CHAPTER-1

INTRODUCTION

Literature, a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry
and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived excellence of their execution.
Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including national origin, historical period, and
subject matter.

Literature in all its forms can be seen as written records, whether the literature itself be factual or fictional, it is
still quite possible to decipher facts through things like characters' actions and words or the authors' style of writing
and the intent behind the words. The plot is for more than just entertainment purposes; within it lies information
about economics, psychology, science, religions, politics, cultures, and social depth. Studying and analyzing
literature becomes very important in terms of learning about human history. Literature provides insights about
how society has evolved and about the societal norms during each of the different periods all throughout history.
For instance, authors argue that history and fiction both constitute systems of signification by which we make
sense of the past is asserted that both of these are "discourses, signifying systems, and both derive their major
claim to truth from that identity." Literature provides views of life, which is crucial in obtaining truth and in
understanding human life throughout history and its periods. Specifically, it explores the possibilities of living in
terms of certain values under given social and historical circumstances.

Literature helps us understand references made in more modern literature because authors often reference
mythology and other old religious texts to describe ancient civilizations such as the Hellenes and the
Egyptians. Not only is there literature written on each of the aforementioned topics themselves, and how they
have evolved throughout history (like a book about the history of economics or a book about evolution and science,
for example) but one can also learn about these things in fictional works. Authors often include historical moments
in their works, like when Lord Byron talks about the Spanish and the French in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:
Canto I" and expresses his opinions through his character Childe Harold. Through literature we are able to
continuously uncover new information about history. It is easy to see how all academic fields have roots in
literature. Information became easier to pass down from generation to generation once we began to write it down.
Eventually everything was written down, from things like home remedies and cures for illness, or how to build
shelter to traditions and religious practices. From there people were able to study literature, improve on ideas,
further our knowledge, and academic fields such as the medical field or trades could be started. In much the same
way as the literature that we study today continue to be updated as we continue to evolve and learn more and
more.
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Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of
permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-century critic referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic
literature” as a “transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” But such definitions assume
that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving
from the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing;
after that it is the body of belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing.

But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself
misleading, for one may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.” The art of literature is
not reducible to the words on the page; they are there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature
might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and
transforms experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of
both criticizing and affirming cultural values.

A fiction is a ‘made’ story, an imagined and invented literary composition designed to entertain (and sometimes
instruct), to make readers feel and think.’ Rabindranath Tagore says about the Rajasthan literature, “The heroic
sentiment which is the essence of every song and couplet of a Rajasthan is peculiar emotion of its own of which,
however, the whole country may be proud”.

The novel is a genre and work of fiction. The term novel is truncation of the Italian word ‘novella’ which means
‘a new story or a new thing’. Novels imitate the real life. Rajasthan Literature is the literature of Rajasthani, people
of India is the inhabiting the state of Rajasthan. Rajasthani Literature dates to the eleventh century. In the fifteenth
century two literary Languages emerged: Diagal, based on the Marwari dialect, and Pingal, based on the Braj
dialects of Hindi. The Charans, Bhats, and other castes of Rajasthan played the major role in the spread of Dingal
by bringing together professional storytellers and singers. The examples of prose date to the First Half of the
seventeenth century, Braj became the language of Rajasthani poetry and literary Hindi became the language of
prose.

Rajasthani, Devanagiri to a group of Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the states of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab,
Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in India. It is also spoken in parts of the neighbouring provinces of Sindh and Punjab
in Pakistan. The Rajasthani linguistic sphere is usually sectioned into four major languages groups: Rajasthani,

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Marwari, malvi, and Nimadi. Each of these languages contains numerous dialects. Rajasthani is one of the two
major languages strains descended from old Gujarati. Maruwani, the others being modern Gujarati.

Rajasthan literature written in various Genres starting from 1000A.D. but,it is generally agreed that modern
Rajasthani Literature began with the works of Surajmal Misrana. His most important works are the Vansa Bhaskar
and the Vir Satsai. The vans Bhaskara contains accounts of the Raj put princes who ruled in what was then
Rajputana (at present the state of Rajasthan), during the lifetime of the poet (1872-1952).The hundreds of couplets.
Medieval Rajasthani Literature is mostly poetry only and it is more about the heroic poetry mentioning of the
great kings and fighters of the Rajasthan.Rajasthani serves as Indo-Aryan languages, bearing its roots in Vedic
Sanskrit and Sauraseni Prakrit. The language is employed, is the Devanagari script. It merges with Riasti and
Saraiki in Bahawalpur and Multan areas, respectively.

Stories are ancient human product, preceding the invention of writing, and there is no identifiable ‘first’ story
teller or work of fiction. The English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe′ s Robinson
Crusoe(1719)andMoll Flanders (1722),though John Bunyan′s The Pilgrim Progress (1678)and Aphra Behan’s
Oroonoko (1688)are also contenders, while earlier works Such as Sir Thomas Malory′s Morted Arthur and even
the Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer′s Canterbury Tales have been suggested.

