The Gateman s Gift. R.K.Narayan

Transcription

1 The Gateman s Gift R.K.Narayan Author s biography R. K. Narayan (10 October May 2001), shortened from Rasipuram KrishnaswamiIyer Narayanaswami. In Indian author whose works of fiction include a series of books about people and their interactions in an imagined town in India called Malgudi. He is one of three leading figures of early Indian literature in English, along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. He is credited with bringing Indian literature in English to the rest of the world, and is regarded as one of India's greatest English language novelists. Narayan broke through with the help of his mentor and friend, Graham Greene, who was instrumental in getting publishers for Narayan s first four books, including the semi-autobiographical trilogy of Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. Narayan s works also include The Financial Expert, hailed as one of the most original works of 1951, and Sahitya Akademi Award winner The Guide, which was adapted for films in Hindi and English languages, and for Broadway.

2 In a writing career that spanned over sixty years, Narayan received many awards and honours. These include the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature and the Padma Vibhushan, India's secondhighest civilian award. He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament. R. K. Narayan was born in Madras (now known as Chennai), Madras Presidency, British India. His father was a school headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school. As his father's job required frequent moves, Narayan spent part of his childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother, Parvati. During this time his best friends and playmates were a peacock and a mischievous monkey. His grandmother gave him the nickname of Kunjappa, a name that stuck to him in family circles. She taught him arithmetic, mythology, classical Indian music and Sanskrit. According to his youngest brother R. K. Laxman, the family mostly conversed in English, and grammatical errors on the part of Narayan and his siblings were frowned upon. While living with his grandmother, Narayan studied at a succession of schools in Madras, including the Lutheran Mission School in Purasawalkam, C.R.C. High School, and the Christian College High School. Narayan was an avid reader, and his early literary diet included Dickens, Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy. When he was twelve years old, Narayan participated in a pro-independence march, for which he was 269

3 reprimanded by his uncle; the family was apolitical and considered all governments wicked. Narayan moved to Mysore to live with his family when his father was transferred to the Maharajah's Collegiate High School. The wellstocked library at the school, as well as his father's own, fed his reading habit, and he started writing as well. After completing high school, Narayan failed the university entrance examination and spent a year at home reading and writing; he subsequently passed the examination in 1926 and joined Maharaja College of Mysore. It took Narayan four years to obtain his Bachelor's degree, a year longer than usual. After being persuaded by a friend that taking a Master's degree (M.A.) would kill his interest in literature, he briefly held a job as a school teacher; however, he quit in protest when the headmaster of the school asked him to substitute for the physical training master. The experience made Narayan realize that the only career for him was in writing, and he decided to stay at home and write novels. His first published work was a book review of Development of Maritime Laws of 17th-Century England. Subsequently, he started writing the occasional local interest story for English newspapers and magazines. Although the writing did not pay much (his income for the first year was nine rupees and twelve annas), he had a regular life and few needs, and his family and friends respected and supported his unorthodox choice of career. In 1930, Narayan wrote his first novel, Swami and Friends, an effort ridiculed by his uncle and rejected by a string of publishers. With this book, Narayan created Malgudi, a town that creatively reproduced the social sphere of the 270

4 country; while it ignored the limits imposed by colonial rule, it also grew with the various socio-political changes of British and post-independence India. While vacationing at his sister's house in Coimbatore, in 1933, Narayan met and fell in love with Rajam, a 15-year old girl who lived nearby. Despite many astrological and financial obstacles, Narayan managed to gain permission from the girl's father and married her. Following his marriage, Narayan became a reporter for a Madras based paper called The Justice, dedicated to the rights of non-brahmins. The publishers were thrilled to have a Brahmin Iyer in Narayan espousing their cause. The job brought him in contact with a wide variety of people and issues. Earlier, Narayan had sent the manuscript of Swami and Friends to a friend at Oxford, and about this time, the friend showed the manuscript to Graham Greene. Greene recommended the book to his publisher, and it was finally published in Greene also counseled Narayan on shortening his name to become more familiar to the Englishspeaking audience. The book was semi-autobiographical and built upon many incidents from his own childhood. Reviews were favourable but sales were few. Narayan's next novel The Bachelor of Arts (1937), was inspired in part by his experiences at college, and dealt with the theme of a rebellious adolescent transitioning to a rather well-adjusted adult; it was published by a different publisher, again at the recommendation of Greene. His third novel, The Dark Room (1938) was about domestic disharmony, showcasing the man as the oppressor and the woman as the victim within a marriage, and was published by yet another publisher; this 271

