The Dark Room by R. K. Narayan (1938, 128 pages)

The Dark Room by R. K. Narayan ( 1906 to 2004 Delhi) is an amazing look at a marriage in late Raj India.  The family is in comfortable surroundings with servants and three children.  The husband is the manager of a life insurance sales office.  He is a petty tyrant at home verbally abusive to his wife and sometimes children.  It is a time and place in which wifely subservience was a cultural given.  The father is not a monster, just selfish and unfeeling.  A crisis arises when an attractive female saleswoman comes to work for the husband.

This may not be among Narayan's most read books and I would not suggest one start in his work here but it is very much worth reading and might be one of the best accounts of Indian family life as seen in tremendous empathy to women ever written.   

I have a few Narayan novels still to read and I will be sad once I have read them all.

Mel u

The Guide by R. K. Narayan (1958)

N

R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2004) is one of my favorite writers.  I love his short stories and novels, most of them set in the imaginary South Indian community of Malgudi.  I find his prose style an addictive delight, his characterizations brilliant and the plot action of his work always keeps me wanting to see what will happen next. 

The Guide is his consensus best novel.  Of the eight I have so far read, I agree with this.   The Guide is the longest of his novels and really is a rich wonderful work.  David Gorda has provided a very interesting introduction to the Penguin edition in which he points out a very marked difference in the work of Narayan to most other well known Indian novelists.  Most modern Indian novels focus on the dark turmoil, the teeming slums, the terrible corruption found in the Indian mega-cities.  They are eager to show us the ugly side of Indian life.    Narayan instead focuses on simple family issues, daily life, food, making a living, being Hindi, married life (Narayan in just a few lines can bring the dynamics of a marriage to life), and relationships between people.  One if the common elements found in much of his work is how differing perceptions of the same thing can greatly impact relationships.   As one reads more in his work we come to see how the community of Malguidi works. 

 The central character is a shop keeper in a rail road station who doubles as a guide for tourists.  He knows all the various points of interest and is an expert on sizing people up in terms of how much money they will spend.   There are lots of twists and turns in the plot.  He somehow gets a reputation as a wise swami and begins to cultivate the appearance and manner of a guru who can solve all problems.   Then one fatal day a man interested in cave paintings and his classical dancer wife hire him as their guide.  He soon becomes indispensable to the man while starting an affair with his wife.  The novel goes deeply into the culture of dancing women, on the one hand a highly respected profession but many, especially house wives, regard them almost on the level of "public women".  I do not want to tell too much of the plot but we see the guide go from poverty, to riches and back again.   

The Guide truly is a great novel.  I am currently reading the author's 1938 work The Dark Room and hope to post on it soon.   

Mel u

"Mother and Son" by R. K. Narayan

"Mother and Son" by R. K. Narayan (1956, 8 pages)

Short Stories of the Indian Subcontinent

A Reading Life Project

My Prior Posts on R. K. Narayan

I am very pleased  that The Reading Life was recently recommended by The Economic Times of India,. the leading financial daily of The Subcontinent.   

The Reading Life Guide to The Indian Short Story

There is no literary culture with roots older than that of India.   I will always admire Edmund Burke for telling the English that they had no right to govern a region whose culture is much older than theirs. .       Some of the writers featured  will be internationally famous, such as Salmon Rushdie, Saadat Manto,  and R. K. Narayan but most of the writers I post on will be authors on whom there are no prior book blog posts.    There are numerous books and academic conferences devoted to exploring the colonial experiences of India and Ireland and I will look at these stories partially as post colonial literature.   My main purpose here is just to open myself up to a lot more new to me writers and in this case most will be new to anyone outside of serious literary circles in the region. I am hoping in a small way to create networks of readers worldwide.    Where I can I will provide links to the stories I post on but this will not always be possible.

My blog owes a lot to R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001).   My posts on his work have drawn more readers to my blog than those on any of the other authors I have posted on.   I was very proud when The Economic Times of India, the leading financial daily newspaper of the Subcontinent recommended my posts on Narayan to its one million plus readers.    Jhumpa Lahiri in her introduction to Malgudi Days ranks him among the greatest of all short story writers.   I totally agree with this.   Historically he is probably the first writer from India, writing in English, to have a large international readership.

It has been since November of last year that I read a work of Narayan, way to long.   Plus there is no way I could do a project on short stories of the Indian Subcontinent without including several of his works.

"Mother and Son" is a simple story anybody from anywhere can relate well to.    For sure devotees of the Irish short story will like this story.  (In his book on the short story, The Lonely Voice, Frank O'Connor, writing in 1962, said the Indian short story writers were very close to surpassing the Irish and he had to have meant Narayan.)   There are only two center stage characters, a widow and her late teen age son.  Like his counterparts world wide, the son does not want to listen to any parental advise and for sure he does not want to be pushed into a marriage with his cousin, which his mother is constantly trying to do.   She finally gets exasperated and tells him he either agrees to marry the cousin (she is buck toothed) or she will have no more to do with him.   The son has finally had it, he does not want to get married even though his mother keeps saying motherly things like "who will cook for you after I am dead".   The mother is a bit dominating and she knows it.   One day the son does not come home and the mother is beside herself.  Finally she goes all over the town until she finds her son sleeping outside.   She tells him come home and he follows her, inside she is so glad he is safe and he is so thrilled to be going home but on the way they strike up the same conversation again.  