Indian English literature refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and
whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. Its early history began with
the works of R.K .Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, who contributed to Indian fiction in the 1930s. It is also
associated with the works of members of the Indian Diaspora, such as V.S. Naipaul, Kiran Desai, Jhumba Lahiri,
Agha Shahid Ali, Robinson Mistry and Salman Rushdie, who are of Indian descent.

It is frequently referred to Indo-Anglican literature (Indo-Anglican is different from Anglo-Indian). As a category,

this production comes under the broader realism of Postcolonial Literature- the production from previously
colonised countries such as India. The history of Indian English novel can be very much aligned to the advent and
supreme Reign of the British Raj upon India, resting for a good 200 years. Leaving ruthless Colonisation,
Britishers did leave their shares of wondrous virtues in the literary, architectural and political sides.

The history of English novels can thus honestly be dubbed as the story of a ‘metamorphosing India’. This displaced
intellectual class, explicated as the ‘Indian Diaspora’ were integral part of domestic conversation in the villages.

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The history of the Indian English novels was once more standing at the crossroads in the line of post-colonialism,
with literature in India awaiting its second best metamorphosis. Men like Salman Rushdie have enamoured critics
with his mottled amalgamation of history and language as well.

Indian English language has a relatively recent history, being only one and a half centuries old. The first book
written by an Indian in English was Travels of dean Mahomet, travel narrative by Sake Dean Mahomet published
in England in 1793. In its early stages, Indian English literature was influenced by the western novel .Early Indian
writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially Indian. Bankim
Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Rajmohan′swife(1864); it the first Indian novel written in English.

Raja Rao (1908-2006), Indian philosopher and writer, authoredKanthapura(1938)and the Serpent and the
Rope(1960), which are Indian in terms of their storytelling qualities. Kisari Mohan Ganguli translated the
Mahabharata into English; the only time the epic has ever been translated in it’s entirely into a European language.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his
own work into English.

Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1890-1936) was the first Indian author to win a literary award in the United States. Nirad
C. Chaudhri(1897-1999), a writer of non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an unknown Indian
(1951),in which he relates his life experience and influence .P.Lal(1929-2010),a poet ,translated, publishers and
essayist , founded a press in the 1950s for Indian English writers, writers workshops. Ram Nath Kak (1917-1993),a
Kashmir veterinarian, wrote his autobiography Autumn Leaves, which is one of the most vivid portraits of life in
twentieth century.

The social novel, also known as the social problem novel, is a “work of fiction in which prevailing social problem,
such as gender, race or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of the novel”. More
specific examples of social problems that are addressed in such works, include poverty, condition in factories and
mines, the plight of child labour , violence against the women, rising criminality, and epidemic because of over-
crowding ,and poor sanitation in cities.

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Propaganda novels, Industrial novels, Working-class novel and problem novels also used to describe this type of
novel; a recent development in this genre is the young adult, The Problem of novel, is also referred to as the
sociological novels. The Social protest novel is a form of social novel which places an emphasis on the idea of
social changes, while the proletarian novelises political form of the social protest novel which may emphasis
revolution.

Medieval India was considered the ‘Dark Ages’ for Indian women. Medieval Indian saw many foreign conquests,
which resulted in the decline in women′s status.Over the ages in India women have been treated as the sole
property of her father, brother or husband, not been given any choice of her own. In that period the Muslim
invaders are picked up any women they wanted and kept them in their ‘harems’. In order to protect those Indian
women started using ′Purdah′, which covers the body. Due to this reason their freedom also became affected. They
were not allowed to move freely and this lead to the further deterioration of their status.

These problems related with women resulted in changed mindset of people and they began to consider a girl as
misery and a burden, which has to be shielded from the eyes of intruders need an extra care. Thus a vicious circle
started in which women were at the receiving end. All this gave rise to some new evils such as child marriage,
sati, Jauhar and restriction on girl’s education and their development. Women society brings some changes in
where go outlet world and mingle with society. In that period women writer can started to write about their
freedom.

The contemporary writers of Rama Mehta are Varsha Adalja (born 1940), Gujarati novelist, playwright. Smita
Agarwal (born 1958), a poet and educator. Meena Alexander (born1951), Poet, memoirist, essayist, novelist, critic
and educator.

Samina Ali, contemporary Indian –American novelist, feminist, author of Madras on Rainy Days. Lalithambika
Antharjanam (1909-1989), Malayalam short story writer, poet, children′s writer, novelist, author of Agnisakthi.
Bala maniamma (1909-2004) poet published many collections of poetry in Malayalam.Malati Bedekar (1905-
2001), Marathi feminist writer, short story writer, screen writer. Sheila Bhatia (1916-2008), poet, playwright,
Theatre director. Suchitra Bhattacharya has born Scientist, feminist, non-fiction writer, and essayist. Anita Desai
(born1937), novelist, author ofIn Custody.

