She said: 'You shouldn't have been so rude to Arul Doss. You should not have said that you'd employ the secretary. That's not the way to speak to people earning five hundred rupees a month.'

'Let him get five thousand, what do I care? I can also earn a thousand or five thousand, and then these fellows will have to look out.' Much of his self-assurance was returning in the presence of his wife. All the despair and inferiority that he had been feeling was gradually leaving him. He felt more self-confident and aggressive. He felt he could hold out his hand and grab as much of the good things of life as he wanted. He felt himself being puffed up with hope and plans and self-assurance. He said, 'Even you will learn to behave with me when I have money. Your rudeness now is understandable. For isn't there a famous saying: "He that hath not is spurned even by his wife; even the mother that bore him spurns him." It was a very wise man who said it. Well, you will see. I'll not carry about that barber's box any more, and I'll not be seen in this torn dhoti. I will become respectable like anyone else. That secretary will have to call me "Mister" and stand up when I enter. No more torn mats and dirty, greasy saris for you. Our boy will have a cycle, he will have a suit and go to a convent in a car. And those people' (he indicated the next house) 'will have to wonder and burst their hearts with envy. He will have to come to me on his knees and wait for advice. I have finished with those villagers.'

He became like one possessed. He was agitated, as if he had made a startling discovery. He couldn't yet afford to keep away from the place where he worked. He went there as usual, but he had taken care to tidy himself up as much as possible. He wore a lace-edged dhoti which he normally kept folded in his box. It was of fine texture, but much yellowed now. He had always kept it in his box with a piece of camphor, and he now smelt like an incense-holder as he emerged from his small room, clad in this gorgeous dhoti. It had been given to him, as it now seemed a century and a half ago, on the day of his wedding when he was sitting beside his wife on a flower-decked swing, surrounded by a lot of women-folk joking and singing and teasing the newly-weds, after the feast at night. He sighed at the thought of those days. How they had fussed about him and tried to satisfy his smallest request and keep him pleased in every way. How eminent he had felt then! People seemed to feel honoured when he spoke to them. He had only to turn his head even slightly for someone or other to come rushing up and inquire what his wishes were. He had thought that that would continue for ever. What a totally false view of life one acquired on one's wedding day! It reminded him of his brother. How he bargained with the bride's people over the dowry! He used to be so fond of him. His brother's face stood out prominently from among the wedding group in Margayya's memory, as he sat in the corner, beyond the sacrificial smoke, in their village home. Margayya sighed at the memory of it; they had got on quite nicely, but their wives couldn't. 'If women got on smoothly ...' Half the trouble in this world is due to women who cannot tolerate each other.

His wife was amused to see him so gaudily dressed. 'What's the matter?' she asked. 'Are you going to a wedding party?' 'This is the only good one I have. They will never see me in that again,' he said, indicating his discarded dhoti. 'Keep it and give it to Ami Doss. He may come for it.' He was pleased with his own venom aimed at the distant Arul Doss. This quiet pleasure pricked his veins and thrilled his body. He put on a new shirt which he had stitched two years ago but had not had the heart to wear always reserving it for some future occasion. The child too seemed to be quite pleased to see his father in a new dress. He clapped his hands in joy and left him in peace, concentrating his attention on apiece of elephant made of lacquer-painted wood. Margayya had elaborately tied up his dhoti, with folds going up, in the dignified Poona style, instead of the Southern fashion, looked down upon by people of other provinces. He explained to his wife: 'You see, if we are treated with contempt by people it is our fault. Our style of tying dhoti and our style of dressing it is all so silly! No wonder.' He talked like a man who had just arrived from a far-off land, he spoke with such detachment and superiority. His wife was somewhat taken aback. She treated him with the utmost consideration when she served him his frugal meal. Usually he would have to ask, 'Food ready? Food ready?' several times and then pick up his plate and sit down and wait indefinitely as she kept blowing the fire. If he said: 'Hurry up, please,' she would retort: 'With my breath gone, blowing on this wet firewood, have you the heart...' etc. But today she said: 'Your plate is there, food is ready.' She served him quietly, with a sort of docile agreeableness. 'I got this brinjal from the back garden,' she said. 'You didn't know I had a garden.' 'No. Nice stuff,' he murmured agreeably. Even the little fellow ate his food quietly, only once letting out a shout when he thought his mother wouldn't serve him his ghee. On that occasion he threw a handful of rice in his mother's face. She just ignored it, instead of flying at him, and the episode ended there. At the end of the meal Margayya picked up his plate as usual to wash and restore it to its corner in the kitchen. But she at once said: 'Oh, don't, I will attend to it.' He got up grandly and washed his hands, wiping them on a towel readily brought to his side by his wife. She gave him a few scented nuts and a betel leaf and saw him off at the door as he went down the street. He had opened his little box and picked up a few papers, which he carried in his hand. It looked better. He walked with the feeling that a new existence was opening before him.

