With Mayor Nandu Satam yanking the Rs 10 lakh which the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had pledged for the meet and the Siddhivinayak Trust failing to pay its Rs 21 lakh donation, the Dadar Sarvajanik Vachnalaya, the sammelan's main organisers, are wondering how they will honour their colossal financial commitments.

After Rs 91 lakh was lavished on the literary meet, this is what the balance sheet looked like before war broke out. State government: Rs 25 lakh; BMC: Rs 10 lakh; Siddhivinayak Trust: Rs 21 lakh; and the rest from other sponsors, corporate donations, sale of literary books, etc.

Vachnalaya sources say the Siddhivinayak Trust's donation has been caught in a legalwrangle and there is a strong possibility the money will never come.Office-bearers of the 91-year-old vachnalay, one of the oldest libraries in Mumbai, say they owe the caterers, decorators and other parties whose services they hired Rs 91 lakh. But with one-third of the donations withdrawn, they figure they will probably have to empty their own coffers to compensate for the expenses.

But that is a physical impossibility. If the vachnalaya is forced to slash its own annual expenditure and rework its budget, it would be a cruel blow indeed. But the fact is its annual budget amounts to a modest Rs 10-15 lakh. ``Doing that would therefore set us 10 years back,'' an official explains.Remarks the worried official: ``The war was between Thackeray and Bapat. But the vachnalaya, which is at no fault, has to pay a heavy price for the entire episode. We never expected that the sammelan would be used as a springboard to launch an offensive by both sides.''

The official says the vachnalaya, situated outside the Dadarrailway station, has never before wrestled with a migraine like this. Neither had it anticipated the crisis. ``The preparations went very smoothly. We had followed up with the authorities for the money since the last six months... till this controversy erupted and the mayor stopped the payment. We had calculated the expenditure taking into account donations from both the BMC as well as the Siddhivinayak Trust. What shall we do now,'' the official wonders.