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Kamala Desai (1928-2011) is a famous novelist, writer in Marathi. Shashi Despande, is a novelist, short story
writer and children′s writer. Rama Mehta born in Nainital in 1923 was a well-known top sociologist; she got good
education in Nainital. Later, she studied at the University of Lucknow and Delhi and received her MA degree in
Philosophy. She is one of the first women to be appointed to India’s Foreign Service, lecturer and novelist. She
made several studies of educated Indian women who are caught between traditional and modernity. She also
worked as a lecture and plunged into writing with her novelInside the Haveli(1977). She also wrote non-fiction
research works such as divorced woman(1996) and from Purdah to modernity.

R.K. Narayan, in full Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan, original name Rasipuram Krishnaswami
Narayanswami, (born October 10, 1906, Madras [Chennai], India—died May 13, 2001, Madras), one of the
finest Indian authors of his generation writing in English.
Reared by his grandmother, Narayan completed his education in 1930 and briefly worked as a teacher before
deciding to devote himself to writing. His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), is an episodic narrative
recounting the adventures of a group of schoolboys. That book and much of Narayan’s later works are set in the
fictitious South Indian town of Malgudi. Narayan typically portrays the peculiarities of human relationships and
the ironies of Indian daily life, in which modern urban existence clashes with ancient tradition. His style is
graceful, marked by genial humour, elegance, and simplicity.

Among the best-received of Narayan’s 34 novels are The English Teacher (1945), Waiting for the
Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), and A
Tiger for Malgudi (1983). Narayan also wrote a number of short stories; collections include Lawley
Road (1956), A Horse and Two Goats and Other Stories (1970), Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985),
and The Grandmother’s Tale (1993). In addition to works of nonfiction (chiefly memoirs), he also published
shortened modern prose versions of two Indian epics, The Ramayana (1972) and The Mahabharata (1978).

R. K. Narayan is considered as one of leading figures of early Indian literature in English. He is the one who
made India accessible to the people in foreign countries—he gave unfamiliar people a window to peep into
Indian culture and sensibilities. His simple and modest writing style is often compared to that of the great
American author William Faulkner. Narayan came from a humble south Indian background where he was
consistently encouraged to involve himself into literature. Which is why, after finishing his graduation, he
decided to stay at home and write. His work involves novels like: ‘The Guide’, ‘The Financial Man’, ‘Mr.
Sampath’, ‘The Dark Room’, ‘The English Teacher’, ‘A Tiger for Malgudi’, etc. Although Narayan’s
contribution to the Indian literature is beyond description and the way he grabbed foreign audience’s
attention for Indian literature is commendable too but he will always be remembered for the invention of
Malgudi, a semi-urban fictional town in southern India where most of his stories were set. Narayan won

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numerous accolades for his literary work: Sahitya Akademi Award, Padma Bhushan, AC Benson Medal by
the Royal Society of Literature, honorary membership of the American Academy of Arts and Literature,
Padma Vibhushan, etc.

 R. K. Narayan was born in Chennai, Indian in 1906 in a working class south Indian family. His father was
a school headmaster and because his father had to be frequently transferred for his job, Narayan spent most
of his childhood in the loving care of his grandmother, Parvati.
 It was his grandmother who taught him arithmetic, mythology and Sanskrit. He also attended many
different schools in Chennai like, Lutheran Mission School, Christian College High School, etc. He was
interested in English literature since he was very young.
 His reading habit further developed when he moved to Mysore with his family and there his father’s
schools library offered him gems of writing from authors like Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Wodehouse, etc.
 In 1926, he passed the university examination and joined Maharaja College of Mysore. After completing
his graduation, Narayan took a job as a school teacher in a local school. Soon after, he realized that he
could only be happy in writing fiction, which is why he decided to stay at home and write.
 Narayan’s decision of staying at home and writing was supported in every way by his family and in 1930,
he wrote his first novel called ‘Swami and Friends’ which was rejected by a lot of publishers. But this book
was important in the sense that it was with this that he created the fictional town of Malgudi.
 After getting married in 1933, Narayan became a reporter for a newspaper called ‘The Justice’ and in the
meantime, he sent the manuscript of ‘Swami and Friends’ to his friend at Oxford who in turn showed it to
Graham Greene. Greene got the book published.
 His second novel, ‘The Bachelors of Arts’, was published in 1937,. It was based on his experiences at
college. This book was again published by Graham Greene who by now started counseling Narayan on
how to write and what to write about to target the English speaking audience.
 In 1938, Narayan wrote his third novel called ‘The Dark Room’ dealt with the subject of emotional abuse
within a marriage and it was warmly received, both by readers and critics. The same year his father expired
and he had to accept regular commission by the government.
 In 1939, his wife’s unfortunate demise left Narayan depressed and disgruntled. But he continued to write
and came out with his fourth book called ‘The English Teacher’ which was more autobiographical than any
of his prior novels.

