'Oh! I'm tired of sitting and sitting some sort of lumbago here,' Margayya said. He sat down on the short compound wall. A country cart passed along, and it threw up dust. Margayya sneezed. 'You see, you should not sit there,' moralized the other. 'I should not, that's why I'm looking for an office hereabouts with chairs and tables. When eminent people like you arrive, you will be seated in chairs,' he said. 'I must also look to your convenience, don't you see?'

'Of course,' said the other. 'But that banyan shade was quite good, sir. So much fresh air. I always like it.'

'I don't,' replied Margayya. 'It's all very well for a man like you, who comes out to lounge and have a nap in the afternoon. But for a business man it is not good. The uproar those birds make! I can hardly hear my own voice! And then their droppings! And those ants down below. I used to suffer agony when I was sitting there.'

'Where is your box, sir?' asked Kali, noticing its absence.

'Sent it for repainting: it's a lucky box, my dear fellow. I don't like to throw it away ... It's not looking quite tidy. I've sent it for painting. I have it more as a keepsake.'

'Yes, whatever article has grown up with us must be kept all our life ... In our village there was a fellow who had a hoe with a broken handle '

'I know all that,' Margayya cut in, snubbing him just for the sake of effect. 'When he changed the handle, his harvest suffered, didn't it?'

'How do you know, sir?' asked Kali, overawed.

'I know everything that goes on in people's minds; otherwise, I should not have taken to this banking business ... Now I know what is going on in your mind. You have got in your purse, which you have tucked at the waist, money drawn from the bank.'

'No, no, sir,' he protested. 'Is it so easy to get money out of them?'

'Listen! Your loan application was considered and passed on Monday last. You must have in your purse now two hundred and seventy-nine rupees and four annas; that is, you have given eight annas to the clerk, and four annas as a tip to Arul Doss. Is it, or is it not a fact?' He cast a searching look at Kali, who had wrapped himself in a large sheet. There were a hundred corners over his person where he might tuck a whole treasure. Kali met his gaze, and turned to go. It was the dull hour of the afternoon when his other clients had gone into the bank or were dozing in the shade. They would all come a little later. Margayya was glad it was so, because he wanted to tackle this difficult man alone. Others would not be able to take a lesson from him. Kali was attempting to retreat. He looked up at the sky and said: 'Looks like three o'clock. They have asked me to call in at three again. You know how it is, if we go in even a minute late. They make it an excuse ' Margayya looked at him. If he let him go out of sight, he would pass into the bank and then out of it by the back door.

He said firmly: 'You give me the fifty rupees I advanced, with interest.' The other looked puzzled.

'Fifty! With interest! What is it you are talking about, Margayya?' At other times, if anyone said such a thing, Margayya would open the pages of his red-bound book and flourish it. He thought of his son. Why did the boy do such a thing? He had left the book alone all these days! Kali stopped, looked at him haughtily and said: 'I never like to be called a liar! You may settle my account tomorrow, the first thing... Let me see what it is, and I will settle it the first thing tomorrow, to the last pie.' He moved away. Margayya stood helplessly. He watched him with sorrow. He could not even throw after him any curse and threats (brilliant ones that occurred to him, as usual, a little too late). 'Margayya, you have been made a fool of. They have made a frightful fool of you.' 'They haven't ... I should have told him ... You son of a guttersnipe ... Don't I know what your father was! He went to gaol for snatching a chain from a child's neck! You come of a family which would steal a matchstick rather than ask for it ... I shouldn't have associated with you, but I'll get at you one day, don't worry. I can ' But it was no use arguing with himself in this manner. The man was gone, while Margayya stood watching him dumbly. He recollected that he had helped him get loans four times when his life and honour, as he said, were at stake. 'And this is what I get.' He was filled with self-pity. He thought of the account-book. Suppose he announced a reward to any scavenger who might salvage it? Even if it was salvaged what was the use? How was it to be touched again and read!