5 book also received good reviews. In 1937, Narayan's father died, and Narayan was forced to accept a commission from the government of Mysore as he was not making any money. Rajam died of typhoid in Her death affected Narayan deeply and he remained distressed for a long time; he was also concerned for their daughter Hema, who was only three years old. The bereavement brought about a significant change in his life and was the inspiration behind his next novel, The English Teacher. This book, like his first two books, is autobiographical, but more so, and completes an unintentional thematic trilogy following Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. In subsequent interviews, Narayan acknowledges that The English Teacher was almost entirely an autobiography, albeit with different names for the characters and the change of setting in Malgudi; he also explains that the emotions detailed in the book reflected his own at the time of Rajam's death. Bolstered by some of his successes, in 1940 Narayan tried his hand at a journal, Indian Thought. With the help of his uncle, a car salesman, Narayan managed to get more than a thousand subscribers in Madras city alone. However, the venture did not last long due to Narayan's inability to manage it, and it ceased publication within a year. His first collection of short stories, Malgudi Days, was published in November 1942, followed by The English Teacher in In between, being cut off from England 272

6 due to the war, Narayan started his own publishing company, naming it (again) Indian Thought Publications; the publishing company was a success and is still active, now managed by his granddaughter. Soon, with a devoted readership stretching from New York to Moscow, Narayan's books started selling well and in 1948 he started building his own house on the outskirts of Mysore; the house was completed in After The English Teacher, Narayan's writings took a more imaginative and creative external style compared to the semiautobiographical tone of the earlier novels. His next effort, Mr. Sampath, was the first book exhibiting this modified approach. However, it still draws from some of his own experiences, particularly the aspect of starting his own journal; he also makes a marked movement away from his earlier novels by intermixing biographical events. Soon after, he published The Financial Expert, considered to be his masterpiece and hailed as one of the most original works of fiction in The inspiration for the novel was a true story about a financial genius, Margayya, related to him by his brother. The next novel, Waiting for the Mahatma, loosely based on a fictional visit to Malgudi by Mahatma Gandhi, deals with the protagonist's romantic feelings for a woman, when he attends the discourses of the visiting Mahatma. The woman, named Bharti, is a loose parody of Bharati, the personification of India and the focus of Gandhi's discourses. While the novel includes significant references to the Indian independence movement, the focus is on the life of the ordinary individual, narrated with Narayan's usual dose of irony. 273

7 In 1953, his works were published in the United States for the first time, by Michigan State University Press, who later (in 1958), relinquished the rights to Viking Press. While Narayan's writings often bring out the anomalies in social structures and views, he was himself a traditionalist; in February 1956, Narayan arranged his daughter's wedding following all orthodox Hindu rituals. After the wedding, Narayan began travelling occasionally, continuing to write at least 1500 words a day even while on the road.the Guide was written while he was visiting the United States in 1956 on the Rockefeller Fellowship. While in the U.S., Narayan maintained a daily journal that was to later serve as the foundation for his book My Dateless Diary. Around this time, on a visit to England, Narayan met his friend and mentor Graham Greene for the first time. On his return to India, The Guide was published; the book is the most representative of Narayan's writing skills and elements, ambivalent in expression, coupled with a riddle-like conclusion. The book won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in Occasionally, Narayan was known to give form to his thoughts by way of essays, some published in newspapers and journals, others not. Next Sunday (1960), was a collection of such conversational essays, and his first work to be published as a book. Soon after that, My Dateless Diary, describing experiences from his 1956 visit to the United States, was published. Also included in this collection was an essay about the writing of The Guide. 274

8 Narayan's next novel, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, was published in The book was reviewed as having a narrative that is a classical art form of comedy, with delicate control. After the launch of this book, the restless Narayan once again took to travelling, and visited the U.S. and Australia. He spent three weeks in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne giving lectures on Indian literature. The trip was funded by a fellowship from the Australian Writers' Group. By this time Narayan had also achieved significant success, both literary and financial. He had a large house in Mysore, and wrote in a study with no fewer than eight windows; he drove a new Mercedes-Benz, a luxury in India at that time, to visit his daughter who had moved to Coimbatore after her marriage. With his success, both within India and abroad, Narayan started writing columns for magazines and newspapers including The Hindu and The Atlantic. In 1964, Narayan published his first mythological work, Gods, Demons and Others, a collection of rewritten and translated short stories from Hindu epics. Like many of his other works, this book was illustrated by his younger brother R. K. Laxman. The stories included were a selective list, chosen on the basis of powerful protagonists, so that the impact would be lasting, irrespective of the reader's contextual knowledge. Once again, after the book launch, Narayan took to travelling abroad. In an earlier essay, he had written about the Americans wanting to understand spirituality from him, and during this visit, Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo accosted him on the topic, despite his denial of any knowledge. 275