This is a totally believable universal story about the love between a mother and her teenage son.   Like all of Narayan's work, it is beautifully written.   If you look in some of my other posts on Narayan, you will find links to his stories.   In some countries his stories are under copyright so make your own judgement.  I read it in Jhumpa Lahiri's edition of Malgudi Days, which has thirty stories from various periods of his life, including works not previously anthologized.  

You can also see TV shows based on his stories on You Tube.

I have three of his novels I have not yet read  (I have read five of them) and will read them, I hope, pretty soon.  

Mel U

R. K. Narayan: Six More Malgudi Stories from Lawley Road

My Prior Posts on Narayan


Full Episodes of the Malgudi Days TV
shows from the 1980s (some in English, some in Tamil, read the story and you will enjoy the video in any case-a classic series from Indian TV)

In her introduction to Malgudi Days by R. K. Narayan, Jhumpri Lahari said when she first was sent  the collection of short stories she saw it contained 32  stories.    She reasoned she would read one a day for a nice relaxed pace and finish it in a month.   She says she was so captivated by the wonderful plots, completely real people and beautiful simple prose of the stories that she read it nearly straight through.    I am kind of having the same experience.  I do not feel like reading anything else as long as I have some unread Narayan stories to read.

I have already posted on a number of the stories from anthology that were originally in his 1956 anthology, Lawley Road and Other Stories.   Tonight I want to post briefly on the six remaining stories from this collection included in Malgudi Days.  His stories were written in English for an audience who mostly spoke Tamil as a first language.   Narayan is considered one of the foremost chroniclers of Hindu life in the 20th century through his creation of the wonderful imaginary city of Malgudi.

"The Martyr's Grave" is a story about how quickly the fortunes of life can change as people are swept up by events beyond their control.   The lead character has a street food stall.   His customers are the poor oref Malgudi.   He does pretty well for himself and his family.   He works very hard and has a great spot for his food stall.   One day a political riot breaks out in which a political leader is killed right where the man's food stall is located.   He is forced to relocate his stall 200 meters from his old good spot.   We watch saddened as his life goes very bad.

"The Wife's Holiday" shows well what a great job Narayan does in describing the dynamics in a marriage.   There are a lot of strong women in his stories and the wife in this one for sure is.   When the husband is caught doing something he promised he no longer would when his wife returns from vacation I felt his pain for sure.

"A Shadow" is a very interesting story centered on the son and widow of a movie star.    The man died about six months ago.   He was a pretty big star and the family is prosperous.   His last movie is set to open in Malgudi in a few days.   This story is about what happens when his widow and his son go to see the movie.    It really is a unique story.

"A Willing Slave" is about a seemingly perhaps a bit retarded woman who has worked for many years as helper in an upper middle class family.   She gives nearly all of her pay to her two grown son, described as brutal drunks.   One day her husband shows up after many years in prison and drags her off to be his slave. This is a tale of unremitting sadness.

"Leela's Friend" is another story about a servant.   One day Sidda showed up at the door asking for a job.  He ended up being hired as a houseboy and became the special friend of the young daughter.  One day the girl's gold necklace shows up missing and everyone assumes Sidda stole it.   When they call the police it turns out he has been in trouble before.   The girl Leela pleads for him to stay but he is fired.   There is a very interesting morally confusing twist at the end.   Narayan is really brilliant at ending his stories.

"Mother and Son" is about a widow and her mid-teenage son.   She has found a wife for him.  (Marriages were pretty much all arranged.)   The son does not like the bride as she is too ugly.   They have a big fight.   This is a wonderful story about the love of the mother for her son and his struggles to be a good son but not have his own life ruined, as he sees it.

There are seven more stories in Malgudi days that have not been previously anthologized.    I have already posted on the most famous of them "God and the Cobbler" which is really good.   I read two of the stories today.   As a practical matter I plan to for sure read the remaining five stories very soon but I will not post on any more of them.

One reason I like Narayan's stories so much is there is such a wide variety of people in them, from the wives of movie stars to the poorest people.   All are treated with respect as whole people.


Mel u

"Lawley Road" by R. K. Narayan

"Lawley Road" by R. K. Narayan (1956, 12 pages)

My Prior Posts on R. K. Narayan

Watch 39 Episodes of the Classic Malgudi Days TV shows from the 1980s

To me R. K. Narayan is not just a very good writer, he is a very likable one as well.   Anyone who has read his novels and stories will understand what I mean.   The people in his stories are real and have real life problems.   In her introduction to the collection of Narayan's short stories, Malgudi Days, Jhumpa Lahari says that Narayan  jumps right into his stories and assumes you are interested in what is going to happen.   Most of his stories are set in the imaginary community of Malgudi in south India.  Malgudi, unlike  Winesburg Ohio or Yoknapatawpha County,  has mostly normal mentally healthy residents.

1906 to 2001

In "Lawley Road", taken from the collection Lawley Road and other Stories, Narayan lets us see how the city fathers of Malgudi reacted to the independence of India from British rule in 1947.    Narayan in a brilliant note say the city fathers of Malgudi sort of had kept quiet until they were sure the British were gone then they begun to try to win votes by deciding it was time to rename the streets of Malgudi.   Most of the roads had been named after things or people relating to England.   The streets were all renamed, many of them after members of the Congressional party of India.   As consequence of this people who used to be able to easily tell people that they lived on the corner of Alfred Street and Manchester Blvd now did not even know how to tell people where they lived.  Many streets had duplicate names, the mail did not get through, etc.  But using the old names would mark you out as a lackey of the British.