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  After this, Narayan authored books like, ‘Mr. Sampath’ (1949), ‘The Financial Expert’ (1951) and ‘Waiting
for the Mahatma (1955)’, etc.
 He wrote ‘The Guide’ in 1956 while he was touring United States. It earned him the Sahitya Akademi
Award.
 In 1961, he wrote his next novel called ‘The Man-Eater of Malgudi’. After finishing this book, he travelled
to the United States and Australia. He also gave lectures on Indian literature in Sydney and Melbourne.
With his growing success, he also started writing columns for The Hindu and The Atlantic.
 His first mythological work ‘Gods, Demons and Others’, a collection of short stories was published in
1964. His book was illustrated by his younger brother R. K. Laxman, who was a famous cartoonist.
 In 1967, he came up with his next novel titled ‘The Vendor of Sweets’. Later, that year Narayan travelled
to England, where he received the first of his honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds.
 Within next few years he started translating Kamba Ramayanam to English—a promise he made to his
dying uncle once.
 Narayan was asked by the government of Karnataka to write a book to promote tourism which he
republished in 1980 with the title of ‘The Emerald Route’. In the same year he was named as the honorary
member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
 In 1980, Narayan was chosen as the member of Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament and
throughout his 6 years term he focused on the education system and how little children suffer in it.
 During the 1980s Narayan wrote prolifically. His works during this peiod include: 'Malgudi Days' (1982),
'Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories', ‘A Tiger for Malgudi’ (1983), ‘Talkative Man’ (1986) and 'A
Writer's Nightmare' (1987).
 In 1990s, his published works include: ‘The World of Nagaraj (1990)’, ‘Grandmother’s Tale (1992)’,
‘The Grandmother’s Tale and Other Stories (1994)’, etc.
 R.K. Narayan made India accessible to the outside world through his literature. He will be remembered
for the invention of Malgudi, a semi-urban fictional town in southern India where most of his stories were
set.

Awards & Achievements

 Narayan won numerous accolades for his literary works. These include: Sahitya Akademi Award (1958),
Padma Bhushan (1964), AC Benson Medal by the British Royal Society of Literature (1980), and Padma
Vibhushan (2001).

Personal Life & Legacy

 In 1933, Narayan met his future wife Rajam, a 15 year old girl, and fell deeply in love with her. They
managed to get married despite many astrological and financial hurdles.
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  Rajam died of typhoid in 1939 and left a three year old daughter for Narayan to take care of. Her death
caused a great shock in his life and he was left depressed and uprooted for a long period of time. He never
remarried in his life.
 Narayan died in 2001 at the age of 94. He was planning on writing his next novel, a story on a grandfather,
just before he expired.

Trivia

 He was very fond of the publisher of The Hindu, N. Ram, and used to spend all his time, towards the end
of his life, conversing with him over coffee.
 Narayan is regarded as one of the three leading English language Indian fiction writers, along with Raja
Rao and Mulk Raj Anand

Novels:

Swami and Friends (1935)

The Bachelor of Arts (1937)

The Dark Room (1938)

The English Teacher (1945)

Mr. Sampath (1948)

The Financial Expert (1952)

Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)

The Guide (1958)

The Maneater of Malgudi (1961)

The Vendor of Sweets (1967)

Talkative Man (1986)

The World of Nagaraj (1990)

Grandmother’s Tale (1992)

Short Stories:
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Malgudi Days (1942)

An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories (1947)

Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956)

A Horse and Two Goats (1970)

Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985)

The Grandmother’s Tale and Selected Stories (1994)

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CHAPTER-II

MALGUDI DAYS

Malgudi is the fictional setting of R.K. Narayan’s novels and stories. This place has comparable standard to the
other writers of English Literature. It is compared to ‘boarder countries’ of Sir Walter Scott , ‘Lake District’ of
William Wordsworth ,’’The Wessex’ of Thomas Hardy, or ‘five Towns’ of Arnold Bennet.Malgudi is an
imaginary South Indian town round which Narayan has woven the complex pattern of the lives of his characters.
The readers are taken to this imaginary land to laugh ,sympathise ,and share the vicissitudes of its inhabitants.
This imaginary setting came to Narayan’s mind instantly

I remember waking up with the name Malgudi on Vijayadashami ,the day on which the goddess of learning is
celebrated. Malgudi was an shaking discovery for me ,because I had no mind for facts and things like that ,which
would be necessary in writing about Malgudi or any real place. I first pictured not my town but just the railway
station ,which was a small platform with a banayan tree ,a station master ,and two trains a day ,one coming and
one going. On Vijayadashami , I sat down and wrote the first sentence about my town: ‘the train had just arrived
at Malgudi station.’ Hatri,Chote Lal,R.K. Narayan :Reflections and R-evaluation(Sarup Malgudi does not exist
on any map of India.It is Lalgudi in Trichinapoly District ,fringing the river Cavery which can be taken for the
original of Malgudi.It is neither a village nor city ,but a town of modest size. It lives in the imagination more
distinctly than any other region described by any Indian writer.Narayan’s Malgudi is a reality charged with all
that is intimate and poignant in human life.It is associated with the rise and fall of heroes and heroines.Narayan’s
first novel ‘Swami and Friends’ introduces us to this town called Malgudi on the boarder of the states of Mysore
and Madras. Malgudi has a municipality ,a town Hall ,a club and two schools –The Albert Mission School,and
the Board High School.

