KUTUVIBA RAO
219
anywhere. But movie settings and fashions can't compare with the
houses and fash ions I see now.
So please don't think that I want to join Saraswati Publishing Com–
pany only for the money-although money is not such a bad thing.
With another fifty or hundred rupees coming in, we'll eat a full dinner
for our second meal, too, and can stop having snack food every evening.
"Saraswati Company" is a famous name in publishing. It is not like
my bookstore, which no one has heard about. At Saraswati Publishing
Company, they print books every day. Not just one type of book:
women's books, men's books, elderly people's books, children's books,
teenage girls' books, teenage boys' books; there are books with pictures,
hooks without pictures; poetry, prose, fables, mystery, philosophy; best–
sellers and worst sellers-they print them all.
Writers visit daily, as if on pilgrimage. The offices are as busy as the
Reserve Bank of India: the production section, design section, proof–
reading section, paper store, composing section, printing section, bind–
ing section, sales section. They have a Publicity Officer and a Printing
Specialist-it's not possible to describe everything. [f [ landed a job
there, I wouldn't need
to
worry about the future anymore. A monthly
salary would be guaranteed to fall into my pocket just as surely as Rs
300,000
falls monthly into Lord Venkateshwaraswami's donation box.
And with those hardworking people, nobody would feel jealous, so the
evil eye wouldn't touch me.
Me? I'll do anything. I'll correct proofs. I'll send dispatches. I'll type
letters.
If
you tell me
to,
I'll wear khaki slacks and a khaki hat and run
scampering here, there, and everywhere. Whatever work you give me,
I'll do with loyalty.
TIIAT'S WIIAT
I
WROTE
to Saraswati Publishing. "I will be indebted to
you for many lifetimes if you offer me a small position at your esteemed
corporation," I wrote. "If you assist me and my family in this manner,
I will focus on your business, putting aside my family'S troubles and my
own difficulties." [sent three applications. But I didn't receive a reply to
any of them.
I posted the first application without showing it to anyone.
r
didn't
get a response to it, so I thought I might as well show the second one to
Chandram.
"Why are you announcing to them that you're poor?" he asked.
"Write and tell them that if they give you a position, you'll increase their
profit in a thousand ways. Then you'll get an answer."