His clients were somewhat surprised to see him in his new dress. He didn't squat under the tree, but remained standing.

'Why are you standing, Margayya?'

'Because I am not sitting,' Margayya replied.

'Why not?'

'Because I like to stand that's all,' he replied.

He handed a filled-up application to someone and said: 'Give it in there, and come away.' He told another: 'Well, you will get your money today. Give me back my advance.' He carried on his business without sitting down. One of the men looked up and down and asked: 'Going to a marriage party?'

'Yes,' replied Margayya. 'Every day is a day of marriage for me. Do you think I like a change of wife each day?' He cracked his usual jokes. He placed his paper on the ledge of a wall and wrote. He had brought with him, hidden in his pocket, the little ink-bottle wrapped in paper, and his pen. As he bowed his head and wrote he muttered: 'I just want to help people to get over their money troubles. I do it as a sort of service, but let no one imagine I have no better business.'

'What else do you do, sir?' asked a very innocent man.

'Well, I have to do the same service for myself too, you see. I have to do something to earn money.'

'You get interest on all the amounts you give us.'

'Yes, yes, but that's hardly enough to pay for my snuff,' he said grandly, taking out a small box and inhaling a pinch. It sent a stinging sensation up his nostrils into his brain, and he felt his forehead throbbing with excitement. It made him feel so energetic that he felt like thumping a table and arguing. He said aggressively: 'I want to do so much for you fellows, do you know why?' They shook their heads bewildered. 'Not because of the petty interest you give me that's nothing for me. It is because I want you all to get over your money worries and improve your lives. You must all adopt civilized ways. That's why I am trying to help you to get money from that bastard office.' He pointed at the Co-operative Bank. They all turned and looked at it. Ami Doss was seen approaching. 'He is coming,' they all said in one voice. Arul Doss approached them somewhat diffidently. His gait was halting and slow. He stopped quite far away, and pretended to look for a carriage or something on the road. Margayya thrust himself forward and watched him aggressively. Arul Doss stole a glance now and then at Margayya. Margayya felt annoyed. The sting of the snuff was still fresh. He cried out: 'Arul Doss, what are you looking for? If it is for me, come along, because I am here.' Arul Doss seemed happy to seize this opportunity to approach. Margayya said: 'Mark my words, this is god-given shade under the tree; if you or your secretary is up to any mischief, I will make you feel sorry for your ' The villagers were overawed by Margayya's manner of handling Arul Doss. Arul Doss had no doubt come spying but now he felt uncomfortable at Margayya's sallies. If Margayya had been squatting under the tree with his box, he might have had a tale to bear, but now he saw nothing wrong. He had only one worry that of being called an earth-worm again before so many people. He tried to turn and go, saying, 'I just came to see if the Secretary's car had come.'

'Has your secretary a car?' Margayya asked patronizingly.

'Haven't you noticed that big red one?'

Margayya snapped his fingers and said: 'As if I had no better things to observe. Tell your secretary ' He checked himself, not being sure what his tongue might utter. 'Arul Doss, if you are in need of an old dhoti or shirt, go and ask my wife. She will give it to you.' Arul Doss's face beamed with happiness.

'Oh, surely, surely,' he said. He approached nearer to Margayya and whispered. Margayya raised his hand to his face and put his head back. The other's breath smelt of onion. Margayya asked: 'Do you nibble raw onion in the morning?' Arul Doss ignored the question and whispered: 'You must not think that I myself tried to bother you yesterday. It's all that fellow's orders.' He pointed towards his office. 'He is a vicious creature! You won't think that I ... You can carry on here as you like, sir. Don't worry about anything.' He turned and abruptly walked back. Margayya looked after him and commented to his circle: 'That's the worst blackguard under the sun both of them are. This fellow carries tales to him and then he comes and behaves like a great governor here. What do I care? If a man thinks that he is governor let him show off at home, not here, for I don't care for governors.'

As he went through the town that day he was obsessed with thoughts of money. His mind rang with the words he had said to the villagers: 'I'm only trying to help you to get out of your money worries.' He began to believe it himself. He viewed himself as a saviour of mankind. 'If I hadn't secured three hundred rupees for , he would be rotting in the street at this moment. So and so married off his daughter, educated his son, retained his house.'

