October 1902

From Jaimal Singh: Lots of Love to Babu Sawan Singh, Basant Singh, and Narain Singh. 

Your letter was received and a postcard was sent in reply; I hope it has reached you. Secondly, I would like to write to you in Gurumukhi, but what can I do? I get so little free time because of the heavy work on the upper-storey rooms. The work is going well. Three masons, three carpenters, and five labourers are engaged in the work. Timber worth 195 rupees has been delivered, and the work is progressing well. Earlier also I had written to you for 50 rupees, so please send them. Do not send a money order for a larger amount, as then I have to go to the post office. If you wish to send more, divide it into two money orders, as up to 50 rupees is delivered here.

The other news is that three letters from Gajja Singh have arrived from Rawalpindi, informing us that Buta Mal has stopped work on the books for the past week. Our loss has been eight copies. He is not printing because the payment he gets for printing Ghat Ramayan is the same as for Hazur Swami Ji’s Sar Bachan in verse. So I have recalled Ghat Ramayan. More copies of it are not to be printed because he was printing them very badly. The print was exactly like that of Anurag Sagar, but some words had been poorly inked, others had damaged lines, in some the vowel marks were not there, while still others had the diacritics missing. The ink was of very bad quality, too. For these reasons, the printing of Ghat Ramayan has been stopped – we will have it printed elsewhere by another printer. So I am writing to ask you to please go to Rawalpindi for a day or two, pay him for the printing already done, and stop the rest of the work.

Pay him for Anurag Sagar and for as much of Hazur Swami Ji’s verse text as has been printed, and settle the matter. If he demands 10 rupees extra, give it to him. It does not matter. That Buta Mal is a very careless fellow. We’ll have the books printed elsewhere – this is what I suggest. He is going to make a mess of the books. We will have both the verse and prose editions of Hazur’s Sar Bachan printed at another press. You had better give him notice first that if he wants to print the books he should do so honestly, and that if he acts dishonestly, the wages of Gajja Singh and Aya Singh, the two people who are deputed there especially for these books, will be charged to him. Along with this, stipulate that if he can finish printing the three books in three months he should do so, otherwise he should frankly refuse the job. We will then make other arrangements. If he can do it, he should print the three books – Hazur’s main text, the prose edition and Ghat Ramayan – within three months, and we will accept them if the printing is like the sample page of the first copy. If the lettering on a page is damaged or faint, that page will be rejected. Price the printing charges of the three books separately. The charges for Ghat Ramayan and Swami Ji’s verse text have already been decided, leave them as they are. But he won’t print them. Ghat Ramayan in Gurumukhi script has arrived at the Dera. Just imagine! What good would it do to spend so much money if the letters start fading out in a year’s time? 

October 1902