9 After a long journey in the field of literature in May 2001, Narayan was hospitalized. A few hours before he was to be put on a ventilator, he was planning on writing his next novel, a story about a grandfather. As he was always very selective about his choice of notebooks, he asked N. Ram to get him one. However, Narayan did not get better and never started the novel. He died on May 13, 2001, in Chennai at the age of 94. Plot Summary: The Gateman s Gift Narayan's writing style was simple and unpretentious with a natural element of humour about it. It focused on ordinary people, reminding the reader of next-door neighbours, cousins and the like, thereby providing a greater ability to relate to the topic. Unlike his national contemporaries, he was able to write about the intricacies of Indian society without having to modify his characteristic simplicity to conform to trends and fashions in fiction writing. He also employed the use of nuanced dialogic prose with gentle Tamil overtones based on the nature of his characters. Critics have considered Narayan to be the Indian Chekhov 162, due to the similarities in their writings, the simplicity and the gentle beauty and humour in tragic situations. Greene considered Narayan to be more similar to Chekhov than any Indian writer. Anthony West of The New Yorker considered Narayan's writings to be of the realism variety of Nikolai Gogol. 276

10 According to Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, Narayan's short stories have the same captivating feeling as his novels, with most of them less than ten pages long, and taking about as many minutes to read. She adds that between the title sentence and the end, Narayan provides the reader something novelists struggle to achieve in hundreds more pages: a complete insight to the lives of his characters. These characteristics and abilities led Lahiri to classify him as belonging to the pantheon of shortstory geniuses that include O. Henry, Frank O'Connor and Flannery O'Connor. Lahiri also compares him to Guy de Maupassant for their ability to compress the narrative without losing the story, and the common themes of middle-class life written with an unyielding and unpitying vision. Critics have noted that Narayan's writings tend to be more descriptive and less analytical; the objective style, rooted in a detached spirit, providing for a more authentic and realistic narration. His attitude, coupled with his perception of life, provided a unique ability to fuse characters and actions, and an ability to use ordinary events to create a connection in the mind of the reader. A significant contributor to his writing style was his creation of Malgudi, a stereotypical small town, where the standard norms of superstition and tradition apply. Narayan's writing style was often compared to that of William Faulkner since both their works brought out the humour and energy of ordinary life while displaying compassionate humanism. The similarities also extended to their juxtaposing of the demands of society against the 277

11 confusions of individuality. Although their approach to subjects was similar, their methods were different; Faulkner was rhetorical and illustrated his points with immense prose while Narayan was very simple and realistic, capturing the elements all the same. Malgudi A living character of Narayan s short stories The setting for most of Narayan's stories is the fictional town of Malgudi, first introduced in Swami and Friends. His narratives highlight social context and provide a feel for his characters through everyday life. He has been compared to William Faulkner, who also created a fictional town that stood for reality, brought out the humour and energy of ordinary life, and displayed compassionate humanism in his writing. Narayan's short story writing style has been compared to that of Guy de Maupassant, as they both have an ability to compress the narrative without losing out on elements of the story. Narayan has also come in for criticism for being too simple in his prose and diction Malgudi is a fictional, semi-urban town in southern India, conjured by Narayan. He created the town in September 1930, on Vijayadashami, an auspicious day to start new efforts and thus chosen for him by his grandmother. As he mentioned in a later interview to his biographers Susan and N. Ram, in his mind, he first saw a railway station, and slowly the name Malgudi came to him. The town was created with an impeccable historical record, dating to the Ramayana days when it was noted that 278

12 Lord Rama passed through; it was also said that the Buddha visited the town during his travels. While Narayan never provided strict physical constraints for the town, he allowed it to form shape with events in the various stories, becoming a reference point for the future.dr James M. Fennelly, a scholar of Narayan's works, created a map of Malgudi based on the fictional descriptors of the town from the many books and stories. Malgudi evolved with the changing political landscape of India. In the 1980s, when the nationalistic fervor in India dictated the changing of British names of towns and localities and removal of British landmarks, Malgudi's mayor and city council removed the long standing statue of Frederick Lawley, one of Malgudi's early residents. However, when the Historical Societies showed proof that Lawley was strong in his support of the Indian independence movement, the council was forced to undo all their earlier actions. A good comparison to Malgudi, a place that Greene characterised as "more familiar than Battersea or Euston Road" 163, is Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Also, like Faulkner's, when one looks at Narayan's works, the town gets a better definition through the many different novels and stories. 279