The principal landmarks of Malgudi –Malgudi station, the central co-operative Land Mortgage Bank, The Bombay
Anand Bhawan ,Kabir Street ,Lawley Extension ,the Regal Hair-cutting Saloon, the statue of Sir Frederic Lawley,
the Sarayu River,Nallapa’s Groves, Mempi Hills ,Hotels, cinemas make a social framework of the novel. Malgudi
passes through many changes with the passage of time. The characters in various novels pass through various
stages of development. In ‘Swami and Friends’ ,Malgudi is neither a village nor a city ,but a town of modest
size,but in successive novel it grows in time and place. The writer expresses the picture of this imaginary island
in different novels differently.
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It has grown from the small sized agricultural town to a semi industrialised city. The Malgudi of Swami and
Friends is not the same as as the Malgudi of The Vendor of Sweets. Even in the same novel ,in The Guide ,we see
it passing through various phases of development. Speaking from the topographical point of view,the Albert
Mission college ,headed by Principal Brown ,the Central Co-operative land mortage bank with its imposing
structure, the newly –built bungalows in the lawly Extension ,Englandia Banking Corporation, The Sunrise
Pictures ,all speak emphatically of the story of the growth of the town. Walsh, William, R.K.Narayan
In the novels of R.K. Narayan, the characters are malgudians deeply rooted in the age –old local traditions and
they entirely belong to Malgudi in every sense and aspect.Malgudi is of all absorbing interest to the readers of
R.K.Narayan.It is not a mere geographical expression ,it has a distinct personality of its own.N.Mukherjee finds
Malgudi as the real hero of Narayan’s novels and stories.

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It is Narayan’s triumph as an artist that makes us have complete faith faith in the reality of Malgudi. It is so
strongly implanted in our imagination that we wonder whom we are going to meet in this town…….The streets
and the lanes appear to as familiar as one’s home town.

R. K.Narayan describes the the sights ,sounds and smells of this imaginary place with much accuracy and
vividness. Even the minute things seem typical of Malgudi.N.Mukherjee explains the natural sights, sounds and
flavour of this place :

The smells ,sights ,sounds and the flavour that are all parts of the experience of being in Malgudi are conveyed
with an ever-extraordinary vividness. Mukherjee,N.K,Indian In the novels of R.K.Narayan ,Malgudi is a symbol
of contemporary India. This place is a small town with its high school ,cricket ground ,temple and market place.
It changes with the advancement of time as it acquires a film sudio,a road bridge on the river ,a college and other
amenities of modern civilization. The protagonists of different fictions like Swami in Bachelor of Arts ,Krishnan
in English Teacher ,Margayya in Financial Expert ,Raju in Guide are the living personalities Malgudi.

The speciality of the locale of the Malgudi setting is its reluctance for gradual changes. Life here moves at slow
pace. It is completely undisturbed by the outside world. There is no outside interference in the peace and
tranquillity of this place. The people of the Malgudi have strong faith on the traditions and customs of the place.
The setting of the Malgudi is quite distinctive and the most part of the place is descriptive. The places of Malgudi
are not overshadowed by the people who inhabit it and they have nothing of special quality of their own. The
portrayal of life is the main objective Narayan and it is adequate for the setting of Malgudi. There are characters
who give meaning to the places of Malgudi and make them real and life –like. There is a sence of familiarity of
the place and streets of Malgudi.It is homebred.It helps the readers to be intimate.It creates a deeper and better
understanding of its people and places establishing a close intimacy.There is no separate identity of Malgudi
without its financial expert ,Margayya, its printer,Sampath,its editor, Srinivas,and its holy man, Raju.

Malgudi is the comic projection of Narayan.It is an imaginary town in which nationalists and nationalism are
treated with the same comic irony. This comic irony is deployed against cheats, bohemians,bossy wives and
indulgent grandparents. This clearly indicates the maturity and artistic visions of the novelist.The Malgudi of India
is treated in same line as R.K.Narayan treats. It is full of knaves ,prostitutes ,lehers,adulters, money-grabbers
,drunkards,sanyasi,and would be gangsters. The place is full of chaos. Husbands are betrayed by their wives. Men
are captivated by the false beauty of actresses and the female sex.There are children revolting against parents and
and the old ways of life. There is a sence of misery and happiness in reading the novels of R.K.Narayan.Like the
tragedies of William Shakespeare, there is a touch of sadness and disillusionment. The creations of R.K.Narayan
compel the readers to face the tragic as well as comic views of life without any hesitations.

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Malgudi is a place where people are not heroic. There is no control over the events but it seems as if they control
everything .They are utterly helpless creatures torn by desire .There is a divine force controlling the characters of
the fictions .Chandra of The Bachelor of Arts at last runs away from home .Mr.Sampath is impelled by fortune
and at last leaves Malgudi forever. The English Teacher finds happiness in the world of spirits after the death of
his wife. The Guide dies as a ruined man not because he wants to conspire death. The circumstance is not
supportive and he decides to be as willing martyr. The people of Malgudi are mere puppets in the hand of fate.
The ultimate fate seems to be the decider for the happiness or unhappiness of the dwellers of Malgudi. The
different characters of the fiction are representative figures Malgudi. The characters prefer to become sanyasi if
they are defeated in life. If they realise that the circumstance is not favourable ,they surrender the ultimate force
of the universe.Narayan has given solution for the evils of life :”If you are defeated ,run away .’’

