Chapter 2
HALF A RUPEE WORTH
Subbiah, a rich merchant, sold rice at a price. A poor man approached him for half-a rupee worth of rice. Did the merchant give him rice?
Subbiah sold rice at the market gate. In his shop you found, heaped in wicker baskets, all varieties: from pebbly coarse rice to Delhi Samba, white as jasmine and slender as a needle. His shop was stuffy and dark but he loved every inch of it. He loved the smell of gunny sack, of rice and husk. Through good times and bad he flourished. There were days of drought when paddy didn't come up and the rice mills were silenced, when people looked hollow-eyed and half dead. But even then he never closed his shop. If he didn't find stuff for twenty baskets, he scoured the countryside and filled at least two baskets, and sold them. There were times when the harvest was so rich he could hardly accept a quarter of the grain that was offered, when it seemed a fool's business to be, selling rice. If you sold rice all day and night you could not hope for a profit of even fifty rupees. They called it 'depression in the trade'.
But Subbiah survived all ups and downs. Rice was in his blood. He had served as an unpaid apprentice when his father ruled. Those were days when Subbiah loathed the rice bags. He longed for the crowded streets, cinemas, football matches and wrestling tournaments, which he saw through the crowded shop door. But his father more or less kept him chained to the shop and discouraged his outside interests. 'Boys should be horsewhipped if they are not to become brigands.' He practised this theory of child-training with such steadfastness that in due course the little man had no eyes or head for anything except rice and the market. When his father died, he slid in so nicely that nobody noticed the difference. Most people thought that the old man was still there counting cash. Business prospered...
Subbiah kept five prized cows and buffaloes whose milk, curd and butter he and his wife and five children had day and night, and then became rotund and balloon-like. He owned thirty acres of land in a nearby village, and visited it once a month to survey his possessions and make sure they were intact. He lent money at exorbitant rates of interest and if people failed to pay he acquired their houses. He became swollen with money. He sent his children to a school, bought them brocaded caps and velvet coats, and paid a home-tutor to shout the lessons at the top of his voice every evening under a lamp in the hall. He loaded his wife with gold ornaments and draped her in gaudy Benares silk;
It might have continued thus but for the War. It seemed at first to be the end of civilization, but after the first shock, it proved not so unwelcome after all. His profits piled up as never before. Saigon and Burma ceased to send rice, and that meant the stock he held was worth its weight in gold. People flocked to his shop at all hours. He bought the big house next door for a godown and then the next one and the next; and then bought a dozen more villages. War seemed, on the whole, a very beneficial force till the introduction of Price and Food Control. For the first time in his life he was worried. He could not see how anyone had the right to say what he should sell and at what rate. He felt happy when he heard someone say, “The Food Department is a hoax. The government is making a mess of things.
He soon found that he could still survive under a new garb. By waiting before officials, and seeing people, and filling up forms, he was soon allowed to continue his business as a Fair Price Grain Depot. He groaned unhappily when he learnt that he had to surrender all the rice his peasants cultivated in his village fields. The whole thing seemed to him atrocious. “They have to fix the price for my produce! They have to give me permission to take what I myself produce!" but he accepted the position without much outward protest. He slept little and lost the taste for food. All through the dark nights he thought about this problem. Finally, he had a solution. He cried to himself, “I still have my rice in the fields, and I still have the bags in my godown. After all, what does the government want? To have things in nice shape on paper? That they shall have.” He kept all the rice he wanted for sale and personal use but out of sight and out of paper. He had to give away a lot of money to people who came to examine his stock and accounts. If he passed a ten-rupee currency note on such an occasion, it meant he had screened from prying eyes a thousand rupees worth of grain. When he thought it over, he realized that all controls were really a boon. He distributed a few annas for charity twice a week, and broke a coconut at the temple on Fridays in appreciation of God's interest in his affairs. Gradually, with experience, he became a master of his situation. At his depot, he measured out rice with a deft hand, so that at the end of a day a considerable quantity accumulated which was nobody's, and then he delayed and opened and closed and reopened his shop in such a manner as to make people come to him several times before they could get any rice out of him: when they had money he had no stock, or when he had rice they had no money. By all this, he accumulated a vast quantity of rice every week; and then out of his village harvest only a small portion reached the Food Department. Very soon he converted one of his houses in a back street into a godown and there piled up rice bags from floor, to ceiling. It was supposed to be a store of waste paper and rags, which he collected for the paper mills.