13 The Gateman s Gift: Critical Appreciation R.K. Narayan, who died in 2001, is one of India's greatest authors. A good friend of Graham Greene and many others, he wrote many, many novels and stories about the conflicts with which the average Indian citizens have contended from the Colonial Period through Independence and into the present. He wrote right up until the time of his death. The Great Narayan, for an appreciation of his accomplishments. While Narayan does not write in great detail about specific contemporary issues in India--he invents the town of Malgudi--his characters, including the ex-gateman Govind Sing, contend with struggles that beset India. In our story, the gateman lives under the Colonial regime of the British, who did not leave India until 1947, the year of the partition when more than a million people died. And this system of social and political organization comes to dominate the character's life and to determine the rather limited horizons he comes to view as the defining characteristics of, well, a sane person. When a dozen persons question openly or slyly a man's sanity, he begins to entertain serious doubts about himself. 164 The opening statement sets the stage for a narrative that asks questions about just what sanity actually means? 280

14 The story divides well into three parts: 1. Life up to retirement. 2. His retirement "hobby." 3. His bout with sanity. Behind these issues of insanity/sanity lurk questions about what the society dictates concerning behaviour and what therefore is valued--and who dictates these norms. The narrative uses the flashback technique to emphasize the juxtaposition of past life and present circumstance, two phases in the man's life linked by a registered letter from his former employer. Obviously, this letter causes him no small consternation. And you might find that the character's actions border on the absurd; indeed you are supposed to, for he thinks others insane for failing to understand why he fears opening the letter. Everywhere the suggestion was the same, till he thought everyone had turned mad 165. We leave the first two paragraphs wondering what the hell is going on in this man's mind. What other questions? Why does he fear the letter? What from the past accounts for these fears? 281

15 All good questions that our author will not answer all that directly. Among other things, we have to assume that the man does not get registered mail all that often--either do we? And most of us probably feel very much the same when this kind of mail reaches us: Must be bad news. So we can identify just enough to link, as it were, with the story. After war service in , he came to be recommended for a gatekeeper's post at Englandia's. The name of the company certainly resonates--england joined with India, but also a reference to the British Empire--land that belongs to England. At any rate, the title bespeaks the contrast between the colonizer and the colonized. And Govind Singh certainly conforms to a very British view of how an Indian should behave: He was given a khaki uniform, a resplendent band across his shoulder and a short stick. Obviously, his job does not amount to all that much. In the morning, he salutes cars as they arrive and repeats the process at quitting time. And he retires only because he really cannot do his job anymore, strange as that might sound: He would not have thought of retirement yet, but for the fact that he found his sight and hearing playing tricks on him; he could not catch the Manager's footsteps on the stairs, and it was hard to recognize him even at ten yards. The preceding gives the impression that Singh is on close terms with his "Master." Such is hardly the case, however; and the fact that the 282

16 boss really does not know him at all makes the job and the man's relationship to it and to his Master very pathetic--what would happen to a person who works all those years at doing nothing? Consider the job itself, the gateman who has absolutely no stake in running the business or the country, as a metaphor for colonialism. Who does all the real work? What is the position of the Indian? The supposed insanity to follow suggests, perhaps, how upside down everything is, for conforming requires, one could argue, that a person sacrifice all individuality. To what extent does the gateman depend on "the great man" for his sense of purpose in life and his self identity? Though so little was said, Singh felt electrified on both occasions by the words of his master. In Singh's eyes the chief had acquired a sort of godhood, and it would be quite adequate if a God spoke to on only twice in a lifetime. In moments of contemplation Singh's mind dwelt on the words of his master, and on his personality. And then to get a registered letter from, well, God; no wonder the poor man finds himself at wit's end. Indeed, he pretty much prays to the General Manager. Remember that his story is a work of literature. And you want, therefore, to consider the significance between what Singh does for twenty five years of his life and then how he handles retirement, in terms of what you see as the story's comments on the social system. 283

17 And consider, too, if Singh represents a huge class of Indian citizens, what shape are they in for self rule, which comes just around the time the gateman retires after all those years on the job? Singh does not deal directly with politics--he mentions, for example, none of the turmoil leading to independence, all the violence, for instance, between Hindu and Muslim; however, the events in the life of Singh certainly suggest the effects all this matter has on individuals. How much imagination is required to fulfil Singh's job requirements? And for his hobby, through which he brought into existence a miniature universe, how much imagination is required? Note, too, how much satisfaction he takes from his accomplishments on which he must depend on his own talents and abilities to create: It was a wonderful miniature reflection of the world; and he mounted them neatly on thin wooden slices, which enhanced their attractiveness. He kept these in his cousin's shop and they attracted huge crowds every day and sold very briskly. More than from the sales Singh felt an ecstasy when he saw admiring crowds clustering around his handiwork. 166 While the artistic endeavours and accomplishments bring him tremendous pleasure and satisfaction, how much importance does the man 284