His mind began to catalogue all the good things money had done as far as he could remember. He shuddered to think how people could ever do without it. If money was absent men came near being beasts. He saw at the Market Fountain a white sheet covering some object stretched on the pavement. It was about six in the evening, and the street was lit up with a blaze of sunlight from the west. Pedestrians, donkeys and jutkas were transformed with the gold of the setting sun. Margayya stood dazzled by the sight. A ragged fellow with matted hair thrust before him a mud tray and said, pointing at the sheet-covered object on the ground, 'An orphan's body, sir. Have pity, help us to bury him.' Margayya threw a look at the covered body, shuddered and parted with a copper, as so many others had done. There was a good collection on the tray. Margayya averted his face and tried to pass quickly. Farther on yet another man came up with a mud tray whining: 'Orphan body '

'Get off, already given,' said Margayya sternly, and passed on. There was money on this tray too. Margayya was filled with disgust. He knew what it meant. A group of people seized upon an unclaimed dead body, undertook to give it a burial and collected a lot of money for it. He knew that they celebrated it as a festive occasion. When they saw a destitute dying on the roadside they cried to themselves: 'Aha! A fine day ahead.' They left their occupations, seized the body, carried it to a public place, put it down on the pavement, placed a few flowers on it, bought a few mud trays from the potter, and assailed the passers-by. They collected enough money at the end of the day to give a gorgeous funeral to the body. They even haggled with the grave-digger and were left with so much money at the end of it all that they drank and made merry for three or four days and gave up temporarily their normal jobs, such as scavenging, load-carrying, and stone-quarrying. It made Margayya reflective. People did anything for money. Money was men's greatest need, like air or food. People went to horrifying lengths for its sake, like collecting rent on a dead body: yet this didn't strike Margayya in his present mood as so horrible as something to be marvelled at. It left him admiring the power and dynamism of money, its capacity to make people do strange deeds. He saw a toddy tapper going a hundred feet up a coconut tree and he reflected: 'Morning to night he wears a loin-cloth and goes up tree after tree for fifty years or more just for the eight annas he gets per tree.' He saw offices and shops opened and people sweating and fatiguing themselves, all for money. Margayya concluded that they wanted money because they wanted fellows like the Secretary of the Cooperative Bank to bow to them, or to have a fellow like Arul Doss speak to them with courtesy, or so that they might wear unpatched dhotis and be treated seriously. Margayya sat down for a moment on a park bench. The Municipality had made a very tiny park at the angle where the Market Road branched off to Lawley Extension. They had put up a cement bench and grown a clump of strong ferns, fencing them off with a railing. He passed through the stile and sat down on the bench. Cars were being driven towards Lawley Extension. Huge cars. He watched them greedily. 'Must have a car as soon as possible,' he said to himself. 'Nothing is impossible in this world.' A cool breeze was blowing. The sun had set. Lights were lit up here and there. 'If I have money, I need not dodge that spectacle dealer. I need not cringe before that stores man. I could give those medicines to my wife. The doctor would look at her with more interest, and she might look like other women. That son of mine, that Balu I could give him everything.' His mind gloated over visions of his son. He would grow into an aristocrat. He would study, not in a Corporation School, but in the convent, and hobnob with the sons of the District Collector or the Superintendent of Police or Mangal Seth, the biggest mill-owner in the town. He would promise him a car all for himself when he came to the College. He could go to America and obtain degrees, and then marry perhaps a judge's daughter. His own wife might demand all the dowry she wanted. He would not interfere, leaving it for the women to manage as they liked. He would buy another bungalow in Lawley Road for his son, and then his vision went on to the next generation of aristocrats.

At this moment he saw a man coming from Lawley Extension: a cadaverous man, burnt by the sun, wrapped in a long piece of white cloth, his forehead painted with red marks and his head clean shaved, with a tuft of hair on top. A tall, gaunt man, he was the priest of the temple in their street. An idea struck Margayya at the sight of him. He was a wise man, well versed in ancient studies, and he might be able to give advice. Margayya clapped his hands till the gaunt man turned and advanced towards him.

'Ah! Margayya! What are you doing here?'

'Just came for a little fresh air. The air is so cool here, unlike our Vinayak Street.'

'Oh, these are all aristocratic parts, with gardens, and fresh air. Our Vinayak Mudali Street! It's like an oven in summer.'

'And what a lot of mosquitoes!' Margayya added.

'I couldn't sleep the whole night,' the priest said.

'Why should they make such a row in our ears? Let them suck the blood if they want, but it's their humming that is so unwelcome,' said Margayya.