He had to wait at the gate, away from the line of vision of the secretary's room, sitting on the short parapet, and keep an eye on all his old customers who might go in and come out of the building. Without giving himself too much away, he was able to tackle a few of his old customers, and they didn't prove as tricky as Kali. He was able to salvage the bulk of his investments within the next fifteen days, which amounted to just two hundred rupees.

Margayya stepped into the temple, driven there by a vague sense of desperation. He told himself several times over that he was going to see the God and not the priest. But he did not believe it himself nor did the priest let him view only the God and go away. As soon as he entered the portals of the temple the priest's voice came to him from an unknown, unobserved place, behind the image in the dark inner sanctum. 'Oh, Margayya, welcome to this God's home.' Margayya was startled as if a voice from Heaven had suddenly assailed him. He trembled. The last worshipper had prostrated before the image and was leaving. Margayya prostrated on the ground before the inner sanctuary. A couple of feeble oil-lamps were alight; a mixed smell of burning oil, flowers, and incense hung in the air. That was a combination of scent which always gave Margayya a feeling of elation. He shut his eyes. For a moment he felt that he was in a world free from all worrying problems. It was in many ways a noble world, where everything ran smoothly no Arul Doss or Co-operative Society Secretary, no villagers with their complex finances, no son to snatch away an account-book and drop it in a gutter. Life was a terrible affair. The faint, acrid smell of oil seemed to detach him from all worries for a moment. He shut his eyes and let himself float in that luxurious sensation, with the tip of his nose pressed against the flagstones of the corridor. It was still warm with the heat of the day's sun. Its smell of dust was overpowering the dust carried by the feet of hundreds of devotees and worshippers or blown in by the wind from Vinayak Mudali Street. When Margayya withdrew from the feeling of ecstasy and lifted his head, he saw the feet of the priest near his face. He looked up. The priest said: 'Margayya's mind is deeply engrossed in God ... if a man's piety is to be measured by the length of time he lies prostrate before God. Get up Margayya. God has seen your heart already.' Margayya got to his feet. He smiled at him and felt some explanation was due. He began awkwardly: 'You see, you see ... I felt I should visit God at least once a week '

'Yes, you were here only last evening, have you forgotten it already?'

'Not at all, not at all,' Margayya replied. 'I wonder what the time is.'

'In this house there is no need for us to look at a watch. If it is dark, it is night. If it's sunny, it's day: that's all we know. This is not a bank, you see.' At the word 'bank' Margayya gulped suddenly. He thought it referred to him. He said: 'I don't have a watch either.'

'But you ought to,' said the priest. 'A bank keeps a watch to see how fast interest is accumulating.'

'My bank is finished. This is all I have,' said Margayya, taking out of his pocket a small packet of currency notes all that he was able to salvage from his banking operations. 'Just two hundred rupees what is it worth?'

'Two hundred rupees,' replied the priest. 'Come in. I will give you some milk and fruit!'

'What again!' asked Margayya.

'Yes, again, and again!' answered the priest. 'Is there anything strange about it? Don't we have to eat every day, again and again?' Margayya was cowed. He explained: 'It's not that. I was wondering what the time might be.'

'It's not yet tomorrow, that's all I know,' replied the priest. 'If it is really late for you, you can go.' He turned and moved down the corridor and passed out of sight. Margayya stood still for a few moments. He looked at the image of the God and threw it a vague nod. His wife might once again start a lot of bother and pull a long face and think he'd been visiting a brothel. 'Funny creature, so jealous at this age!' he reflected. 'I can tell her I've been out on important business. What makes her think I have sweethearts!' Ever since he could remember she had always shown a sort of uneasiness about Margayya. 'Who'd consent to be a sweetheart to me!' he said. 'A fellow with the name "Margayya", which seems almost a branding with hot iron.' He remembered how a year or so ago she raised quite a lot of bother when he mentioned that a woman had come to him as a client under the tree. She looked sullen for two days until he convinced her that he had only been joking.