18 place on this individual accomplishment? Compared with his former occupation, which affects people directly? Notice the religious overtones in the following passage about Singh's monthly trip to get his pension check: He made it a convention to carry on every pension day an offering for his master, and each time his greatest reward was the accountant's stock reply to his question: "What did the Sahib say?" "He said it was very good." Gods speak to mere humans only through an intermediary 167. At this juncture in the story, the registered letter arrives, and you must ask yourself why the man fears its contents. He tells his wife of his fears: Why not open it and see, ask someone to read it?" He threw up his arms in horror. "Woman, you don't know what you are saying. It cannot be opened. They have perhaps written that my pension is stopped, and God knows what else the Sahib has said The Kafka-like humour of this poor, illiterate fellow's paranoid odyssey to discover the contents of the message from authority becomes, 285

19 of course, pathetic. Again, you must remember that you read a piece of fiction and ask yourself the significance of what goes on. He does crazy things and determines that he is mad, for he feels that the world on which he depended--the one made of real clay--might well crumble. And he begins to perceive the work he did in clay as the occupation of a lunatic. The fear from the letter offers, of course, numerous avenues to pursue. But if you think about how he depicted himself in the masterpiece, you get an idea of why in his strange thinking the model could be considered rather blasphemous: he put himself in the same scene with the one he worships. Given the context of what goes on, the preceding helps account for his actions. Now we have numerous contrasts in the story. Compare, for example, the difference between the workplace masterpiece, which shows Singh serving the Sahib, and the special piece on which he had been working, the model village: It was the most enjoyable piece of work that he had so far undertaken. He lived in a kind of ecstasy while doing it. "I am going to 286

20 keep this for myself, a memento of my father's village," 169 he declared. This artistic creation is special. And he determines to share it with everyone, a communal gift, if you will, one that serves his memory and which will bring people enjoyment. But in his madness, he instead destroys the village and makes himself a clay helmet: His madness had given him a sense of limitless freedom, strength and buoyancy. The remarks and jeers of the crowds gaping at him did not in the least touch him. In his insanity, he begins to talk about other things connected with his personal life. The village he creates replicates memories from his childhood, and as he goes on his crazed walk though the town in his clay helmet, he talks about what he did during the war, when he was stationed, the narrative suggests, in Mesopotamia--all these things he keeps repressed during the years he worked for that company. Who is the real Singh? While the police drag him away, Singh sees the accountant from the office, who tells him of the letter's contents, 100 rupees, over nine month's worth of salary: The General Manager greatly appreciates the very artistic models you have sent, and he is pleased to sanction a reward of 100 rupees and hopes it will be an encouragement for you to keep up this interesting hobby

21 Note that on the basis of the accountant's word--a member of the company--singh determines that he is no longer insane: "You look quite well, you aren't mad," said the accountant. Singh fell at his feet and said with tears choking his voice, "You are a god, sir, to say that I am not mad. I am so happy to hear it." 171 What might have happened if the message just said "splendid work"? And he gives up the making of these "toys." Are they simply toys? What is more important as a basis for self identity, the job or that thing he labels a mere hobby, which he quits: "Nothing sir. Never again. It is no occupation for a sane man..." 172 he said, received his pension and walked stiffly out of the office. Yes, the story certainly is "different." As you have read these past weeks, however, the literature has offered numerous depictions of people under what seems unnatural conditions, from war to other kinds of oppressions. And none of the literature offers easy fixes. What the man takes his measure from is empty; that which fills him with a sense of accomplishment and that which brings joy to the people around him, he labels insane. What causes this unnatural contrast? One possible answer is found at the center of the story. 288

22 This story does bear on the topic, the colonial overtones notwithstanding. In India, a caste system remains very much in place, with the Brahman class at the top--the people to whom other and lower classes owe allegiance and religious awe. In the "Breast-Giver", for example, consider the boss of the company, who eats scrapings from the poor Brahman man's feet as a sign of reverence, though he keeps the man in a low-paying position. In this story, the General Manager receives the awe generally accorded the upper caste; they are the ones who inspire, and they hold these positions naturally. Consequently, the story might well suggest that the colonial organization fills a pre-existing social organization with strict divisions. Thus, the gateman must remain for his career an unseen gateman, who asks for little and who thinks less. To ask for more or to call attention to self is socially unacceptable. The situation is therefore and indeed complex and hardly bodes well in the author's estimation for India's chances to enter the so-called modern world. 289