There was a statue in the center of town of one Sir Frederick Lawley.   It has been there so long no one even recalls who he is or who put the very large statue up.   They just assume he was the worst kind of British Raj governor.   The Statue is ordered taken down.   After it is removed, it was discovered he was a strong advocate of India Independence, a true scholar of India culture who spoke several languages and a total humanitarian and really just a wonderful person.    To compound it all he lost his life trying to save the victims of a flood when Indian leaders ran for high ground.   Now things get crazy when all of this is reported in the local papers.   Politicians whoever they are do not want to admit they made a mistake.   Narayan does his normal brilliant job of letting us see what happens next.

From now until the end of the year I think I will mostly post on short stories.

If you want to sample the work of Narayan, you will find links to his stories in my prior posts.

Please share your experiences with Narayan with us.   Do you have a favorite Narayan story (or have you not yet read him)?

Mel u

"God and the Cobbler" by R. K. Narayan

"God and the Cobbler" by R. K. Narayan (16 pages, 1976)

My Prior Posts on R. K. Narayan

People liked to claim back in the 1970s that they read Playboy magazine for the great prose.   In August, 1976 this might actually have been true when R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-India)  had his really wonderful and captivating short story, "God and the Cobbler" published within its glossy pages.

I encountered the story today in his collection of short stories, Malgudi Days.   The collection, with a very interesting introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri, has stories from two of his collections and a number of new stories not previously anthologized.   There are seventeen stories from An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories, I have already posted all of these stories.   There are sixteen other stories in the collection I have not yet read.   I have also read a number of Narayan's thirteen novels and will be reading two more soon, The Guide  and The Sign Painter.   I love the work of Narayan and was happy to see Jhumpa Lahari classified him along with just a few other writers as one of the geniuses of the short story.   (There is some background information in my prior posts on him.)

This story reminded me a lot of Narayan's story "A Horse and Two Goats", one of my personal favorites.   In this story an affluent American tourist and a local goat herder have a conversation in which neither understands what the other is saying but both leave the conversation quite happy.  

In 1976 India was awash in the unwashed of the west.   I think it was Jack Kerouac who coined the term "Dharma Bums" to describe western young people traveling through India looking for spiritual enlightenment.  

This story is just so great.  (I hope Narayan was well paid to class up Playboy.)   A western man, referred in the story as a "hippy" (the word did not have just negative connotations in 1976 as it does now, I think) comes upon a man besides the road who repairs old shoes for a living.   They can converse a bit in English.  The hippy thinks the cobbler has found enlightenment in his simple work and sees his work on the shoes as a holy exercise of some kind.   The cobbler things the hippy may be a god in disguise sent to test him so he is very cautious in everything he says to him.   The fun and power in this story is the absurd ways that the two men interpret what the conversation is about and how they size up each other.  

This is a very good story beautifully told in the simplest of language.   I suspect the beauty of the women depicted in Playboy thirty five years ago have long since faded but that of Narayan's story still shines through.   I wonder if any of the readers of the magazine went on to read more Narayan!

I am glad to be reading and posting on Narayan once again.   Narayan is not just a curousity read, not just an Indian writer.   He is one of the great writers of the 20th century and he is a lot more fun to read than many of the other great writers!

Mel u

The Printer of Malgudi by R. K. Narayan

Mr. Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi by R. K. Narayan (1949, 134 pages)

Bollywood Comes to Malgudi

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

Indian Literature on The Reading Life

Mr. Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi (sometimes simply referred to as The Printer of Malgudi) by R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-India) is about the lives of two friends and business partners.   One of them is the editor of a weekly newspaper (The Banner) and the other is the printer.   In the days before desk top printers every substantial business in Malgudi needed the services of a printer, no one more than a newspaper.    

Narayan is a wonderful writer.  Since discovering him a few months ago I have read and posted on 31 of his short stories and three of his novels.   Most of his 

stories are set in a community he created in his imagination, Malgudi India.   He has a unique prose style that I love.   When you read his work at first you have to step back and realize the characters in the stories and novels are speaking a language that is not their "home language".   The understanding of the import of this is, I think, central to an appreciation of Narayan.   His stories and novels are not all hard to follow.    He was one of the very first Indian authors to have a wide spread readership for his English language works.   He was assisted in his career by Graham Greene.   

The plot is pretty simple.   Mr. Shrinivas starts a weekly newspaper and is it going great.    Everybody who is anybody in Malgudi is reading it.   The printer is his good friend Mr.  Sampath.   A labor issue forces the newspaper out of business.   Both men get work with a film making company and are taken up with the glamour of the movie business.   Mr.  Sampath becomes a screen writer and his friend starts a romance with an actress.    I won't relay more of the plot.   

The characters are beautifully developed.    The prose is perfect and the plot is a lot of fun.   The more I read Narayan the more I like him.    Malgudi feels very real to me.   

Narayan wrote fifteen novels and a lot of short stories (I do not know how many yet).     I would suggest that if you like short stories you start out with a few of them, the style of the novels is the same, then, if you can, begin to read his novels in order of publication.   If you want to read only his  consensus best novel then I think it is The Guide.   In my posts on his short stories I have given a link where you can download or read online 31 of them.    

I am excited about my next of his works I will read, Waiting for the Mahatma, about Gandhi's trip to Malgudi and its impact on the town.   I hope to read all of his novels and short stories.   

I received this book as a gift from a patron of my blog in New Delhi to whom I am very grateful.   