They spoke of weather and mosquitoes and fresh air and the diseases prevalent in the town for about half an hour. The priest lived in a sort of timelessness and seemed to be in no hurry. The stars were shining in the sky. Margayya asked: 'How was it you were coming this way?'

'I had gone to perform a Pooja in a house in Lawley Extension. You know that Municipal Chairman's house: they are very particular that I alone should perform these things. They won't tolerate anyone else. So every evening I do it there and then rush back to our temple, where the devotees will be waiting. A man can't be in two places at the same time.'

'Truly said. I will walk back with you to the temple, if you are going there.'

'I have to go to another place on the way and then on to the temple. Just a minute's delay there, that's all. Do come with me. There's nothing so good as company on the road. I've to walk miles and miles from morning to night.'

They walked back towards the Market Road. The priest led him into some unnamed lanes behind the Market. He stopped in front of a house and said: 'If you will wait here, I will be back in a moment.' He went in. Margayya sat up on the pyol. There was a gutter below him. 'This is worse than our Vinayak Street,' Margayya reflected. The place was occupied by a class of hand-loom weavers. All along the lane they had set up weaving frames with yarns dyed in blue and hung out to dry on frames. Somebody came out of the house and said to Margayya: 'Won't you come in?' Margayya felt pleased at this attention and followed him in. There was a very small front hall in the house piled up with weaving frames, stacks of woven saris in different colours, and several rolls of bedding belonging to the members of the household. At one corner they had put up a small wooden pedestal on which a couple of figures of Gods and one or two framed pictures were hanging. An incense stick was burning. His friend the priest sat up before the pedestal, with his eyes shut, muttering something. The master of the house with his wife and children stood devoutly at a distance. There were four children. One or the other of them was being constantly told: 'Don't bite your nails before God.' And they were so much overwhelmed by the general atmosphere that they constantly put their finger tips to their lips and withdrew them quickly as if they had touched a frying-pan. Margayya was very much impressed with their seriousness, and wondered at the same time what his Balu would have done under these circumstances. 'He'd have insisted upon doing what he pleased and not only bitten his own nails but other people's as well. He would have upset all this holy water and camphor flame,' Margayya reflected, with gratification. It seemed to him a most enchanting self-assertiveness on the part of his child. It gave him a touch of superiority to all these children, who wouldn't bite their nails when ordered not to. He felt a desire to go home and spoil his son. 'I left so early in the day,' he reflected. He suddenly asked himself, 'Why am I knocking around with this priest instead of going home?' An old lady, probably the grandmother of the house, sat before the God with a small child on her lap. Only the child's eyes were visible, gleaming in the sacred lamps. It was entirely wrapped in a blanket. Margayya guessed that it must be very sick. They were all fussing over it. 'How old is that child?' Margayya wondered, unable to get a full glimpse of it. Somehow this worried him. 'If Balu were in his position would he have consented to be chained up like this? Some children are too dull '

It was nearly nine o'clock when they came out. Margayya followed the priest mutely through the streets. The town had almost gone to sleep. The streets were silent.

'It's so late!' he murmured.

'What is late?' asked the priest.

'We are so late.'

'Late for what?'

Margayya fumbled for a reply. He said clumsily: 'You said you'd be kept there only for a short time. I thought you would be kept only a short time that's why '

'In holy business can we be glancing at a wristwatch all the time? That child has been crippled with a dreadful disease from childhood. It is now much better. It is some wasting disease '

'Do you perform Poojas for his sake?'

'Yes, every Friday. It is the Pooja that enabled young Markandeya to win over Yama, the God of Death.'

'Oh!' Margayya exclaimed, interested but not willing to show his ignorance.

'Every child knows that story.'

'Yes, of course, of course,' Margayya said non-committally. He felt he ought to say something more and added: 'Those people,' indicating over his shoulder a vast throng of wise ancestors, 'those people knew what was good for us.'

'Not the people you mean, but those who were there even before them,' corrected the priest in a debating spirit.

'All right,' Margayya agreed meekly.

The priest asked him further on: 'What do you gather from the story of Markandeya?'

Margayya blinked, and felt like a schoolboy. He said ceremoniously: 'How can I say? It's for a learned person like you to enlighten us on these matters.'

'All right. What was Markandeya?' asked the man persistently.

Margayya began to feel desperate. He feared that the other might not rest till he had exposed his ignorance. He felt he ought to put a stop to it at once, and said: 'It's a long time since I heard that story. My grandmother used to tell it. I should like to hear it again.'