23 Twentieth Century View Narayan first broke through with the help of Graham Greene who, upon reading Swaminathan and Tate, took it upon himself to work as Narayan's agent for the book. He was also instrumental in changing the title to the more appropriate Swami and Friends, and in finding publishers for Narayan's next few books. While Narayan's early works were not exactly commercial successes, other authors of the time began to notice him. Somerset Maugham, on a trip to Mysore in 1938, had asked to meet Narayan, but not enough people had heard of him to actually effect the meeting. Maugham subsequently read Narayan's The Dark Room, and wrote to him expressing his admiration. Another contemporary writer who took a liking to Narayan's early works was E. M. Forster, an author who shared his dry and humorous narrative, so much so that Narayan was labelled the "South Indian E. M. Forster" 173 by critics. Despite his popularity with the reading public and fellow writers, Narayan's work has not received the same amount of critical exploration accorded to other writers of his stature. Narayan's success in the United States came a little later, when Michigan State University Press started publishing his books. His first visit to the country was on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, and he lectured at various universities including Michigan State University and University of California, Berkeley. Around this time, John Updike noticed his work and compared Narayan to Charles Dickens. In a review of Narayan's works published in The New Yorker, Updike called 290

24 him a writer of a vanishing breed the writer as a citizen; one who identifies completely with his subjects and with a belief in the significance of humanity. Having published many novels, essays and short stories, Narayan is credited with bringing Indian writing to the rest of the world. While he has been regarded as one of India's greatest writers of the twentieth century, critics have also described his writings with adjectives such as charming, harmless and benign. Narayan has also come in for criticism from later writers, particularly of Indian origin, who have classed his writings as having a pedestrian style with a shallow vocabulary and a narrow vision. According to ShashiTharoor, Narayan's subjects are similar to those of Jane Austen as they both deal with a very small section of society. However, he adds that while Austen's prose was able to take those subjects beyond ordinariness, Narayan's was not. A similar opinion is held by Shashi Deshpande who characterizes Narayan's writings as pedestrian and naive because of the simplicity of his language and diction, combined with the lack of any complexity in the emotions and behaviours of his characters. A general perception on Narayan was that he did not involve himself or his writings with the politics or problems of India, as mentioned by V. S. Naipaul in one of his columns. However, according to Wyatt Mason of The New Yorker, although Narayan's writings seem 291

25 simple and display a lack of interest in politics, he delivers his narrative with an artful and deceptive technique when dealing with such subjects and does not entirely avoid them, rather letting the words play in the reader's mind. Srinivasa Iyengar, former vice-chancellor of Andhra University, says that Narayan wrote about political topics only in the context of his subjects, quite unlike his compatriot Mulk Raj Anand who dealt with the political structures and problems of the time. Paul Brians, in his book Modern South Asian Literature in English, says that the fact that Narayan completely ignored British rule and focused on the private lives of his characters is a political statement on its own, declaring his independence from the influence of colonialism. In the west, Narayan's simplicity of writing was well received. One of his biographers, William Walsh, wrote of his narrative as a comedic art with an inclusive vision informed by the transience and illusion of human action. Multiple Booker nominee Anita Desai classes his writings as "compassionate realism" 174 where the cardinal sins are unkindness and immodesty. According to Wyatt Mason, in Narayan's works, the individual is not a private entity, but rather a public one and this concept is an innovation that can be called his own. In addition to his early works being among the most important English-language fiction from India, with this innovation, he provided his western readers the first works in English to be infused with an eastern and Hindu existential perspective. Mason also holds the view that Edmund Wilson's assessment of Walt Whitman, "He does not write editorials on events but describes his actual feelings" 175, applies equally to Narayan. 292

26 Narayan's greatest achievement was making India accessible to the outside world through his literature. He is regarded as one of the three leading English language Indian fiction writers, along with Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. He gave his readers something to look forward to with Malgudi and its residents and is considered to be one of the best novelists India has ever produced. He brought small-town India to his audience in a manner that was both believable and experiential. Malgudi was not just a fictional town in India, but one teeming with characters, each with their own idiosyncrasies and attitudes, making the situation as familiar to the reader as if it were their own backyard. Whom next shall I meet in Malgudi? That is the thought that comes to me when I close a novel of Mr Narayan's. I do not wait for another novel. I wait to go out of my door into those loved and shabby streets and see with excitement and a certainty of pleasure a stranger approaching, past the bank, the cinema, the haircutting saloon, a stranger who will greet me I know with some unexpected and revealing phrase that will open a door on to yet another human existence. 176 Malgudi Days is a later collection (1975), and it draws from two earlier collections and includes some "New Stories." They are really short (some are just three pages) and crisply plotted. Some of the better stories seem almost like textbook examples of how to write a memorable short story in five hundred words or less: a gesture at characterization and 293

