/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/LITERATURE-INDIA: Storyteller Narayan Gone, But Malgudi Lives On

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

R Rajashree

NEW DELHI, May 22 2001 (IPS) - In the demise of R K Narayan, the country is bound the feel the literary vacuum left by perhaps the greatest Indian writer of the twentieth century.

The writing of Narayan, who died May 13 at age 94 after heart and lung trouble, spans almost a quarter of a century, beginning with the publication of his first book ‘Swami and Friends’ (1935).

If it was ‘Untouchable’ by Mulk Raj Anand that drew waves of national empathy in literary circles, Narayan’s fictitious Malgudi and the irrepressible central character Swaminathan or ‘Swami’ were to become household names with its further popularisation in the form of an eight-part television serial.

Malgudi, the town that did not exist on the Indian map, just emerged out of a combination of a place called Lalgudi near Trichy and another place called Mangudi near Kumbakonam, as the writer was to explain to his official biographers.

In 1930, the 24-year-old Narayan sat down to write what would become not only a literary success but encourage him to further explore his own creation, the town of Malgudi.

Born on Oct. 10, 1906, Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanswami’s foray in the world of writing did not meet with success initially.

He studied at Maharajah College in Mysore, which is now the University of Mysore, and graduated from there in 1930. He worked as a teacher, but he left that profession to write full-time.

His ‘Swami and Friends’, did not find a single publisher but he found a patron and a friend in a Mysore neighbor, Kittu Purna, who was then studying in Oxford. Purna took the script to the British writer Graham Greene, who not only appreciated the matter but gave the necessary impetus to Narayan.

Turned down by many British publishers before Greene took a good look at it, ‘Swami and Friends’ was finally published by Hamish Hamilton in 1935. Greene suggested that the creator of Malgudi shorten his name to R K Narayan. That name stuck.

In the introduction to ‘The Bachelor of Arts’ (1937), Greene wrote: “In Narayan’s novels, though the Raj still existed during the dozen years of his literary career, the English characters are peripheral. They are amiable enough but hopelessly unimportant like Professor Brown in The Bachelor of Arts.”

In the same introduction, Greene wrote that unlike Mulk Raj Anand, Narayan was hardly touched by politics.

One of his later books, ‘The Financial Expert’ (1952) was dedicated to the memory of Kittu Purna, the friend who took the script of ‘Swami and Friends’ to Greene. Kittu Purna had been told by Narayan not to bring the script back to Mysore but to weight it with a stone and drop it into the Thames.

However that was not to be, for Greene found a publisher for ‘Swami’ and Malgudi was finally born.

In all, Narayan wrote 15 novels, all but one set in Malgudi, four stories, three retold legends, four essays, one memoir and two travelogues. All his novels are set in Malgudi and its characters. His literary output has included novels, short-story collections, essays and translations of Indian epics.

His novels included ‘Swami and Friends’ (1935), ‘The Bachelor of Arts’ (1937), ‘The Dark Room’ (1938), ‘The English Teacher’ (1945), which explored the pain Narayan experienced after the death of his young wife; ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’ (1955); ‘The Guide’ (1958); ‘The Man-Eater of Malgudi’ (1961); ‘Gods, Demons, and Others’ (1965); ‘The Vendor of Sweets’ (1967); ‘A Tiger for Malgudi’ (1983); ‘Talkative Man’ (1986); ‘The World of Nagaraj’ (1990); and Grandmother’s Tale’ (1995).

Among his known story collections were ‘Malgudi Days'(1982), ‘Lawley Road’ (1956); ‘A Horse and Two Goats and Other Stories'(1970); ‘Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories’ (1985); and ‘An Astrologer’s Day and other Stories'(1947).

In his struggling years, with very few publications in hand, the writer in Narayan got the necessary impetus from ‘The Hindu’ newspaper, where many of the short stories were originally written.

His prose versions and retold legends of the ‘The Ramayana’ (1972) and ‘The Mahabharata’ (1978) and ‘Gods, Demons and Others’ (1965) were appreciated a lot for their lucid and humorous narratives.

In 1974 he published ‘My Days: A Memoir’ . His essays include four collections: ‘Next Sunday’, ‘Reluctant Guru’, ‘A Writer’s Nightmare’ and ‘The World of a Story-Teller’.

An introduction to R K Narayan is best done by reading ‘Swami and Friends’. The layout of Malgudi, the Sarayu river, the smell of coffee, Nalappa’s grove and Lawley Extension come to life in this book. Malgudi appears as the quintessential South Indian town, replete with its smalltownness and provinciality. No major conflicts can take place here.

“It was Monday morning” and the central character Swaminathan’s reluctance to open his eyes — which forms the introduction of ‘Swami and Friends’ — sets the tenor for the rest of the book.

Essentially a narrative of the exploits of 10-year-old Swami, his very democratic relationship with his grandmother, his awe of the suited, booted Rajam who owns a air gun, Swami’s diffidence vis a vis his father and his conflict with the only form of establishment in his life, the school, form one of the many contexts in the book.

Shorn of gimmickry, ‘Swami and Friends’ is about the worldview of Swami and his friends, the ruffian club-wielding Mani and the rich Rajam, son of the police superintendent.

The place is Malgudi, very small-place but very complete in Swami’s eyes. For Swami, his friends, their collective exploits, the formation of the Malgudi Cricket Club the parting with each other is as important as life itself.

The unpretentiousness of Swami reflects in the unpretentious writing style of Narayan. Not a devout Hindu, Narayan’s characters could be seen as having imbued a deep sense of morality but seem to enjoy a certain flexibility as well.

His portrayal of women characters is interesting, whether it be that of Savitri in ‘The Dark Room’ or that of his own great- grandmother in ‘Grandmother’s Tales’. While his women character are not exactly emancipated beings, he brings forth a latent rebellion in them, which would have fit in with the times.

Narayan won several awards. Some of them included the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1958 for ‘The Guide’. This book was later filmed starring Waheeda Rehman and Dev Anand and went on to become a hit. In 1964 Narayan received the Padma Bhushan, a coveted Indian award for distinguished service to literature.

In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1989, Narayan was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament.

The storyteller is no more but his Malgudi lives on, as a metaphor for nostalgia, for humility of language and of people and their complexities.

Narayan rarely dwelt on conflict in society and divisions between social groups, which must have been very poignant and strong, but he never held a brief for orthodoxy. If anything, he managed to gently poke fun at it at well.