'Ask then. If you don't know a thing, there is no shame in asking and learning about it,' moralized the priest. He then narrated the story of Markandeya, the boy devotee of God Shiva, destined to die the moment he completed his sixteenth year. When the moment came, the emissaries of Yama (the God of Death) arrived in order to bind and carry off his life, but he was performing the Pooja and the dark emissaries could not approach him at all! Markandeya remained sixteen to all eternity, and thus defeated death. 'That particular Pooja had that efficacy and it's that very Pooja I am performing on behalf of the child, who is much better for it.'

'Will the child live?' asked Margayya, his interest completely roused.

'How can I say? It's our duty to perform a Pooja; the result cannot be our concern. It's Karma.'

'Yes, yes,' agreed Margayya, somewhat baffled.

They now reached the little temple at the end of Vinayak Mudali Street. There under a cracked dome was an inner shrine containing an image of Hanuman, the God of Power, the son of Wind. According to tradition this God had pressed one foot on the very spot where the shrine now stood, sprang across space and ocean and landed in Lanka (Ceylon), there to destroy Ravana, a king with ten heads and twenty hands, who was oppressing mankind and had abducted Rama's wife Sita.

The priest was part and parcel of the temple. There was a small wooden shack within its narrow corridors, where he ate his food and slept. He looked after the shrine, polished and oiled the tall bronze lamps and worshipped here.

Margayya hesitated at the entrance. It seemed already very late. 'I'll go now,' he said.

'Why don't you come in and see the God, having come so far?' asked the priest. Margayya hesitated. He was afraid to ignore the priest's suggestion. He feared that that might displease God. As he hesitated, the priest drove home the point: 'You stopped me there at the park to say something. You have been with me ever since and you have not spoken anything about it.' Margayya felt caught. He found himself behaving more and more like a schoolboy. He remembered his old teacher, back there in his village, an old man with a white rim around his black pupils that gave him the look of a cat peering in the dark, whose hands shook when he gripped the cane, but who nevertheless put it to sound use, especially on Margayya's back, particularly when he behaved as he behaved now, blinking when he ought to be opening his lips and letting the words out. Later in life Margayya remedied it by not allowing any pause in his speech, but the disease recurred now and then. This was such a moment. He wanted to talk to the priest and seek his advice, but he felt reluctant to utter the first word. As he stood there at the portals of the temple he feared for a second the old whacking from a cane. But the priest only said: 'Come in.'

'Isn't it late?'

'For what?'

Margayya once again blinked. He mutely followed the priest into the shrine. The main portion of the image went up into the shadows, partly illuminated by a flickering oil-lamp. The priest briskly swept into a basket some broken coconut, plantains, and coins, left on the doorstep by devotees. He held up a plantain and a piece of coconut for Margayya. 'Probably you are hungry. Eat these. I will give you a tumbler of milk.' He went into his shack and came out bearing a tumbler of milk.

Margayya squatted on the floor, leaning against the high rugged wall of the corridor. The town had fallen asleep. Vinayak Mudali Street was at the very end of the town, and no one moved about at this hour. Even the street dogs, which created such a furore every night, seemed to have fallen asleep. A couple of coconut trees waved against the stars in the sky. The only noise in the world now seemed to be the crunching of coconut between Margayya's jaws. It was like the sound of wooden wheels running over a sandy bed. Margayya felt abashed, and tried to eat noiselessly. At this a bit of coconut went the wrong way, and he was seized with a fit of coughing, which racked his whole frame. He panted and gasped as he tried to explain: 'It ... It ... It ...' The priest seemed to watch with amusement, and he felt indignant. 'What right has this man to keep me here at this hour and amuse himself at my expense?'

The priest said: 'Drink that milk, it will make you all right.'

'He asks me to drink milk as if I were a baby. Next, I think, he will force it between my lips.' He suddenly grew very assertive and said resolutely: 'I don't like milk ... I have never liked it.' He pushed away the tumbler resolutely.

The priest said: 'Don't push away a tumbler of milk with the back of your hand.' Margayya was no longer going to be treated and lectured like a schoolboy. He said: 'I know. But who doesn't?'

'And yet,' said the priest with amused contempt, 'you push away milk with the back of your hand as if it were a tumbler of ditch water.'

'No, no,' said Margayya semi-apologetically. 'I didn't push it with the back of my hand. I just tried to put away the tumbler so that you might take it.'

Ignoring this explanation and looking away, far away, the priest said: 'Milk is one of the forms of Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. When you reject it or treat it indifferently, it means you reject her. She is a Goddess who always stays on the tip of her toes all the time, ever ready to turn and run away. There are ways of wooing and keeping her. When she graces a house with her presence, the master of the house becomes distinguished, famous and wealthy.' Margayya reverently touched the tumbler and very respectfully drank the milk, taking care not to spill even a drop.