Please share your experience with R. K. Narayan with us-

Mel u

Bachelor of Arts by R. K. Narayan

Bachelor of Arts by R. K. Narayan (1937, 78 pages)

Coming of Age in India in the 1930s

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

India Literature on The Reading Life

In the last two months I have read and posted on thirty one short stories and two novels by the great Indian writer R. K. Narayan, Swami and Friends and The Man Eater of Malgudi.    The more I read Narayan (1906 to 2001-India-there is background information in my prior posts on Narayan) the more I like his work.    Narayan was the first author from India writing in English to have a large international audience.   Most of his works are set in an imaginary city he created, Malgudi, India.   I have been happy to notice that my posts on Narayan have consistently been and stayed the most viewed posts on my blog from day one of  my first posting on him(out of 650 or so posts) so I know there is a lot of interest in him among readers of my blog.   

Bachelor of Arts is the second of Narayan's novels.   It is like almost all his work, set in Malguidi.    The central character, Chandran, a young man from an upper middle class family, is enrolled in college when we meet him.  This is really a fun novel.   The characters are well done and I liked all the main characters in the novel.   Narayan is pretty much on a par with almost anybody in making people come to life in just a few sentences.   Chandran's mother is just perfectly done.    We see she is strong and can be abrasive but she loves and totally looks out for her family.  There is one scene that takes a reader from 2011 a bit of getting used to.   Chandran has fallen in love (or infatuation) with a girl he has seen but never spoken too.   He tells his parents about her and the father knows she comes from a good family in the same caste they are in (very important) so he goes to the father of the girl and talks marriage.   Everything including the dowry is all worked out until the bride's father takes the horocscope of Chandran to an astrologer and the astrologer says it is not a match.   As much as he tries, the father cannot get the other father to allow the marriage.   The mother of Chandran  says she is glad as she did not want  her son humiliating himself by marrying a girl of the very advanced age of fifteen.   The negotiations were so much fun to sit in on and I felt crushed for Chandran when they fell through.



I was shocked when I saw that Chandran was so upset by this he decided to become a Sanhus, a wandering holy man who has renounced materialism.   But his parents were a whole lot more shocked.  This is a horrifying thing to his parents.   He wanders for several months, his parents know what he is doing but not where he is or if he is OK.   Sandus have a high religious status but it is hardly the career his parents sent him to college to prepare for.   In a few months he decided to return home.   His father lectures him, his mother yells at him and his younger brother tells him he is an idiot and his lady has married someone else but he is soon  more or less back to normal.

Once back in Malgudi he needs a job.   He ends up getting a pretty decent job with a good potential income promoting subscriptions to a newspaper.   He throws himself into the work and is very successful at it.   The more subscriptions he sells the more he makes.   I was really happy to see how well he did and how his self esteem was built up.   You can see his father and mother are very proud of his success.   The father locates another wife for him.   At first he says no as he feels he will never love another girl besides the one he lost so he refuses the match.   Then his poet friend (he is a recurring character) tells him he might as well marry the girl once he verifies for himself she is attractive.  The poet is a great character!.

The ending is fun and keeps us wanting more.   I will be reading near term three more novels by Narayan, The English Teacher, The Financial Expert, and Waiting for the  Mahatma.    Narayan wrote, I think, fifteen novels and I hope to read all of them.   Reading these works also seems to me a great way to learn about life in colonial India.


Please feel free to share your experience reading Narayan with us.

Mel u

"A Horse and Two Goats" by R. K. Narayan

"A Horse and Two Goats" by R. K. Narayan (1970, 10 pages)

A Top of the Mark Short Story 

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

Indian Literature on the Reading Life

R. K.  Narayan (1906 to 2001-India) is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors.   In the last two months I have read and posted on thirty of his short stories from his 1947 collection The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales and two of his novels.     All of them are set in an imaginary  community he created, Malgudi, India (located in South Indian).    The more I learn about Malgudi,   the more I like it.    (There is some background information on Narayan in my prior posts.)

"A Horse and Two Goats" is just a flat out delightful in every way short story.   It is about an elderly,  poor man with two goats, a wife, little money and no children. He used to have a herd of forty goats, numerous sheep and even a few cows.    His  name is Muni.  Hard luck  has reduced him down to two scraggly goats.    He and his wife live in a small very minimal house next to a "drumstick tree".     I was not sure what a "drumstick tree" was so I checked.    It is a tree with super  nutritious seed pods in the shape of chicken drumsticks (OK we could have guessed that).    You can also boil the leaves for a tasty soup.     Though it is much tastier if you can throw in a vegetable or two or when very lucky a bit of meat.    The couple in part lives from this tree.

Narayan does a very good job depicting the relationships of long married couples.   In just a few lines he can make us understand their lives.   Maybe there was a time when the man was the boss  but those tines are long ago.    Muni's main occupation now is taking his goats for long walks where they can hopefully find something to eat.    His wife tells him do not come back until the goats are fed and he knows if he is gone long enough she will find some way to put together a meal for him.    If he stays out longer  maybe she will be in a good mood when he gets home.

One day the man is out for his walk with his goats.     Muni speaks no English.    A red-faced man in khaki shorts standing next to a fancy car asked him "where can I get some gasoline for my car.    I am out".    Muni has no idea what he is talking about but he knows a white man in khaki shorts next to a fancy car  probably means trouble if  upset so Mani more or less nods at whatever he says.    When the man offers Mani a cigarette, a pleasure he has not been able to indulge in for a long time, he begins to talk back to him but of course the man has no idea what Mani is saying.  The cigarette broke the ice for them.   Now the story just gets so funny when Narayan shows us what each of the men thinks the other is thinking.    As I read this I marveled at how Narayan could make the white man (an American on holiday with his wife) sound so right in his conversations.   We also see what each one of them is thinking the other is saying.   Anyone who has ever head a long  "conversation" with someone who they did not share a language with will love this story.    