Narayan underlines the timeless quality of Malgudi in spite of disturbances and changes inside and outside. His
craftsmanship lies not only in the classical conventional life of Malgudian India, but in the loving attention he
devotes to building up a real picture of Malgudi and its inhabitants. Malgudi has its greatest characters with its
Mempi hills, tiger –haunted jungles ,Natraj printing shop,Jagan’s sweet emporium,Jonsonian human characters
like Mr .Sampath.Narayan finds plenty of comedy in the normal life of Malgudi without a Vasu to complicate it.
There is a mempi malgudi Bus depot. There is ‘ Mahaut ’ to persuade the elephant to walk to Malgudi. There is a
poet at war with ‘all disyllables…….polysyllables’ in his great Krishna poem. There is peculiar comic personality
of ‘The Man Eater’. Still Narayan’s attitude towards Malgudi remains lovingly ambiguous. He loves to depict the
traditional life of Malgudi with all its backwardness and peculiarities.But he treats it with gentle teasing and
melancholy understanding.The treatment of the psychology of the characters is subtle and beautiful.

The ways in which childhood is socially constructed, as well as culturally and historically situated, will obviously
differ from place to place. ‘Swami and Friends’ clearly illustrates the unscaled heights of imagination, from a
child’s point of view, in Narayan’s world of fiction. Narayan’s stories, cossetting with children, explored their
psychology abundantly. The element of innocence as well their deeds that causes mental anxiety and fear complex
in their tender minds isdepicted in very distinctive style in his classic story Swami and Friends. This paper attempts
an analysis of Swami’s character within the Indian milieu of childhood and adolescence.

14
The procession of extraordinary characters that marches through Malgudi consists of animal stuffer ,crooked
politicians, the adjournment lawer,film producers, village idiots and the temple prostitutes. The reality of Malgudi
is also displayed in his short stories. Malgudi is lively with with its collection of printing shops,schools ,temples,
hotels and mempi hills.It has usual beggars ,spongers ,tricksters ,bohemians and orthodox community. Malgudi is
less tolerant of the modenisers ,Americanizers and Anglicizers,Government planners ,men of violence, fanaticism
and needless novelty. So Malgudi takes characters of its own. The themes ,characters and dialogue echo the sound
of Malgudi.

Narayan is not a scientist in fiction. He is a realist and gives details of life he depicts. He does not comprehend
the whole of the reality but the realism creeps up as the selective tendency in the descriptive part of his fictional
world. The reality of Malgudi has got to be appreciated because of the detailed relevance to the subjects he has
treated. He does not paint a serious picture of life .It is rather comic-tragic view of life. His approach to life is very
comic. It is realistic, ironic ,pathetic and yet comic. Some of the incidents are dramatic ,introspective and
moralizing. The common factor in most of his novels is that the main character grows from an average to an
influential human being and then comes back to his normal status.

Narayan is at his best giving his fictional setting of Malgudi a reality of his own. His energy has been spent over
the details of the characters and the manners of the people moving over the canvas of Malgudi. Their individual
traits and habits have been depicted with certain relevant details.Narayan portrays –Marco of The Guide intensely
interested in his own researches. He is also very particular about the vouchers.Raju’s father takes keen interest in
talks regarding litigation. The manners of Raju from tourist guide to the holy man change according to the
exigencies of the situation ,but his manners remains almost the same throughout. In this way the reality of Malgudi
is directly or indirectly the reality of the manners of characters ,their places ,their attitudes ,their taste and poise
of their personalities. Narayan’s reality of Malgudi is the presentation of different human attitudes individually
differing in their environment in a most realistic manner. It is usually built round Indian beliefs and superstitions.
The smells , sights , sounds and flavours form the part of the experience of Malgudi. They are conveyed to all of
us with extraordinary vividness.