'That is better,' said the old man. 'There was once upon a time ' He narrated from Mahabharata the story of Kubera, the wealthiest man in creation, who undertook a long arduous penance as atonement for spilling a drop of milk on the floor of his palace. When the story ended and a pause ensued, Margayya felt he could no longer keep back his request. He felt somewhat shy as he said: 'I want to acquire wealth. Can you show me a way? I will do anything you suggest.'

'Anything?' asked the first emphatically. Margayya suddenly grew nervous and discreet. 'Of course, anything reasonable.' Perhaps the man would tell him to walk upside down or some such thing. 'You know what I mean,' Margayya added pathetically.

'No, I don't know what you mean,' said the old man point blank. 'Wealth does not come the way of people who adopt half-hearted measures. It comes only to those who pray for it single-mindedly with no other thought.'

Margayya began to tremble slightly at this statement. 'Perhaps he is a sorcerer, or a black magician or an alchemist.' He threw a frightened look at him and then at the shack in which he usually dwelt. 'Perhaps he has hidden human bodies in that shack, and extracts from the corpses some black ointment, with which he acquires extraordinary powers.'

Margayya wanted to get up and run away. In the starlight the man looked eerie; his hollow voice reverberating through the silent night. Margayya's mind was seized with fears. 'Perhaps he will ask me to cut off my son's head.' He imagined Balu being drugged and taken into the shack. 'It's midnight or probably dawn. Let me go home.'

He got up abruptly. The old man did not stop him. He merely said: 'Yes, go home. It is very late. Probably your wife will be anxious.' Margayya felt tremendously relieved that after all he was permitted to leave. He got up, prostrated before the God's image, scrambled to his feet hurriedly, lest the other, sitting immobile where he had left him, should call him back. He hurried off through the silent street. Far off a night constable's whistle was heard. 'I hope he will not take me for a thief.' He was wearing his wedding dhoti, carrying his account papers under his arm; the whole thing struck him at this hour as being extremely ridiculous.

He stood before his door unable to make up his mind to knock. It might rouse his wife or his son. But unless his wife was roused ... And how could he explain his late coming? 'Something has happened to me everything seems to be going wrong. That Ami Doss has perhaps cast a spell: can't be sure what everybody is up to The world seemed to be a very risky place to live in, peopled by creatures with dark powers. As he stood there undecided, his wife threw back the bolt and let him in. She hadn't put out the kerosene lamp. She looked at him sourly and asked: 'What have you been doing so late?' Once inside his home all his old assertiveness returned. He was the master in his house, with nobody to question him. He ignored her and quickly went into the smaller room to undress and change. He washed himself briskly at the well. His son was sleeping near the doorway of the smaller room on a rush mat. He threw a loving look at him, with a feeling that but for a quick decision on his part the little fellow might be in that shack put to no end of tortures. His wife was very sleepy as she waited for him in the kitchen. He found that she had spread out two leaves. 'What? You have not had your dinner yet!' he said, feeling pleased that she had waited for him.

'How could I without knowing what had happened? Hereafter, if you are going to be late '

'I must ask your permission, I suppose,' he said arrogantly.

They consumed their midnight dinner in silence. They went to bed in silence. He lay on the mat beside his son. She went down into her room, and lay on a carpet on which she had already snatched a few hours of sleep before he arrived. Margayya lay in bed unable to shut his eyes. He lay looking at the ceiling, which was dark with smoke; cobwebs dangled from the tiles like tapestry. 'She ought to clean it and not expect me to have to see such things,' he said to himself angrily. He got up and blew out the kerosene lamp and lay down. He slept badly, constantly harassed by nightmares composed of the priest, the secretary, and Arul Doss. One recurring dream was of his son stepping into the shack in the temple, with the priest standing behind the door, and all his efforts to keep him back proved futile. The young fellow was constantly tiptoeing away towards the shack. It bothered Margayya so much that he let out a cry: 'Aiyo! Aiyo!' which woke up the child, who jumped out of bed with a piercing scream; which in turn roused his mother sleeping in the other room, and she sprang up howling: 'Oh, what has happened! What has happened!' It was about half an hour before the dawn. All this commotion awakened Margayya himself. He cried: 'Who is there? Who is there?' 'Someone was moving about.' 'Someone made a noise.' The uproar increased. 'Where are the matches?' Margayya demanded suddenly and cursed in the dark. 'Who asked you to blow out the light?' his wife said. He sprang up and ran towards the backyard thinking that the intruder must have run in that direction. The little boy cried, 'Oh, father, father, don't go ... Don't go ...' His mother clutched him to her bosom. He struggled and wildly kicked for no reason whatever. The people of the next house woke up and muttered: 'Something always goes wrong in that house. Even at midnight one has no peace, if they are in the neighbourhood.'