He found himself obeying the priest without a single thought of his own. At a look from this gaunt man, he peeled four plantains and swallowed them in quick succession, and he drank a huge vessel of milk, treating the matter with as much reverence as he could muster. When the priest said approvingly, 'That's very good indeed. That's an excellent performance,' he felt proud of the certificate. The priest added, 'You have been hungry without knowing it.'

'Yes, but when one's mind is full of worries, one does not notice,' he said, feeling that the time had come for him to say something. The stars were out. A cool breeze was blowing, and night seemed quiet; the nourishment he had taken filled him with a sense of harmony, and so when the priest said: 'Margayya! What is ailing you? You can speak out,' he felt that he could no longer hesitate and fumble; that all barriers between himself and the world had been swept away and that he stood alone; that he alone mattered. He had a right to demand the goods of life and get them, like an eminent guest in a wedding house a guest who belongs to the bridegroom's party, with the bride dancing attendance, ever waiting for the slightest nod or sign to run to his side and do some pleasing act ... He swelled with his own importance ... When he inhaled the fresh night air it seemed to increase his stature so much that the earth and the sky were only just big enough to hold him ... He began to talk in a grand manner ... the priest with his eyes glinting in the starlight listened without speaking a word ... He looked like a sloth-cub in the darkness as he humped into a ball with his chin on his knees, his lank face thrust forward ... Margayya catalogued all his demands. He was like a Departmental Officer indenting for his stationery a superior baize cover for his office table, a crystal paperweight, a shining mirror-like paper-knife, and so on. There was no reason why he should be given the inferior things. Let the department stores beware, he would throw it out of the window if they sent in the miserable stuff they put on their fourth clerk's tables. He would just throw it out, that's all ... He would be a man of consequence, let them beware: let the Gods beware they that provided a man with a home, and cars, servants, the admiration of his fellow men, and good clothes. After letting him run on as long as he liked, the priest opened his mouth and said: 'That means you would propitiate Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. When she throws a glance and it falls on someone, he becomes rich, he becomes prosperous, he is treated by the world as an eminent man, his words are treated as something of importance. All this you seem to want.'

'Yes,' said Margayya, authoritatively. 'Why not?' He took out of his pocket his little snuff-box and tapped its lid. He flicked it open and took a deep pinch. The priest said: 'Go on, go on, no harm in it. A devotee of Goddess Lakshmi need care for nothing, not even the fact that he is in a temple where a certain decorum is to be observed. It's only a question of self-assurance. He has so much authority in his face, looks, so much money in his purse, so many to do his bidding that he cares for nothing really in the world. It's only the protege of Goddess Saraswathi* who has to mind such things. But when Saraswathi favours a man, the other Goddess withdraws her favours. There is always a rivalry between the two between the patronage of the spouse of Vishnu and the spouse of Brahma. Some persons have the good fortune to be claimed by both, some on the contrary have the misfortune to be abandoned by both. Evidently you are one of those for whom both are fighting at the moment.' Margayya felt immensely powerful and important. He had never known that anybody cared for him ... and now to think that two Goddesses were fighting to confer their favours on him. He lifted his eyes, glanced at the brilliant stars in Heaven as if there, between the luminous walls, he would get a glimpse of the crowned Goddesses tearing at each other.

'Why should they care for me?' he asked innocently.

The priest replied: 'How can we question? How can we question the fancies of Gods? It's just there, that's all ... it's beyond our powers to understand.'

Intoxicated by this, Margayya said: 'A man with whom the Goddess of Wealth favours need not worry much. He can buy all the knowledge he requires. He can afford to buy all the gifts that Goddess Saraswathi holds in her palm.'