15
CHAPTER-III
SWAMI AND FRIENDS

R. K. Narayan
Widely regarded as one of India’s greatest 20th-century English writer, R.K. Narayan is as relevant today as he
was during the early days of Indian-English literature. Reckoned as the painter of modern India, R. K. Narayan is
a storyteller with a sharp convincing outlook. The unabridged realities of life are appropriately painted by the
great maestro R.K. Narayan in every novel and short story he penned. A masterpiece as it has been stated, ‘Swami
and Friends’ is the very first work of R.K. Narayan set against the backdrop of the fictional city of Malgudi. In
Narayan’s world of fiction Swami and Friends clearly illustrates the surmounted pinnacles of simplicity and
imagination, from a child’s point of view. Swami and Friends, the novel of innocence, “offers us a pure escape
into irresponsible boyhood” (Morning Post). Swami remains to this day Narayan's illustrious literary creation.
Swami and Friends and Psychology
Swami and Friends, when perceived from contemporary understandings of child psychology, illustrates
remarkable characteristics of R. K. Narayan’s skillful composition. Within the discourse of tabula rasa, the child
is always in the process of becoming an adult-in-the-making with explicit learning requirements that grownups
have to adhere to effectively.
The disciplines of psychology and sociology have made a significant contribution to contemporary understandings
of childhood. In general, psychological research has concentrated upon the individual child, whereas sociological
research has been involved in children as a social group. A contemporary US-based study elaborates upon the
theme of childhood by indicating that children’s contribution to the family in western contexts is economically
worthless but emotionally ‘priceless’ (Zelitzer 1985). Drawing upon the Romantic discourse French philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), claimed that children embody a state of innocence, purity and natural goodness
that is tainted when they start dealing with the corrupt outside world.

John Locke believed that children were born passive “blank slates” (tabula rasa) and were formed through their
experiences in the environment. Swami’s innocent observations about the world around him along with his
suppressed thoughts that he dares not share with his friends for the fear of mockery reflect the usual thought
process of a child which has been skillfully captured by the author's attention to detail and description. The novel
16
is set in pre-independence era and it orbits around a pre-adolescent boy Swaminathan living in Narayan's fictitious
town Malgudi. The novel paints the life of boys in South Indian schools in pre- independent India, and highlights
much of R. K. Narayan's personal experience of his childhood. The plot revolves round Swaminathan shortly
called Swami by his family and friends, the hero, and his friends Mani, Shankar, Somu, the most intelligent boy

of the class, and Rajam, a late arrival, brilliant and charming, the son of the Police Superintendent. The reader is
led very smoothly through a vivid portrayal of the thoughts, emotions and activities of the school boys’ life. For
the readers this novel is a breath of fresh air that takes them into nostalgia of their childhood memories.

Innocence of Childhood
Purity and innocence of childhood in R. K. Narayan’s novel Swami and Friends examines how childhood not only
embodies fun and laughter, purity and innocence but also equally self-centeredness, snobbery, vanity, callousness,
cruelty and jealousy that can be seen among adults. The entire novel focuses on the life of school boys. The
schoolboys have their own joys and sorrows, fears, hopes expectations and dreams which may seem trivial to
adults, but which are much exaggerated by their imagination and seem much more important to them than they
would to an adult person. Even simple or normal situation may give them heavenly joy or deepest frustration. The
cricket match becomes a matter of life and death for the boys in the novel. Approaching childhood from a cultural
perspective Raymond Williams (1961, 1989) who famously claimed that ‘culture is ordinary’, referred to culture
as a ‘way of life’ that makes sense to individuals in a particular community. This perspective also sees culture as
a form .

17
Tabula Rasa Discourse
The tabula rasa discourse draws upon the philosophy of John Locke who developed the idea that children come
into the world as blank slates who could, with guidance and training, develop into rational human beings. Children
lack the power of authority as they occupy a powerless position in society from a sociological perspective. They
tend to rebel as a consequence of this social embodiment during their adolescent days. This understanding about
children and childhood is so well engaged by R.K.Narayan to illustrate Swami’s innocence, vivid imagination and
natural tendency of agitation. The characterization of Mani and Rajam illustrate Swami’s swinging moods of a
young adolescent caught in no man’s land. There are some acts wherein we find Swami openly exhibiting the
natural tendency of rebellion which can be perceived as a fragment of growing up period. In one such act standing
fully exposed to the Head Master of Board School for bunking drill practice, Swami, sensing the looming
punishment, gets primed:
“He hardly knew what he was doing. His arm shot out, plucked the cane from the Head Master’s hand, and flung
it out of the window.” (Swami and Friends, 144)

Social Learning and Cognitive Development

Vygotsky (1978) argues that social learning precedes and directly influences cognitive development. This
understanding regarding adolescents in research studies can be applied to Swami’s association with his family,
friends and teachers very aptly. The usual traits of a ten year old who loves loafing about in the sun and as any
other child despises examinations makes Swami a natural personification of a school boy in our social milieu. The
novel is noteworthy for the author's understanding of child psychology and for his depiction of the carefree,
cheerful world of school boys in a very natural and realistic fashion. Narayan pens the characters and their actions
as they appear at the school stage. The intricacies of a child's innocent world is classically portrayed and expressed
in the character of Swami.

Swamy and Friends – Inevitable Sad Music of Growth!

Graham Greene says: “It (Swami and Friends) is a classical school boy story of a child, written with the same
understanding sense of beauty and sadness”. The novel deals with the inevitable sad music of growth from dreary
childhood onto a contemplative adolescence. Psychology studies reveal that teenagers or adolescent children
indulge in taking risks that proclaim their status within their peer group. In fact, teens might notice that being
accepted among friends and positioning themselves socially is exceptionally important to them. It might even
become more important than family relationships. Swami’s relationship with his mother, grandmother and father
are succinctly echoed on these realistic trends of a growing boy.