As the story proceeds the American asks Mani about a very old mud statue next to his car.    Mani has no idea what the man is talking about.   Somehow the American thinks Mani owns the land he is standing on so he is trying to negotiate a purchase price for the old mud statue (which nobody cares a thing about) which the Anerican thinks is an amazing artifact of an ancient culture (and it may well be such).    As they talk on and on Mani starts to think the man wants to buy his goats (he had shown him some money).    The American assumes Mani is very knowledgeable about the old statue and is trying to drive the price up.    The American wants this statue so badly he will go home to American in a boat while his wife flies back just to be sure the statue makes it back safely.    Mani never has a clue he is interested in the statue.    When they part the American gives Mani more money than he ever had in his life, enough for he and is wife to live on for years.    He leaves the goats with the man, thinking that is what he has sold.    What he really sold was the statue that he never owned in the first place.    I have already told a lot of the plot of this story but I have left untold the great ending.   Narayan is a genius at ending a short story (not always an easy thing to do).

I think this is my favorite Narayan short story so so.    (And that is saying a lot!)

Do you have a favorite Narayan work?

Mel u

The Man-Eater of Malgudi by R. K. Narayan

The Man-Eater of Malgudi by R. K. Narayan (1961, 136 pages)

Getting to Know More about Malgudi, India

A Town from the Mind of 

R. K. Narayan

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

 Indian Literature on The Reading Life

The Man-Eater of Malgudi is the first novel by R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-India-there is background information on Narayan in my prior posts) I have read.    It will not be the last!   I have previously read the thirty short stories in his collection The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales.    I really enjoyed these pre-Partition stories and see Narayan as one of the great short story writers of the 20th century.    I think it takes a little while to understand the nature of his prose but once you do, you will love it.   His stories were written in English, the second language of most of his original readers.  

A lot of Narayan's stories and novels are set in Malgudi, a small town in India that is purely a creation of the imagination of Narayan.    Each work you read makes you appreciate the next one a bit more.

The Man-Eater of Malgudi centers on the life of one of  the town printers.   Before the PC and the desk top printer, a printer was a very important part of almost any business.    No proper wedding could take place without finding a good printer.   Like most businesses, the print shop building was also the home of the printer, his wife and son.    We also get to know his trusty helper, a friend of his that is a poet and loves to hold forth at great length about all the things Nehru is doing wrong in running India.   We get to see the customers come into the print shop and learn how the business works.    The most delicate thing is the collection of fees.    I really liked the conversations in The Man-Eater of Malgudi.     The wife in the story is just a wonderful totally believable person.    At one point when the printer, Nataraj, thought he had so angered his wife that she would always be cold to him in the future I really felt bad for him.    When his wife tears into him when she sees a "public woman" talking to her husband in the print shop about a completely innocent matter, I felt his pain.

The central drama in this story comes when a taxidermist, Vasu, somehow moves into the attic of the building.     He moves in with the idea he will just stay as few days until he finds a place to live.   He turns out to be a monster!   Just to give one example, Vasu invites the printer to go on a brief ride with him (he has a vehicle which is a big thing) and ends up leaving him stuck five hours away in a small jungle town -with no money-while he hunts for animals to shoot for his taxidermy business.    

One bad thing after another starts to happen in the well ordered life of the printer.   The taxidermist has so many dead animals in his room that the neighbors of the printer file a health department complaint on him.     Vasu is a madding manipulative man, he is an expert in martial arts and a crack shot with a gun.   In one just hilarious section Vanu actually files a complaint on the printer for providing him with substandard living conditions.    The printer could actually end up in serious trouble for something caused by the printer and to make it worse he has not received any rent at all.    The printer's friends compare Vasu to a demon out of Hindu tradition, Bhasmasura.     The printer goes to see an attorney (one that owes him money for printing up his business cards) who advises him he will take care of it but of course there are court fees, tips etc to be paid.   The printer suggests the fee be taken from the bill of the lawyer but he is told it is very bad business to "mix accounts".   

In one episode (there are several story lines going on) a temple elephant is said to  be very ill.   Vasu, who can be very helpful and has a strong practical intelligence, tells him they should get the town veterinarian and the three of them will go to the temple.   The elephant returns to health.   Now in an episode that surprised me, it turns out Malgudi has a lot of "loose women".    Vasu begins to have a nightly parade of them up to his room. outraging the printer's wife and neighbors.   Many are prostitutes and I admit I was shocked to find out that Malgudi had so many of them!    One of the women who often visits Vasu finds out that the temple elephant will be in a procession passing in front of the printer's house.   Vasu plans to shot the elephant (which he has evidently bought from a crooked priest) as he passes in front of the print shop and turn the elephant into his greatest piece of taxidermy.    Shooting a temple elephant is totally an outrage to all customs and to have it done right in front of the print shop would be incredibly  bad Karma.   Narayan does a very good job and is pretty frank in describing the appeal the public woman (I guess this is the "sex worker" term in India in 1947!) to him even though he has never been unfaithful to his wife.

I have told enough of the plot to give you a feel of it.   There is a very exciting development near the end of the novel.   I really like how it ended.

For a short novel, there is really a lot to be found in The Man-Eater of Malgudi.  We get a really good feel for life in a small Indian town.   The characters are all just brilliant.    None of the people in the novel are "half characters" and no one is made fun of as a small town backwoods person as a lesser writer might do.   The relationships between the characters are perfect.    