Margayya was sitting before his small box, examining the accounts written in his red book. His son came up to sit on his lap. Margayya said: 'Go and play, don't disturb me now,' and tried to keep him off. 'This is my play, I won't go,' said the child, pushing towards him again resolutely and climbing on his lap. Margayya had to peep over his head in order to look at the register before him; Balu's hair constantly tickled his nostrils and he felt irritated. He cried: 'Balu, won't you leave me alone. I will buy you a nice '

'What?' asked the child.

'A nice little elephant.'

'All right, buy it now, come on.'

'No, no, not now ... I'm working now,' he said, pointing at the small register. Balu shot out his little leg and kicked away the register petulantly, and in the process the ink-well upset beside it and emptied on the page. Then the child stamped his heel on the ink and it splashed over Margayya's face and spoiled the entire book. Margayya felt maddened at the sight of it. He simply gripped the boy by his shoulder, lifted him as he would lift an unwanted cat, and almost flung him into a corner. Needless to say it made the child cry so loudly that his mother came running out of the kitchen, her eyes streaming with tears owing to the smoke there. 'What has happened? What has happened?' she cried, rushing towards the child, who, undaunted, was again making a dash for his father as he stooped over the wreckage trying to retrieve his damaged account-book. 'Look what he has done,' he cried excitedly. 'This monkey!'

'You are a monkey!' cried the boy, hugging his father's knee as he was blotting the spilled ink.

'If you don't leave me, I'll I'll ' He was too angry. 'I'll give you over to the temple priest ... He'll flay your skin.'

'He will give me plantains,' corrected the boy. He turned aside and suddenly pounced on the book, grabbed it and dashed off. His father ran after him with war cries. The boy dodged him here and there, going into this corner and darting into that. His tears had by now dried, he was enjoying the chase, and with hysterical laughter he was running hither and thither clutching the precious red notebook in his hand. It was a small space within which he ran, but somehow Margayya was unable to seize him. Margayya panted with the effort. He cried: 'If you don't stop, I'll flay you.'

'What is the matter with you? What has come over you?' asked the wife.

'I'm all right,' Margayya replied proudly. 'You'll see what I'll do to that little monkey, that devil you have begotten.' His wife gave some appropriate reply, and tried to help in the chase. She pretended to look away and suddenly darted across to seize the boy. He was too swift even for her calculations. She only collided against her husband, which irritated him more; and it allowed the child to dash into the street with his prize, with his father at his heels. He cried impatiently to his wife, 'Get out of the way you ' at which she turned and went back to the kitchen murmuring: 'What do I care? I only let the rice overboil watching this tomfoolery.' The boy dashed down the front steps, with his father following him. Margayya was blind to all his surroundings all he could see was the little boy with his curly hair, and the small red-bound book which was in his hand. Some passers-by in Vinayak Mudali Street stopped to watch the scene. Margayya cried shamelessly: 'Hold him! Hold him!' At which they tried to encircle the boy. It was evident that by now he had become completely intoxicated with the chase. Presently he found that he was being outnumbered and cornered. As a circle of hunters hemmed in, he did an entirely unexpected thing he turned back as if coming into his father's arms, and as he was just about to grasp him, darted sideways to the edge of the gutter and flung the red book into it. The gutter ran in front of the houses; roaring waters went down the drain God knew where. It was well known that any object that fell into it was lost for ever, it sank and went out of sight, sank deeper and deeper into a black mass, and was hopelessly gone. The gutter was wide as a channel. Once in a while, especially before the elections, the Municipal officials came down and walked along the edge peering into its dark current and saying something among themselves as to its being a problem and so on. But there they left it until the next election. It was a stock cynicism for people to say when they saw anyone inspecting the drains: 'They are only looking for the election votes there!' At other times the gutter continued its existence unhampered, providing the cloud of mosquitoes and the stench that characterized existence in Vinayak Mudali Street.