27 setting, a conflict, and a twist of some kind (often ironic reversal) at the end. There is a kind of elemental pleasure in reading these stories in close succession, and watching Narayan people his world with tragic shopkeepers, ethical pickpockets, mean beggars, storytellers, anxious college students, and of course, "The Talkative Man." For Narayan, storytelling is deeply concerned with establishing a sense of community, of people completely involved in each other. The story that best exemplifies this constitutive sociality in Malgudi Days might be "The Missing Mail." Here Narayan imagines a somewhat over-social postman, who knows the business of all the residents on his beat. When someone has good news coming to them, he stops and has tea. And he happily stays to give advice when a family is trying to marry off a daughter using newspaper matrimonial and bio data sent through the mail. Here, one particular family has been struggling to find a boy for their daughter, and the postman gives them the advice that leads to a successful match (go to Madras and meet him face-to-face). On the day of the wedding, on the only astrologically viable date that year, he brings the father a telegram saying that his uncle in another village has passed away. But the telegram was dated two weeks earlier! The postman had been sitting on it for two weeks, knowing that the family's knowledge of the death would have ruined the wedding plans. He apologizes, but it's clear that he's done the right thing. 294

28 In a very basic sense, "The Missing Mail" is about the value in face to face conversation, and resistance to bureaucracy, professionalization, and the ethic of efficiency. When you know that doing your job correctly will cause someone to suffer, it is better that you consider not doing your job. One of the students in the class talked about this story as a 'fable about the value of face-time,' and that seems like an apt description to me (though Narayan would never have used the term "face-time"!). Finally, several of the stories deal with art, depicting art as having an almost mystical power and danger to the artist as well as the world. So you have stories like "Such Perfection," where a sculptor who makes idols for temples learns that he shouldn't try and make them too perfectly. Most of these stories end with the artist giving up his ambitions when things don't go as they should. The story that really stands out in this regard is "The Gateman's Gift." An elderly and retired gateman at an insurance company has taken to making small clay sculptures of the people and places he knows in the town. He sends them to the "Sahib" at his old company (a man he almost never sees, and who has a kind of absolute authority in his imagination). The day after he submits his "masterpiece," he gets a piece of registered mail from the company and he is petrified to open it, assuming the worst (i.e., that his pension has been cut off). He walks about for weeks with the letter in his pocket, afraid to let anyone open it, and begins to go slightly insane. Finally he runs into an accountant from the office on the street 295

29 who tears open the letter: inside is a check rewarding him for his interesting art-works, and a letter praising and encouraging him. The way Narayan describes the gateman's approach to making sculptures sounds a lot like Narayan's own artistic process: He made a new discovery about himself, that he could make fascinating models out of clay and wood dust. The discovery came suddenly, when one day a child in the neighbourhood brought to him its little doll for repair. He not only repaired it but made a new thing of it. This discovery pleased him so much that he very soon became absorbed in it. His back yard gave him a plentiful supply of pliant clay, and the carpenter's shop next to his cousin's cigarette shop sawdust. He purchased paint for a few annas. And lo! he found his hours gliding. He sat there in the front part of his home, bent over his clay, and brought into existence a miniature universe; all the colours of life were there, all the forms and creatures, but of the size of his middle finger; whole villages and towns were there, all the persons he had seen passing before his office when he was sentry there -- that beggar woman coming at midday, and that cucumber-vendor; he had the eye of a cartoonist for human faces. Everything went down into clay. It was a wonderful miniature reflection of the world; and he mounted them neatly on thin wooden slices, which enhanced their attractiveness

30 The gateman's sculptures are all mimetic, that is to say they directly reflect the world around him. The joy he gets from creating them -- his own creative geniuses profoundly social. The gateman's "masterpiece" 178 is a detailed recreation of the insurance company campus where he worked for some thirty years. The only thing about it that makes him nervous is his decision to include an image of himself standing out front; out of humility, he worries that he might be too insignificant to merit a place. What he's done is use artistic expression not merely as a mirror of the world around him, but as a vehicle for self-fashioning. It's when he does a sculpture of himself that he feels the most exhilarated and anxious about his work: art takes on a kind of power that exceeds the sum of its parts. It's the danger in art that leads the Gateman to give up his hobby at the end of the story. We might read it as the Gateman's naive simplicity (as an illiterate man dependent on a pension, he dreads receiving "official" 179 mail of any kind). But it will be preferable to see it as Narayan's comment on the difficult responsibility associated with using art to create one s world and oneself. Incidentally, "The Gateman's Gift" isn't a very widely discussed story. For instance, the great critic M.K. Naik, in his essay "Malgudi Minor: The Short Stories of R.K. Narayan," dismisses it in a line or two. But there is at least one essay that takes as its primary focus this one story. 297