He never sold his rice except in a small quantity, and to known customers. He took their cash in advance and told them to call later. He always threw in a doubt; “There was a person who had a little rice. I don't know if he still has it. Anyway, leave the cash with me.' Sometimes, he returned the money with 'Sorry, not available, the man said he had it, but you know we can never count on these things nowadays'.
One evening, as he had just closed his shop and started out with the key in his pocket, a person halted before him and said, ‘Oh! You have closed. Just my luck.'
'I have other business now, no time to stop and talk’, said Subbiah. He went past him. The other man followed him. He held him by the arm and cried: 'You must open your shop and give me rice. I can't let you go. My two children are crying for food. They and my old mother have been starving. My ration card was exhausted three days ago. I can't see them in that condition any more'. 'Please somehow give me some rice. I have gone round and round the whole town today, but I couldn't get a grain anywhere. At home they will be thinking I'm returning with something. They will... God knows what they'll do when they see me go back empty-handed.'
'How much do you want?'
"Give me a seer. There are six mouths to feed at home.'
“How much have you?' The man held up a half-rupee coin. Subbiah looked at the coin with contempt. “You expect to get one seer of rice for this?
‘But it's three seers for a rupee, isn't it?'
‘Don't talk of all that now. You will starve if you talk of controlled price and such nonsense.' He felt enraged. 'If you have another eight annas, perhaps, you may get a seer,' said Subbiah.
The other shook his head: “This is the end of the month, you see, this is all I have.'
“You will get only half a seer. That's the price a man I know will-demand.'
‘All right,' the other said. “Better than nothing.'
'Give the coin here,' said Subbiah. He took the coin. “Don't follow me; that fellow is suspicious. He will say no the moment he sees anyone with me. You wait here, I will be back, but I can't promise. If he says no, it will be just your luck, that is all. Give me the coin.'
He was gone with the eight annas and the man stood on the street corner.
Three hours had gone by and yet there was no sign of Subbiah. The night had deepened. The man began to mutter several times to himself, 'Well, what has happened, where is he? Where has he gone? When am I to go home and cook the rice? The children, ah, the children.' He turned and walked in the direction the other had gone but that took him nowhere, because the other had pretended to go that way in order not to show where his secret godown was, but actually had turned and gone off in another direction. The man wandered up and down through the silent streets and went back to the main shop, hoping he might be there. He wasn't there either. The lock was still on the door, just as he had seen it before. Then he called at Subbiah's house. He knocked at the door. Subbiah's wife opened it. He asked, 'Is Subbiah at home?'
‘No. He hasn't come home at all.' She looked very anxious. By six next morning they became nervous, and in that condition she could not help, saying, 'Have you looked for him at the other godown?'
'Where is it?'
She had to tell, being the only person who knew its whereabouts. They started out. After passing through some bylanes, they came upon the building. The door was bolted from inside. They knocked on it. Finally they had to break open the front ventilator, slip a boy through it, and then have the main door opened. A faint morning light came in through the broken ventilator. In a corner they saw an electric torch lying on the floor and then a half-rupee coin, and a little of a hand stuck out of a pile of fallen bags.
A. GLOSSARY
1. Stuffy: without much fresh air
2. Drought: period of time when there is a little or no rain
3. Scoured: searched the place thoroughly
4. Depression: period of little economic activity
5. Loathed: disliked
6. Brigands: thieves, criminals
7. Prospered: became successful
8. Intact: complete-not damaged
9. Rotund: round (fat body)
10. Exorbitant: much too high
11. Brocade: thick cloth with gold and silver material
12. Gaudy: too bright, lacking taste
13. Gilt: thin layer of gold used on any surface for
decoration
14. Ceased: stopped
15. Hoax: something made to look true, though .. is not
16. Waiting: serving
17. Atrocious: shocking, brutal
18. Produce(n): things that have been grown like wheat,
rice, etc.
19. Deft: skilful
20. Accumulated: increased, gathered more and more