This is a wonderful comic novel with a deep moral vision.   It is also just a lot of fun to read.    I kept thinking "what terrible thing can happen next to the poor printer?"     

I received a copy of this book from a very kind reader from New Delhi who does not wish to be named.   I was also sent five other novels by Narayan and I will, I hope, read and post on all of them soon.    I will next read  Swami and Friends.

Please let me know of your experience with Narayan.   If you have not tried him yet, you might start with "The Astrologer's Tale".

If you have any suggestions for South Asian short stories, please leave a comment.   If you are a Narayan devotee, please give me some guidance.   

Mel u

R K Narayan-"Under the Banyan Tree" and Four Other Stories from The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales

"Under the Banyan Tree"  (1947, 8 pages)
"Engine Trouble"  (1947, 9 pages)
"Avoid all Avoidable Talk (1947, 8 pages)
"Crime and Punishment"  (1947, 9 pages)
"Fruition at Forty"   (1947, 8 pages)

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Porject


Indian Literature on The Reading Life

The Closing Stories in

The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales

by R. K. Narayan

Many terrible things happened in South Asia in 1947.   Millions died as a result of the Partition of India.    You would never really know this from reading the short stories of R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-India)   set in an imaginary small town in India, Malgudi.    Aside from a few references to motor cars and trains, these stories might have been set in 1047.

I have already done several posts on the 30 stories in this collection.   He was the first Indian author to have achieved a large audience world wide for works written in English.   (There is additional background information on him in my prior posts.)

He is considered one of the geniuses of the short story.   I know a lot of my readers are very into Narayan and I hope more will have the pleasure of discovering his work.     His stories were almost all first published in a magazine format for readers whose first language was not English.    

I liked everyone of these stories a lot.    I found once I started reading them it was hard to stop.    The stories in the collection can be read  as stand alone works but they take on more power read as a group.    Narayan gives us a real feel for life in pre-Partition India.    There is a complex moral theme to these stories and I admit I am still pondering it so I will not say more on it now.

All of the stories can be read online HERE or you can download it to a reading device.    

I will soon be posting on some of his longer works of fiction and other short stories.   

This does conclude my posts on The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales.   I enjoyed it tremendously and recommend it to all without reservation.

Mel u

R. K. Narayan-"The Axe" and "Attila" and two more stories from The Astrologer's Day and other Tales

"The Axe" (1947, 10 pages)
"Attila"  (1947, 8 pages)
"Out of Business" (1947, 6 pages)
"Old Bones"  (1947, 6 pages)

Four More Stories from

The Astrologer's Day and Other Stories by R. K. Narayan

age eight

The Reading Life R. K.  Narayan Project

Indian Literature on The Reading Life

I have now read and posted on 24 of the 30 stories in R. K. Narayan's  (1906 to 2001-India) collection of short stories,  The Astrologer's Day and Other Stories.    Almost all of the stories in this collection were first published in the newspaper The Hindu.    Most all of the first readers of the stories read English as a second (or 3rd or 4th) language.   (There is some background information on Narayan in my prior posts.)     Jhumpa Lahiri has said that Narayan is one of the 20th century geniuses of the short story.   I will just post briefly on two of his stories today

"The Axe" is very interesting captivating story.   It has exposition, drama, and development and a moving ending.   It is fully in accord with Frank O'Connor's thesis that the best short stories deal with people from "submarginal groups".    The central character worked all his life as a gardener for  a large mansion.   

"Attila" is a flat out fun shaggy dog story.    The plot is so much fun I will leave it unspoiled.

There are six more stories in this collection.   I will probably post on the best one or two of these stories.

I will also post fairly soon on two of  Narayan's novels.   

Mel u

"Dashi the Bride Groom" and Three Other Stories by R. K. Narayan

"Dashi the Bride Groom" (1947, 8 pages)
"Snake-Song" (1947, 6 pages)
"45 Rupees" (1947, 6 pages
"The Old Man of the Temple"  (1947, 5 pages)

Four More Stories From

The Astrologer's Day and Other Stories

by R. K. Narayan

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

Indian Literature

I hope others will have the pleasure of reading for the first time the work of R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-India).   He is for sure among the great short story writers of the 20th century.   (There is background information on Narayan in my prior posts, for those interested.)

Today I will just post  briefly on two of the four stories I read since my last post on Narayan.

"45 Rupees", like some of Narayan's other stories, is about people trapped by their economic circumstances into doing what they know is not really right for them or their families.    The wrongness is not horrible or criminal but a question of lives made much less than they might have been by a bit of money.   In this story our lead character works in an office in the accounting department.    His boss works 15 hours a day seven days a week and he expects at least 12 hours a day from his employees.    The relationship between the man and his wife is really well done.   I  admit I cringed when his wife yelled at him and told him he was neglecting his daughter for his job.    All his little daughter wants is some tine with her father.   He is all set to quit his job when his boss refuses to let him leave early for a special occasion he promised to share with daughter.  The ending is totally perfect and a little heart breaking.   Anyone who has ever felt they were a slave to their job will relate to this story.