The priest let out a quiet chuckle at Margayya's very reckless statement. Margayya asked: 'Why do you laugh?' Already a note of authority was coming into his voice. The priest said: 'Yes, this is what every man who attains wealth thinks. You are moving along the right line. Let me see your horoscope. Bring it tomorrow.' Tomorrow! It seemed such along way off. 'Can't you say something today?' Margayya asked pathetically, feeling that he was being hurled back to the earth. The priest said: 'About the same time as today, meet me with your horoscope.'

'Yet another night out and all the trouble with my wife,' Margayya thought immediately.

The priest saw him off at the door and shut the temple gate.

The moment his wife opened the door Margayya demanded: 'Where is my horoscope?'

'Horoscope?' his wife said dreamily. 'What's happened that you want it so urgently at this hour?' She looked him up and down suspiciously and, feeling probably that it was not the right time to drag him into a talk, turned and went back to bed.

It was eight o'clock when Margayya got up. He would probably have slept on till eleven, but for the fact that Balu sat on his chest and hammered his head with his lacquered wooden elephant. When he opened his eyes, Balu let out a shout of joy, put his arms round his neck, and pretended to lift him out of bed. Margayya looked at him benignly. 'This boy must grow up like a prince. The Goddess willing, he'll certainly ...' He sprang up from bed. In a quarter of an hour he was ready, bathed, wearing a clean dress, and his forehead smeared with red vermilion and a splash of sacred ash. He seemed to be in such a great hurry that his wife, although she had resolved to ignore his recent eccentric ways, was constrained to ask, 'What is agitating you so much?'

'Is coffee ready?' he asked.

She laughed cynically. 'Coffee! The milk-vendor created a scene here last evening demanding his dues. It was such a disgrace with the people in the next house watching.'

'They seem to have nothing better to do,' he said irrelevantly, his mind going off at a tangent.

'Anybody will watch when there is something to watch,' she said.

'So, no coffee?' he asked with a touch of despair. It seemed terribly hard for him to start the day without a cup of coffee. It produced a sort of vacuum, a hollow sensation. He braved it out saying: 'That's right. Why should we want coffee? As if our ancestors ' She added: 'There is no milk even for the child.' Margayya threw a sad look at Balu. Balu seemed happy to be missing his milk. He said: 'Let us drive away that milkman. It will be so nice.'

'Why, aren't you hungry?' Margayya asked.

'Yes, I'm hungry. Give me biscuits.'

Margayya said: 'Wait a little, young man. I'll fill a whole shelf with biscuits and chocolates and fruit.'

'All for me?' the boy asked eagerly.

'Yes, absolutely, provided you don't bother me, but leave me alone now,' Margayya said. He went into their little room and pulled out a wooden chest. It was filled with letters in their old envelopes of nearly thirty years ago: there you could find letters written by Margayya's father from a village; Margayya's father-in-law writing to his new son-in-law; a letter from an uncle saying that there was a nice girl to be married and proposing her for Margayya, enclosing horoscopes. There were several letters containing saffron-tipped horoscopes on old stiff paper. There were unknown names of girls either proposed to Margayya or to his brother, with their horoscopes; and many acrimonious letters that passed between him and his brother before the partition. Every letter he picked up stirred a cloud of dust. Little Balu stole up and stood at his shoulder as he squatted on the ground. Margayya turned round and said: 'Balu, you must promise not to put your hand out.'

'Why?'

Margayya handed him over to his wife with: 'Take this fellow away. If you let him come near me again '

She snatched him up as he protested and shouted and carried him away, muttering: 'This is only a trick to send me off. You don't like me to see what you are doing. I suppose. I don't know what you are up to! So mysterious!'

