Bhatta was the only one who would have nothing to do with these Gandhi-bhajans. ‘What is all this city chatter about?’ he would say; ‘we’ve had enough trouble in the city. And we do not want any such annoyances here. ’ To tell you the truth, Bhatta began all this after his last visit to the city. Before that he used to sit with us and sing with us, and sometimes, when Moorthy was late in coming, he would go and get the white khadi-bound My Experiments with Truth and ask Seenu to read it and explain it himself. Then suddenly he went to the city. Business took him there, he said. You see, he always had papers to get registered — a mortgage bond, a bill of sale, a promissory bond — and for this reason and that reason he was always going to the city. After all, when it was the other party that paid the cart fare, what did it matter to him to go to the city? A day in the city is always a pleasant thing. And nowadays, they said, he had even begun to lend out money there. Advocate Seenappa, you know, had appointed him manager of the haunted-tamarind-tree field, and we all knew in what straits that debauchee was now. So Bhatta began to loan out one hundred and two hundred and three hundred rupees. Then came the district elections, and Chandrasekharayya said ‘Two thousand for it’ and so he had it, and that is how Chandrasekharayya is now President of the Tamlapur Taluk. And then there was the Kotyahalli widow, who lived with her widowed mother. It was Bhatta that managed her lands, and she was involved with her husband’s brother. That meant money. Money meant Bhatta — always smiling, always ready, always friendly. Bhatta was a fine fellow for all that. With his smiles and his holy ashes, we said he would one day own the whole village. I swear he would have too had not the stream run the way it did.
So for many a year he was always going to the city. That was why it was so difficult to get him for an obsequial dinner or a marriage ceremony. He would say, ‘Why not ask Temple Rangappa or Post-office-house Suryanarayana?’ And yet Bhatta began life with a loincloth at his waist, and a copper pot in his hand. You should have heard young Bhatta say, ‘Today is the eleventh day of the bright fortnight of Sravan. Tomorrow, twenty seconds after the sixteenth hour, Mercury enters the seventh house, and Ekadashiday begins.’—’When is the Dasara, Bhattarè?’ you would ask, and he would open his oily calendar and lay it carefully on his bulging lap, and deeply thoughtful, and with many learned calculations on his agile fingers, he would say, ‘In one month and four days, Aunt. In just one month and four days.’ And then you asked him for an obsequial dinner for the ninth day of the next moon-month, and he would smile and say, ‘Of course, Aunt. Of course.’ After that he would take his coconut and money offerings and hurry down to Pandit Venkateshia’s house, for the anniversary of his father’s death. Bhatta is the First Brahmin. He would be there before it is hardly eleven — his fresh clothes, his magnificent ashes and all — and seated on the veranda he would begin to make the obsequial grass rings. Such grass rings and such leaf cups too! Never has anything better been seen. And it was so pleasant to hear him hum away at the Gita. The very walls could have repeated it all.
Ramanna is the Second Brahmin. He would come along before noon. The ceremony would begin. Bhatta is very learned in his art. It would be all over within the winking of an eye. Then the real obsequial dinner begins, with fresh honey and solid curds, and Bhatta’s beloved Bengal-gram khir. ‘Take it, Bhattarè, only one cup more, just one? Let us not dissatisfy our manes.’ The children are playing in the shadow, by the byre, and the elderly people are all in the side room, waiting for the holy Brahmins to finish their meal. But Bhatta goes on munching and belching, drinking water and then munching again. ‘Rama-Rama. Rama-Rama.’ One does not have an obsequial dinner every day. And then, once the holy meal is over, there is the coconut and the two rupees, and if it is the That-house people it is five, and the Post-office-house people two-eight. That is the rule.
Bhatta comes home. Savithri has eaten only a dal-soup and rice. When the master of the house is out, better not bother about the meal. He will bring some odès in his glass, and for the evening meal a good coconut chutney and soup will do. On the nights of obsequial dinners he eats so little. The child will get a morsel of rice.
‘Did they pay you the two rupees?’ asks Savithramma, waking up on her mat.
‘What else would they do?’ Bhatta goes straight into his room, opens his casket and the two rupees have gone in.
He knows how much there is in it. Something around three hundred and fifty rupees. Already a little had been loaned out; just ten rupees to Rampur Mada. For a nuptial ceremony of some sort. Six per cent interest, and payable in two months. Fine thing. Then Mada sends Lingayya. Lingayya’s revenue is not fully paid. The revenue inspector is brandishing a search warrant. It has to be paid before the coming week. Just twenty-one rupees and eight annas. Payable soon after harvest. For six months it shall be ten per cent interest—’Learned Maharaja, anything you deem just!’—’All right, you are a father of many children, let it be nine and a half.’—’Your slave, Maharaja. You are like a great father.’ And Lingayya gets the money. Next Lingayya and Mada send Kanthamma, our Potters’ street Kanthamma. This time it is her son’s marriage. She will not die without her son having a wife. And it shall be grand. One hundred and twenty rupees, she needs. Her two and a half acres of wet land to be mortgaged for three years. — ’It means a bond, Kanthamma’—’Learned Bhattarè, whatever you like. Do I know how to decipher your books or your papers? You will say “This is the paper, Kanthamma.” And I shall put my thumb-mark on it.’—In a week’s time the papers are ready. Kanthamma gets the money. Just seven per cent interest.
Meanwhile, alas! Savithramma dies. An accident. She went to fetch water from the champak well, slipped, fell, and died. Offers for marriage came to Bhatta from here and there. From Kupper Suryanarayana, from Four-beamed-house Chandrasekharayya, and from Alur Purnayya. Purnayya has a grown-up daughter, who will ‘come home soon’. She is twelve and a half years old, and in a year’s time Bhatta can have someone to light his bath fire at least. A thousand rupees cash, and five acres of wet land beneath the Settur canal. And a real seven-days marriage. The horoscopes agree marvellously. ‘Well, if the heavens will it, and the elders bless it, let our family creepers link with each other!’ Laced bodice-cloth for each visitor, and a regular sari for the heads of the family. Cart after cart went to Alur, cart after cart with the Front-house people, and the Temple people and the Post-office-house people, and when they returned eight days later they looked as though much ghee had gone into them and much laughter. Only the other day Puttur Satamma was saying, ‘Never have we seen a marriage like Bhatta’s. Such pheni. After all, a zamindar’s house, my sister!’
Bhatta became richer and richer. He could lend out more money. And now he was no more a pontifical Brahmin. He was a landowner. To crown it all, the girl came of age in two month’s time, and so the house was bright as ever. But life around him had changed. Temple Rangappa and Front-house Suranna did not go to the river as they did before. Every early morning they stood before Bhatta’s house and said, ‘Hè, Bhattarè, are you up? Time to go to the river, hè!’ And if Bhatta was asleep, they knocked at the door and woke him up and took him along with them. Then this man came for a hundred rupees, and that other for three hundred, and Patwari and Patel, Pariahs and plantation coolies were at the door for loans. ‘Just for a month, learned one? The rains have played foul with us.’ Or, ‘That rogue has gone to get the best lawyer in Karwar. And I am no son of a prostitute that I cannot get a better one than he. Oh, just three hundred for the moment, maharaja. My coconut field in mortgage.’ Five hundred becomes four hundred and fifty, the four hundred and fifty becomes four hundred, then three eighty and three seventy-five — but Bhatta will have the last word. That field is not worth more than two hundred and fifty rupees. Let us say two hundred and seventy-five. Two hundred and seventy-five it shall be. Stamp charges three rupees, registration bribes two-eight, and eight annas for the head peon and four annas for the doorkeeper.