31 Prajapati P. Shah published an essay in Literary Criterion in 1980, called "R.K. Narayan's 'Gateman's Gift': The Central Theme." Shah's reading focused not on the mimetic nature of the Gateman's art, but on his status as a marginalized figure in the socio-economic life of the town. According to her interpretation, the Gateman's transgression is his presumption of a creative role discouraged by the capitalist system which has structured every aspect of his life. It's a little bit Marxist andthere's more than a little truth to her reading. According to Barbara Crossetti, R.K. Narayan, the literary chronicler of small-town life in South India and one of the first Indians writing in English to achieve international acclaim. Long before writers of the subcontinent broke free of the passions and ideologies of the independence movement and Partition, Mr. Narayan explored the value of village traditions and the lives of ordinary people. In the 1930's, he created a town in South India that he called Malgudi and populated it with characters who could be fussy, tricky, harmlessly rebellious or philosophical -- but who were always believable. Mr. Narayan would return again and again to Malgudi in many of his 34 novels and hundreds of short stories. Although Mr. Narayan's writing may strike many foreign critics as dated today, his books accurately portray an India that hovers between the unchangingly rural and the newly industrial and that is still filled with 298

32 individualistic, often eccentric personalities that recall his imagined universe. Mr. Narayan's biographers, Susan Ram and N. Ram, have noted that Malgudi ''connects with a rural hinterland, and jungle and forest are never far away.'' They added: ''This town teems with life, abounds with color. To wander any street, peer through a window or push open a door is to encounter a character. ''180 As a fiction writer, Mr. Narayan preceded by more than half a century the current crop of Indian novelists writing in English about ordinary people living their ordinary, or sometimes extraordinary, lives. Although he wrote exclusively in English to a relatively small audience in his homeland, Mr. Narayan did not deal, except obliquely, with the impact of Britain on India and the struggle for independence. V. S. Naipaul once observed that Mr. Narayan was interested not so much in the social changes that came to his archetypal Indian town as in ''the lesser life that goes on below: small men, small schemes, big talk, limited means: a life so circumscribed that it appears whole and unviolated, its smallness never a subject for wonder, though India itself is felt to be vast.''

33 In ''Gods, Demons and Others'' (1964), Mr. Narayan's retelling of stories from the Sanskrit religious epics ''The Mahabharata'' and ''The Ramayana'' and from Tamil epics, he explained his approach: ''It is personality alone that remains unchanging and makes sense in any age or idiom, whether the setting is 3000 B.C. or 2000 A.D.'' Mr. Narayan was 29 and had collected many rejection slips when his first book, ''Swami and Friends,'' was published, in Britain, in It was Graham Greene who managed to find a publisher after the book had been rejected half a dozen times. Greene said that ''Swami'' was ''closer to Chekhov than to any English writer, with the same underlying sense of beauty and sadness,'' 182 and he admired Mr. Narayan so much that he went on to find publishers for his second and third novels, ''The Bachelor of Arts'' and ''The Dark Room.'' In addition to nearly three dozen novels and several short-story collections, Mr. Narayan published a memoir and countless essays during his rich literary life. He was never short of causes, especially the environment. While in his 80's, he took on the plight of Indian children and made them the subject of an unusual inaugural speech in India's upper house of Parliament, the RajyaSabha, to which he was named in 1985 for his cultural contributions to the country. Children, he said, no longer had time to play ''or look at birds and trees.'' 300

34 The painful search for ''true identity'' is a major theme of Mr. Narayan's work. In ''The Vendor of Sweets'' the merchant eventually rejects the world for a life of contemplation. In the Narayan world, the streets are a never-ending theater ''and your neighbor's life is a fat novel, which you are sometimes invited to revise,'' 183 Anatole Broyard wrote in his review of the story collection ''Malgudi Days.'' ''Some of Mr. Narayan's best stories are benign satires,'' Mr. Broyard continued, like the one in which the town council decides to pull down the 20-foot metal statue of a former British governor. Research has exposed him as a tyrant, and the statue is offered free to anyone who will carry it away. After dynamiting it off its pedestal, an enterprising citizen has it pulled away by the temple elephant and 50 men. While trying to decide how best to liquidate it, he keeps it in his small house, where half of the statue sticks out into the street. Then it is discovered that the researchers were mistaken, the man commemorated by the statue was a veritable saint, and it must be re-erected. 184 In his long, productive life, Mr. Narayan became his own publisher, a step he took when World War II cut him off from Britain. He also wrote occasionally for newspapers and magazines. His work earned him a number of Indian awards, including the Padma Bhushan, the country's 301

35 highest prize. He was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his papers and manuscripts have been given to Boston University and the University of Texas. Mr. Narayan was once described by J. Anthony Lukas as looking ''a little like a highly intelligent bird.'' 185 He was never much of a self-publicist. ''Everyone thinks he's a writer with a mission,'' Mr. Narayan once told N. Ram. ''Myself, absolutely not. I write only because I'm interested in a type of character, and I'm amused mostly by the seriousness with which each man takes himself.''