'Women can't hold their tongues, that's why,' Margayya replied. Little Balu made a good deal of noise in the other room and Margayya muttered: 'She has completely spoilt him, beyond remedy; I must take him out of her hands and put him to school. That's the only way; otherwise he will be a terrible scoundrel.' As he rummaged in the contents of the box his mind kept ringing with his wife's weak protests and grumblings: 'Seems to be bent upon worrying me she's getting queer!' he said to himself. He took up every envelope, gazed on its postmark, examined the letters, became engrossed for a while in by-gone family politics, and finally came upon a couple of horoscopes tucked into an envelope addressed to his father. A short note by his father-in-law said: 'I'm returning to you the originals of the horoscopes of Sowbhagyavathi (ever-auspicious) Meenakshi, and your son Chiranjeevi (eternally-living) Krishna. Your daughter-in-law is keeping well. Any day you ask us to fix the nuptial ceremony I shall bring her over.' Margayya (he hadn't yet attained that name) felt a sudden tenderness for his wife. She seemed to become all at once a young bashful virgin bride.

'Meena!' he cried. 'Here are the horoscopes.' She came up, still bearing her son on her arm. Margayya flourished the horoscopes. 'I've found them.' He clung to them as if he had secured the plan of approach to a buried treasure. 'What is it?' she asked. He held up the letter and cried: 'This is a letter from your father about our nuptials.' She blushed slightly, and turned away: 'What has come over you that you are unearthing all this stuff?' Little Balu would not let her finish her sentence. He started wriggling in her arm, and showed an inclination to dash for his father's horoscope. 'Take him away,' cried Margayya. 'Otherwise we shall find all this in the gutter before our house so much for this son of ours.'

Presently she came without their son to ask: 'What exactly are you planning?' Her face was full of perplexity. 'Don't worry,' he said, looking up at her. He still felt the tenderness that he had felt for her as a virginal bride. He told her: 'Don't worry. I've not been hunting out my horoscope in order to search for a bride.' He laughed. She found it difficult to enjoy the joke with him. It was too puzzling. She merely said: 'By all means, look for a bride. I shan't mind.' He was disappointed that she sounded so indifferent: he was proud to feel that she guarded him jealously. However, he bantered her about it without telling anything. He could not exactly say in all seriousness what he was trying to do. 'You will know all about it very soon.' When he started out that day, she asked rather nervously: 'Will you be late again today?'

'Yes,' he said. 'What if I am late? I'm only out on business, be assured.'

His son said: 'I will come with you too,' and ran down the steps and clung to him. Margayya could not shake him off easily. He carried him up to the end of the street and lectured him all the way on how he should behave in order to qualify for biscuits and chocolates. The lecture seemed to affect him since he became quite docile when Margayya put him back at his house and left.

That night, in his shack, the priest scrutinized the horoscope with the aid of an oil-lamp. He spread it out and pored over it for a long while in silence. He said: 'Saturn! Saturn! This God is moving on to that house. He may do you good if you propitiate him. Why don't you go and pray in that other temple where they've installed the Planetary Deities? Go there with an offering of honey.' 'Where can I get honey?' Margayya asked, looking worried. He suddenly realized that he had never bought honey in his life. It was just one of those things that one always had at home, when the household was managed by one's parents. Now he recollected that ever since he became an independent family head he had managed to get along without honey. Now the testing time seemed to have come. The priest burst into one of his frightening chuckles. He remarked: 'Margayya shows the whole world how to increase their cash but honey! He stands defeated before honey, is that it?' 'I will manage it,' Margayya said haughtily. 'I was only saying ' The priest arbitrarily cut short all further reference to the subject. 'On Saturday go to the temple and go round its corridor thrice. Do you know that Saturn is the most powerful entity in the world? And if he is gratified he can make you a ruler of this world or he can just drown you in an ocean of misery. Nobody can escape him. Better keep him in good humour.'

'All right; I will do as you say,' Margayya said, with quiet obedience in his voice. He felt as if Saturn were around him, and might give him a twist and lift him up for the plunge into the ocean of misery if he did not behave properly.

It was four o'clock when the priest had finished giving him instructions: a course of prayers and activities. He recited a short verse and commanded Margayya to copy it down in Sanskrit, and side by side take down its meaning in Tamil. He saw him off at the door and said: 'You need not see me again, unless you want to. Follow these rules.'