"Dashi the Bride Groom"  is a really great story.   It has great opening exposition, there is a very interesting development and some powerful drama and a lesson can be learned from the story.   Dashi is a big bull of a man, strong and powerfully built.   He has the mind of a child .    No one is real sure of his age, maybe 30.   He stays in the house of a man that maybe is his older brother or might just be someone who took him in off the streets many years ago.   He sleeps on the kitchen floor and does things like bringing in water and wood.   As he makes his way around Malgudi (the imaginary town where this and the other stories of Narayan take place) the village boys and retired lay abouts taunt him asking him when his bride will come.    Dashi very much wishes he could have a bride and his own family.   The boys tease him with descriptions of  the great beauty of his imaginary wife.  One day a famous actress comes to stay in town for a while as she has relatives there.    The boys tell Dashi about her and tell him she has come to town to marry him.    He believes them.     Things get very exciting now and I will not spoil the terrific ending.

All of the stories in The Astrologer's Day and Other Stories can  be read HERE
Mel u

R. K. Narayan-Three 1947 Stories of Dreams Destoryed

"The Preforming Child" by R. K, Narayan (1947, 7 pages)
"Iswaran" (1947, 10 pages)
"The Evening Gift"  (1047, 8 pages)


The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

Posts on Indian Literature

Is There No Hope in Malgudi?

Three Powerful Stories by R. K. Narayan

I am starting to think the imaginary town of Magudi India, the setting of most of the short stories of R. K. Magudi-shortened  from Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami-1906 to 2001-Chennai, India)  is a darker town than even Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.

All of the stories I will post on today are from the 1947 collection of stories The Astrologer's Day  and Other Stories.    In each story in just a few pages Narayan made me feel I knew the characters and understood much about their lives.   I will just post briefly on each of these stories.   Each one is about hopes so close to being realized only to have them smashed at the moment it seems they will at last come true.    Lives of work and drudgery seem about to take a turn for the better.    All end on a capricious twist of fate brought on by the weakness and venality inherent in the human soul.     I am detecting based on blog statistics a lot of interest in  Narayan which is a very good thing as he belongs among the 20th century  geniuses of the short story (and I have not yet read any of his longer works.)

"The Preforming Child" is both heartbreak and uplifting.    Heartbreaking because a families only hope for a decent future for their daughter has been destroyed and their elated hopes totally defeated.   Uplifting because in the end parental love seems to override the drive for material wealth, even if the drive is for their children.   Their young daughter, at most 12, loves to sing and dance.    She wins a local contest and and a big movie producer wants to bring his financial backer to the parents house to see the child preform as he thinks she has the potential to be a huge movie star.   This means riches beyond the families dreams.    All goes great during the visit-the men  really want to put the daughter into movies (Bollywood is just getting started around 1947)-I do not want to tell the ending as it is a bit of a puzzle as to why it ends the way it does.   What does the girl know or fear?    I will leave the ending of this story unspoiled.   If you have read the story, what do you think of the ending.

"Iswaran" is about a perpetual failure who almost succeeds.   The lead character is trying to get into a good secondary school.   In order to do so he has to pass a standard exam.    He has flunked it so many times he is a laughing stock.   He tries one more time.   He does not even want to go check the board where the results are posted  but he at last gets the courage up to look.   He pasted.   All the laughter will be gone now.   He begins to imagine all the people he will soon be able to look down on and the new future that has opened up for him.     Things do not work out.   I found this a really well done story.

"The Evening Gift"  is just so hilarious and so sad.   I loved the occupation of the central character, he is the paid watch dog of a rich drunk.    A wealthy man pays him to pick him up every night around 600pm and take him to drink.   The man just watches him and no matter what he is to stop the man from drinking at 900pm.  His boss has told him even if he has to use force take him home at 900pm.   The boss has advised him that by 900pm he may well be drunk and will abuse him verbally and threaten to fire him.   He has been told that even if the boss tells him he is fired to take him home and come back the next day like nothing happen has happened.   The worker gets a call from his family saying the need 100 rupees to save the family home.   He tells his boss about it and the boss says. "what that is nothing to me" and he makes the man a gift of the money.    Of course things go bad from here!

You can read these stories and 27 others HERE  (it looks like a sentence or two is missing at the end of "The Evening Gift"-if you have these last few line please e mail them to me-thanks)

If you have experience with Narayan please share it with us.

Mel u

R. K. Narayan-Three 1947 Stories About Things that Almost Happen

"Fellow Feeling"  (1947, 6 pages)
"The Watchman" (1947, 5 pages)
"The Tiger Claw" (5 pages, 1947)

The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project

 The more I read of the work of the R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-Chennai, India) the more I admire him.   Jumpa Lahia (the first great 21th century short story writer to emerge) says  ""Setting aside his plentiful and remarkable novels, Narayan firmly occupies a seat in the pantheon of 19th- and 20th-century short-story geniuses".    I was happy to see that Lahia includes among the geniuses of the short  story Frank O'Connor.    I cannot prove it but I am convinced when O'Connor said in his The Lonely Voice-A Study of the Short Story that the Indian short story was starting to surpass the contemporary (circa 1960) Irish Short story he had Narayan in mind.    

All of the three stories I will talk about today are from his 1947 collection, The Astrologer's  Day and Other Stories.    Most of the stories  included were first published in The Hindu.   The nine stories I have read so far by Narayan all focus on life in an imaginary community he crneated and set his stories in, Malgudi.     Just liked Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio Narayan writes about ordinary people in a way that lets us see we think they are ordinary only if that is all we ourselves are.   They are also sort of stories about people who feel they did not get the credit they deserve for a large moment in their lives.   One of the themes of Narayan seems to be how life can change in the blink of an eye.   This was no doubt very clear in 1947 in India, the year of the Partition.


