' His wife bit her lips and made a wry face. The child let out a howl for no reason whatever. She felt annoyed and said: 'He is always like this. He is all right till you come home. But the moment you step in, he won't even finish washing his face.'

'Where should I go if you don't want me to return home?'

'Nobody said such a thing,' she replied sullenly. The little boy shouted, put his hand into his father's coat-pocket and pulled out his reading glasses, and insisted upon putting them over his own nose. His mother cried: 'Give those glasses back or I'll...' She raised her arm, at which he started yelling so much that they could not hear each other's remarks. Margayya carried him off to a shop and bought him sweets, leaving his wife behind, fretting with rage.

In the quiet of midnight, Margayya spoke to his wife seriously: 'Do you know why we get on each other's nerves and quarrel?'

'Yes,' she said at last. 'Now let me sleep.' And turned over. Margayya stretched out his hand and shook her by the shoulder. 'Wake up. I have much to tell you.'

'Can't you wait till the morning?' she asked.

'No.' He spoke to her of the day's events. She sat up in bed. 'Who is that secretary? What right has he to threaten you?'

'He has every right because he has more money, authority, dress, looks above all, more money. It's money which gives people all this. Money alone is important in this world. Everything else will come to us naturally if we have money in our purse.'