'Will they produce results?'

'Who can say?' the priest answered. 'Results are not in our hands.'

'Then why should we do all this?'

'Very well, don't; nobody compels you to.'

Margayya felt completely crushed under all this metaphysical explanation. He bowed his head in humility. The priest closed one door, held his hand on the other, and said: 'The Shastras lay down such and such rituals for such and such ends. Between a man who performs them and one who doesn't, the chances are greater for the former. That's all I can say. The results are ... you may have results or you may not ... or you may have results and wish that you had failed '

'What is your experience with this mantra?'

'Me!' He chuckled once again. 'I'm a Sanyasi; I have no use for it ... Don't do it unless you wish to,' said the priest and shut the door. Margayya stood hesitating in the road with the stanza in his pocket, and all the spiritual prescription written down. He looked despairingly at the closed door of the temple and turned homeward. He felt it was no use hesitating. He might go on putting questions; the other could answer, yet still the problem would remain unsolved. 'Problem? What's the problem?' he suddenly asked. It was a happy state of affairs not to remember what the problem was. The priest had been saying so much incomprehensible stuff that Margayya felt dizzy and fuddled. He stopped in the middle of the road and resolved: 'He has told me what to do. I shall do it honestly. Let me not bother about other things.'

Margayya's wife was overawed by his activities. He told her next day: 'Clear up that room for me,' indicating the single room in their house in which she slept with her child, and into which all the household trunks and odds and ends were also thrown.

'What are we to do with these things?'

'Throw them out. I want that place for the next forty days.'

'Where am I to sleep?'

'What silly questions you keep asking! Is this the time to think of such problems?'

She became docile at this attack and begged: 'Can't you tell me exactly what you want to do?'

He told her in a sort of way: he'd been advised not to talk of his method and aim even to his wife. The priest had said: 'Even to your wife there are certain practices which become neutralized the moment they are clothed in words.'

She asked: 'Is this what people call alchemy, changing base metals?'

'No, it is not,' said Margayya, not liking the comparison.

'They say that it is like magic black magic,' she wailed, looking very much frightened.

'Don't get silly notions in your head ... it is not that ... the priest is not a man who dabbles in black magic. Don't go talking about it to anyone '

The little room was cleared and all the odds and ends broken-down furniture, trunks and boxes, stacks of paper, spare bed-rolls, and pillows and mats were pulled out and heaped in a corner of their little central hall. Balu became ecstatic. He pulled down the things and mixed them up and generally enjoyed the confusion. Their neighbours heard the noise of shifting and thought: 'They are doing something in the next house; wonder what it is?' They tried to spy on them, but there was a blank wall between them. Margayya had the room washed clean, chased out the rats and cockroaches, and swept off the cobwebs that hung on the wall and corners. It was a very small room, less than eight feet broad, with a single narrow window opening on the street. If the shutter was closed the room became pitch dark. Margayya drew up several pots of water from the well and splashed the water about. He then commanded his wife to decorate the floor with white flour designs, a decoration necessary for all auspicious occasions. He had a string of mango leaves tied across the doorway. He took from a nail in the hall the picture of the Goddess Lakshmi, put up a short pedestal and placed the picture on it: the four-armed Goddess, who presides over wealth, distinction, bravery, enterprise, and all the good things in life. When he carried the picture in, his wife understood something of his plans: 'Oh, I see, I now understand.'

'That's all right. If you understand, so much the better but keep it to yourself He had two hundred rupees in his possession still, which he had to use up. He gave his wife a list of articles she should supply him with such as jaggery, turmeric, coloured cooked rice, fruit, refined sugar, black-gram cake, sweetened sesamum, curd, spiced rice and various kinds of fruits and honey. He would require these in small quantities morning and evening for offering and most of them were also to be his diet during the period of Japa. He gave his wife a hundred rupees and said: 'This is my last coin. You have to manage with it.'