"Fellow Feeling" is set in the third class section of a train.   It really made me in just a few sentences feel I was in a compartment on one of the trains.   The story also lets us see the very real resentment  most people had of the higher caste, normally richer Brahmins.   We also see the hatred   people have for strangers who seem of a different caste than they are.   The action of the story takes place in a train compartment.   A Brahmin comes in the compartment and he tells a drowsy traveler to move to make more space for him.   Then an argument breaks out over the claim of one of the other passengers that Brahmins (whose traditions are vegetarian) have  taken to eating meat and have driven the price so high others can barely afford it.   I have read a couple of articles on Narayan who say the spoken language of his characters "feels wrong".   To me his dialogue is part of his genius.   The people in the compartment all have a language besides English as their basic language but they need to speak to each other in English.   It may be because this is the only language they share or it maybe a class matter in that speaking English well marks you out as upper class.   The spoken English is slang free learned in school style English.   A great near fight breaks out in the compartment.    You can read the story to find out what happens.   The ending was so brilliant I also most felt like applauding.   


"The Watchman" begins when a young woman approaches the station of a night watchman.   She tells him she intends to kill herself.    This story is so compressed and so good I do not feel inclined to summarize it.    One thing I admired in this story was how Narayan made me accept that years had gone by in just a few pages.   The ending leaves us wondering.   Narayan knows how to end a story.


"The Tiger's Claw" deals with something that was a serious problem in the Malgudi area, man eating tigers.  A fear of being eaten by a tiger was part of daily life.   Maybe this is hard of us to relate to but it was a frequent occurrence in India in 1947.   "The Tiger's Claw" is about a man who claims he fought off a tiger.   This would be an incredible feet and people are very skeptical of his story.   I do not want to spoil any of the fun of this story.


Narayan's stories have a very visual cinematic quality.   I felt like I was on the train, that I was a lonely night watchman or that I was telling my story about fighting off a tiger to those who see me as either deluded or just a telling a story to impress.     


I have links to 22 more short Stories by Narayan and own two of his novels.  I hope to post on all of them this year as part of The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project.

I am, in conjunction with Kals of  Pemberley-Life Between Pages parts of my readings of South Asian short stories will be subsumed in a permanent project A Passage to the British Raj (there is information on this project on the link above).   Any one who is interested is very welcome to join in.    My interest in the South Asian Short story is permanent.

There is background information on Narayan in my prior posts.

All of The Astrologer's Day and Other Stories (30 short stories) can be read HERE


If you have a favorite Narayan, Tagore or South Asian short story please leave a comment.

Mel u

"The Blind Dog" by R. K. Narayan and "Magudi Days-Rereading the Master" by Jhumpa Lahiri

"The Blind Dog" by R. K. Narayan (1947, 6 pages)

"Malgudi Days-Rereading the Master" by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008, 5 pages)

A Wonderful Short Story

and

A deeply felt appreciation for R. K. Narayan

In his brilliant (if flawed)  The Lonely Voice-A Study of the Short Story Frank O'Connor tells us that a short story should have exposition, development, drama, focus on people from "submerged groups" and express the central loneliness of the human experience.     If we observe for the sake of discussion these criterion then "The Blind Dog" by  R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-Chennai, India) is a perfect short story.   In just as few pages in beautiful prose Narayan creates a complete world.    In the opening paragraph the basics of the story are laid out  for us.   

A blind beggar sits in his spot collecting alms from passer just as he has done for years.    Everyday a woman drops him off at his spot and takes him home.    We also meet a very undistinguished masterless village dog who lives from garbage and roams free. 

Now both story lines come together in two interrelated

dramatic developments.  


The woman that takes care  of the beggar 

dies.    The dog is captured or takes up

with the beggar and learns to help him increase his

earnings.   If someone passes the beggar by without

giving a donation the dog chases them down and barks and threatens them until they give the beggar something.   The beggar begins to do  much better and his neighbors in the market become jealous.   The Dog begins to long for the "good old days".

  

 A second dramatic development occurs when the 

 dog either escapes or is released by someone with

malicious intent.  Narayan masterfully completes the 

story with developments in the lives of both central 

persons in the story, the dog and the beggar.   

O'Connor felt that the best authors stories arose from their own experiences.   Narayan would for years take

a three hour daily walk, stopping to talk to the

people he met.   There is no feel   at all of the

inauthentic in Narayan's stories.  

Jumpa Lahia (I have posted on five of her wonderful

short stories) has supplied the introduction for a

collection of Narayan's short stories, Malgudi Days.  Her essay was first published in The Boston Review. 

I urge anyone at all interested in Narayan or the short story to read her essay.

Here are her some of her thoughts on the place of

Narayan in the short story genre:

"Setting aside his plentiful and remarkable novels, Narayan firmly occupies a seat in the pantheon of 19th- and 20th-century short-story geniuses, a group that includes Chekhov, O. Henry, Frank O’Connor, and Flannery O’Connor.  Another kindred spirit is Maupassant, whose tightly coiled narratives share with Narayan’s a mastery of compression, of events quickly unfolding and lives radically changing in paragraphs that can be numbered on two hands.  With Narayan as with Maupassant there is that purity of voice, the realism and constraint. Both explore the frustrations of the middle class, the precariousness of fate, the inevitable longings that so often lead to ruin. Both create portraits of everyday life and share a vision that is unyielding  and unpitying."

(Maybe I should read a bit more O. Henry based on this.)

"The Blind Beggar" was included by Narayan in his 1947 collection

The Astrologer's Tale and other Stories which can be read HERE

Lahiri's essay can be read HERE.   I really recommend it highly.

I plan to read all 30 stories in this collection.    I have already  read and loved six of them.

  

Mel u