Presently a big crowd stood on the edge of the drain looking at its inky, swirling waters. People sympathized with Margayya. Wild, inaccurate reports of what had fallen into it were circulated. Margayya heard people tell each other: 'A box was dropped into it.' 'That child threw away a gold chain into it.' Everyone looked at Balu with interest. He seemed to have become a hero for the moment. He felt abashed at this prominence and hung his head. The sun was shining on them fiercely, though it was just nine-thirty in the morning. Margayya looked red with anger and exertion. His son's face was also flushed. The little boy crossed his arms behind him and stood on the edge of the gutter watching it with fascination. There was no trace of the book left anywhere. Margayya's blood boiled as he watched the unconcern of the boy, who, true to the type in that street, wore only a shirt which covered only the upper half of his body. Two pedlars carrying green vegetables, a cyclist who jumped off on seeing the crowd, a few school children, a curd-seller, and a few others formed the group which now watched the gutter with varying comments passing between them. A man was saying: 'Some people are so fond that they give their children everything they ask for.' On hearing this Margayya felt so enraged that he lifted the edge of the shirt the little boy was wearing and slapped him fiercely across his uncovered seat. The boy cried aloud: 'Oh!' and turned round on his father. It started a fresh scene. Someone dragged away the child crying: 'Save the child from this ruffian.' Another said: 'He would have pushed the child into the gutter.' A woman with a basket came forward to ask: 'Are you a heartless demon? How can you beat such a small child?' She flung down her basket and picked up the child on her arm. Balu copiously sobbed on her shoulder. Another woman tried to take him from her, commenting: 'Only those who bear the child for ten months in the womb know how precious it is. Men are always like this.' Someone objected to this statement; it turned out to be the man holding the cycle, who retorted with great warmth: 'Boys must be chastized; otherwise do you want them to grow up into devils?' Margayya looked at him gratefully. Here at last was a friend in this absolutely hostile world. He swept his arms to address all the women and the gathering: 'It's all very well for you to talk.... But he has thrown in there an important account-book. What am I to do without it?'

'How can a baby know anything about account-books and such things? God gives children to those who don't deserve them.'

'You should not have kept it within his reach. You must always be prepared for such things where there are children.'

A washerwoman, who had come forward, said: 'You were childless for twelve years, and prayed to all the Gods and went to Thirupathi: was it only for this?'

'What have I done?' Margayya asked pathetically. He was beginning to feel very foolish. Society was pressing in upon him from all sides the latest in the shape of this woman who had on her back a bundle of unwashed linen. Vegetable-sellers, oilmongers, passers-by, cartmen, students everyone seemed to have a right to talk to him as they pleased. Society seemed to overwhelm him on all sides. The lone cyclist was hardly an adequate support on which to lean. Margayya turned and looked for him. He too was gone. He saw his son clinging fast to the waist of the cucumber-seller, sobbing and sobbing, and gaining more sympathizers. Margayya knew that the little boy would not let his sympathizers go until they took him to the shop across the road and bought him peppermints.

The crowd turned away and was now following Balu, and Margayya felt relieved that they were leaving him alone. He broke a twig off an avenue tree, and vaguely poked it into the gutter and ran the stick from end to end. He only succeeded in raising a stench. A school-master who passed that way advised: 'Call a scavenger and ask him to look for it. He'll have the proper thing with him for poking here. Don't try to do everything yourself Margayya obediently dropped the stick into the drain, reflecting, 'No one will let me do what I like.' He turned to go back into his house. He climbed his steps with bowed head, because his brother's entire family was ranged along the wall on the other side. He quickly passed in. When he was gone they commented: 'Something is always agitating that household and creating a row.' Margayya went straight into the kitchen, where his wife was cooking, ignorant of all that had happened, and told her: 'The folk in the next house seem to have no better business than to hang about to see what is going on here ... Do they ever find the time to cook, eat or sleep?' This was a routine question needing no reply from his wife. She merely asked: 'Where is the child?' 'Probably rolling in the gutter,' he answered wearily. 'What has come over you?' she asked. 'You don't seem to be in your senses since last night.'

'I'm not. And if you try to imply that I have been drinking or spending the night in a brothel, I leave you free to think so '

The loss of the little book produced endless complications for Margayya. He could hardly transact any business without it, he had to conceal the loss from his customers, who he feared might take advantage of it. He had to keep out of the tree shade, remain standing or moving about, and give out figures from his head it was all most irksome. It was an important day; he had to collect money from three or four men to whom he had advanced cash.

'Where is the book, master?' asked Kali, one of his old customers. Margayya said: 'I'm rebinding it. You know it must look tidy. But it is really not necessary for me. I have everything I want here,' he added, tapping his forehead. Kali had not been here for some weeks now and so looked with suspicion at this man standing beyond the gate, without his box, without his book. 'Perhaps,' thought Margayya, 'Ami Doss has been speaking to him.' Kali was like a tiger which suddenly meets the ring-master, without the ring, or the whip in his hand.

'Why are you not in your place?' he asked.