'What about the provisions for the house and the milkman?'

'Oh, do something ... manage the milkman and the rest for some time and then we will pull through. This is more urgent than anything else.'

A couple of days later, at the full moon, he began his rites. He sat before the image of Lakshmi. He shut the door, though his son banged on it from time to time. He kept only a slight opening of the window shutter, through which a small ray of light came in but not the curiosity of the neighbours. He wore a loincloth soaked in water. A variety of small articles were spread out before him in little pans. He inscribed a certain Sanskrit syllable on a piece of deer skin and tied it round his neck with a string. He had been in an agony till he found the deer skin. The priest had told him: 'You must carve out this on an antelope skin.'

'Antelope!' he gasped. Was he a hunter? Where did one go and find the antelope skin? 'You search in your house properly and you will find one. Our elders have always possessed them for sitting on and praying,' said the priest.

'Very well, I will look for one,' said Margayya.

'And then, have you seen any red lotus?'

'Yes, I have,' Margayya said apprehensively, wondering what was coming next.

'Where?' asked the priest. Margayya blinked and felt disgusted with himself: 'They usually sell them in the street for Vara Lakshmi festival.'

'Exactly!' said the priest. 'But now you will have to go where it is found. Formerly, you could pick up a lotus from any pond nearby there were perhaps ten spots in a town where you could pick up a lotus in former days, but now ... our world is going to pieces because we have no more lotus about. It's a great flower the influence it has on a human being is incalculable.' After a dissertation on lotus, the priest said: 'Beyond Sarayu, towards the North, there is a garden where there is a ruined temple with a pond. You will find red lotus there. Get one, burn its petals to a pitch black, and mix it with ghee.'

'Ghee! Oh, yes ' Margayya said, feeling that here was at least one article which you could find in the kitchen. Even if the store-man was ill-disposed, one might still win him over in view of the impending change of circumstances.

'It must be ghee made of milk drawn from a smoke-coloured cow!' said the priest.

'Oh!' groaned Margayya, not being able to hide his feelings any more.

'You probably think all this is bluff... some fantastic nonsense that I'm inventing.'

'Oh, no, I don't feel so for a moment, but only how hard ... what a lot of '

'Yes, but that is the way it's done. It's so written in the Shastras. You have to do certain things for attaining certain ends. It is not necessary to question why. It'll be a mere waste of energy and you will get no answer.... Well, follow my words carefully. Take the blackened lotus petal, mix it with ghee, and put a dot of it on your forehead after the prayer, every day, exactly between your eyebrows.'

'Yes,' Margayya said weakly. He was feeling more and more in despair of how he was going to fulfil these various injunctions. 'Redlotus, grey-skinned cow, and antelope ... where am I? ...what a world this is 'It seemed to him an impossible world. 'How am I to get all these?' He groaned within himself.

'Have trust in yourself and go ahead... He will show you a way. Did you imagine that riches came to people when they sat back and hummed a tune?'

A whole day was spent by him in going after the red lotus. It took him through the northern part of the town, past Ellamman Street and the banks of the Sarayu. He forded the river at Nallappa's Mango Grove. A village cart was crossing the river. The man driving it recognized him and shouted: 'Oh, Margayya!' He jumped out of the cart, sending up a great splash of water, which struck Margayya in the eyes and face; it also cooled his brow after the exertion of the day. The villager was an old client of his. He said: 'What has come over you, sir, that we don't see you? Without you, we are finding it so difficult.'

'You can't expect me to be at your beck and call all the time. I have other things to do.'

'But you cannot just abandon us '

'I have other business to look after, my dear fellow. Don't imagine this is my only task. I used to do it more as a sort of help to my fellow men.' They were both standing knee-deep in water.

Margayya said: 'Let me ride with you up to the branch road.' The villager was only too eager to take him and asked his son, who was in the cart, to get down and walk so as to make room for Margayya.

He asked: 'So far out! May I know why you are going this way?'