“My law career, which was my first, my best-loved career, started a very long time ago. In the year of our independence.”
Maneck counted rapidly. “From 1947 to 1975 — twenty-eight years. That’s a lot of legal experience.”
“Not really. Within two years I changed careers. I couldn’t stand it, performing before a courtroom audience day after day. Too much stress for a shy person like me. I would lie in bed at night, sweating and shivering, scared of the next morning. I needed a job where I would be left to myself. Where I could work in camera.”
“Photography?”
“No, that’s Latin, it means in private.” He scratched his pens as though relieving an itch for them, and looked rueful. “It’s a bad habit I have, because of my law training — using these silly phrases instead of good English words. Anyway, seeking privacy, I became a proofreader for The Times of India.”
How would proofreading ravage the throat? wondered Maneck. But he had already interrupted twice and made a fool of himself. Better to keep quiet and listen.
“I was the best they had, the absolute best. The most difficult and important things were saved for my inspection. The editorial page, court proceedings, legal texts, stockmarket figures. Politicians’ speeches, too — so boring they could make you drowsy, send you to sleep. And drowsiness is the one great enemy of the proofreader. I have seen it destroy several promising reputations.
“But nothing was too tricky for me. The letters sailed before my eyes, line after line, orderly fleets upon an ocean of newsprint. Sometimes I felt like a Lord High Admiral, in supreme command of the printer’s navy. And within months I was promoted to Chief Proofreader.
“My night sweats disappeared, I slept well. For twenty-four years I held the position. I was happy in my little cubicle — my kingdom with my desk, my chair, and my reading light. What more could anyone want?”
“Nothing,” said Maneck.
“Exactly. But kingdoms don’t last for ever — not even modest little cubicle kingdoms. One day it happened, without warning.”
“What?”
“Disaster. I was checking an editorial about a State Assembly member who made a personal fortune out of the Drought Relief Project. My eyes began to itch and water. Thinking nothing of it, I rubbed them, wiped them dry, and resumed my work. Within seconds they were wet again. I dried them once more. But it kept on happening, on and on. And it was no longer a tear or two which could be ignored, but a continuous stream.
“Soon, my concerned colleagues were gathered around me. They crowded my little cubicle, pouring comfort upon what they thought was grief. They presumed that reading about the sorry state of the nation, day after day — about the corruption, the natural calamities, the economic crises — had finally broken me. That I was dissolving in a fit of sorrow and despair.
“They were wrong, of course. I would never let emotions stand in the way of my professional duties. Mind you, I’m not saying a proofreader must be heartless. I’m not denying that I often felt like weeping at what I read — stories of misery, caste violence, government callousness, official arrogance, police brutality. I’m certain many of us felt that way, and an emotional outburst would be quite normal. But too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart, as my favourite poet has written.”
“Who’s that?”
“W.B. Yeats. And I think that sometimes normal behaviour has to be suppressed, in order to carry on.”
“I’m not sure,” said Maneck. “Wouldn’t it be better to respond honestly instead of hiding it? Maybe if everyone in the country was angry or upset, it might change things, force the politicians to behave properly.”
The man’s eyes lit up at the challenge, relishing the opportunity to argue. “In theory, yes, I would agree with you. But in practice, it might lead to the onset of more major disasters. Just try to imagine six hundred million raging, howling, sobbing humans. Everyone in the country — including airline pilots, engine drivers, bus and tram conductors — all losing control of themselves. What a catastrophe. Aeroplanes falling from the skies, trains going off the tracks, boats sinking, buses and lorries and cars crashing. Chaos. Complete chaos.”
He paused to give Maneck’s imagination time to fill in the details of the anarchy he had unleashed. “And please also remember: scientists haven’t done any research on the effects of mass hysteria and mass suicide upon the environment. Not on this subcontinental scale. If a butterfly’s wings can create atmospheric disturbances halfway round the world, who knows what might happen in our case. Storms? Cyclones? Tidal waves? What about the land mass, would it quake in empathy? Would the mountains explode? What about rivers, would the tears from twelve hundred million eyes cause them to rise and flood?”
He took another sip from the green bottle. “No, it’s too dangerous. Better to carry on in the usual way.” He corked the bottle and wiped his lips. “To get back to the facts. There I was with the day’s proofs before me, and my eyes leaking copiously. Not one word was readable. The text, the disciplined rows and columns, were suddenly in mutiny, the letters pitching and tossing, disintegrating in a sea of stormy paper.”
He passed his hand across his eyes, reliving that fateful day, then stroked his pens comfortingly, as though they too might be upset by the evocation of those painful events. Maneck took the opportunity to slip in a bit of praise, to ensure that the story continued. “You know, you’re the first proofreader I’ve met. I would have guessed they’d be very dull people, but you speak so … with such … so differently. Almost like a poet.”
“And why shouldn’t I? For twenty-four years, the triumphs and tragedies of our country quickened my breath, making my pulse sing with joy or quiver with sorrow. In twenty-four years of proofreading, flocks of words flew into my head through the windows of my soul. Some of them stayed on and built nests in there. Why should I not speak like a poet, with a commonwealth of language at my disposal, constantly invigorated by new arrivals?” He gave a mighty sigh. “Until that wet day, of course, when it was all over. When the windows were slammed shut. And the ophthalmologist sentenced me to impotence, saying that my proofreading days were behind me.”
“Couldn’t he give you new spectacles or something?”
“That wouldn’t have helped. The trouble was, my eyes had become virulently allergic to printing ink.” He spread his hands in a gesture of emptiness. “The nectar that nurtured me had turned to poison.”
“Then what did you do?”
“What can anyone do in such circumstances? Accept it, and go on. Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: ‘All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.’“
“Yeats?” guessed Maneck.
The proofreader nodded, “You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.” He paused, considering what he had just said. “Yes,” he repeated. “In the end, it’s all a question of balance.”
Maneck nodded. “All the same, you must have missed your work very much.”
“Well, not really,” he dismissed the sympathy. “Not the work itself. Most of the stuff in the newspaper was pure garbage. A great quantity of that which entered through the windows of my soul was quickly evacuated by the trapdoor.”
This seemed to Maneck to contradict what the man had said earlier. Perhaps the lawyer behind the proofreader was still active, able to argue both sides of the question.