18
Antics of Swami’s Character
In his writing he lucidly pens the antics of Swami’s character amidst a turbulent social context very realistically.
Narayan is situated within a culture so different from Mark Twain yet they both define the contemporary cultures
of human psychology. In their creation of two much popular characters namely Swami and Tom Sawyer we savor
the perception of William Wordsworth’s famous line “Child is the father of Man.”
Vulnerability is another trait of the child that remains so centric in the novel Swami and Friends. Narayan shows
incredible insight into the psychology of the boy Swami, and his thought process while running away from home.
As he runs away from home to avoid the repercussions of his act at school Swami is lost Mempi Forests at some
distance from Malgudi. His terrors when caught in a quagmire as his thoughts became incoherent. In depicting his
vulnerability a natural consequence for a child hallucinating R.K.Narayan subtly embodies the manifestation of
the complex dominant and emotional or psychological distress, anxiety, or confusion of an adolescent youngster.

Ironic Effect
Children assuming the role of adults have been exploited by Narayan for at times ironic effect. In many short
stories R. K. Narayan has explored adolescence from various other human perspectives. Ishwar is a story of how
the built-up stress in the mind of a school boy takes him to madness and how it results into his death. This is no
doubt it is still a contemporary issue of education which Narayan grappled in a simple yet grim portrayal. Naga
is another short story by Narayan about relationship of an adolescent boy who longs for affection and this affection
is substituted by his association with animals. His stories are unpretentious and accessible to all; his lucid style
and sense of humor that could canvas a wide range of emotions embraces the uninitiated instantly.

A Unique World of Boyhood

It is in Swami and Friends a unique world of boyhood elements is created with a creative sincerity which embodies
Narayan’s own pleasant memories of childhood as well as his explicit understanding of social entities. His creation
of Swami and the world of Malgudi is drawn in subtleness that makes R. K. Narayan an incredible author for all
times. With the skilful use of humour, captured in the world of children, their adventure and misadventure in the
mythical town of Malgudi Narayan’s boy adventures continues to enthral readers. Gauri Shankar Jha in her book
Current Perspectives in Indian English Literature says Narayan’s work like that of Chekov combines realism with
elements of fantasy and a melancholy vision of human experience. It is little wonder that R. K. Narayan is one of
the most loved writers and probably

Humour and laughter are the greatest virtues that God has bestowed on man. A sense of humour makes one see
one‟s proper place in this world, and teaches him to see things in proportion. Both humour and laughter are

19
universal, though there are national differences on certain aspects. They have their place in all arts and their
enjoyment leads to aesthetic experience of a unique kind.

The humour of situation and character represent the higher forms of humour. R.K.Narayan has written stories in
which humour arises out of situation or character or stories in which situation and character combine to produce
the humorous effect. Narayan has excelled in producing humour of situation as well as of character. He has taken
his raw material from the people and events around him.

On Defining and Describing Humour

Humour in a situation depends neither on verbal means nor on characters, but purely on the situation that turns
out to be funny due to a juxtaposition of incongruities.

Henry Bergson applies the techniques of repetition, inversion and reciprocal interference of series. By repetition
he means a combination of circumstances, which recur several times, contrasting with the changing stream of life.
Inversion means “topsy-turvy- dom”, where the situation is reversed and the roles inverted. A child trying to teach
its parents, a character who lays a trap in which he is the first to be caught, the villain who is the victim of his
own villainy—in every case the root is the inversion of roles and a situation which recoils.

With regard to reciprocal interference of series, Bergson observes that “a situation is invariably comic when it
belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two
entirely different meanings at the same time” (123). An equivocal situation, which provides two different A Sixth
Grader, His Classmates and Their World of Adventures and Mischiefs!

Swaminathan, the young school student of sixth form is the hero of this novel. His exploits in the school and at
home form the basic plot of the novel. Somu, the class Monitor, Mani, the Mighty-Good for-Nothing; Shankar,
the most brilliant boy in the class; Samuel, the „Pea‟ and Rajam the son of the Police Superintendent are his
friends. The entire novel deals with the mischief and fun made by these boys. Humour of situation abounds in this
novel. The very first paragraph of the novel is rich in the humour of situation and character.

20
It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. He considered Monday specially unpleasant
in the calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood
of work and discipline. He shuddered at the very thought of school: that dismal yellow building; the fire- eyed
Vedanayagam, his class-teacher; and the

21
For Swaminathan life consists mainly of having adventures with his friends, avoiding the misery of homework,
and coping as best as he can with the teachers and other adults he encounters. His greatest passion is the M.C.C—
Malgudi Cricket Club— which he finds together with his friends; his greatest day is when the examinations are
over and school breaks up— a time for revelry and cheerful riotousness. But the innocent and impulsive Swami
lands in trouble when he is carried away by the most serious unrest of India in 1930. Somehow he gets himself
expelled from two schools in succession, and when things have gone quite out of hand he is forced to run away
from home.

Beyond Childish Pranks: A World Full of Curiosity and Wisdom

This is far more than simple narrative of Swami‟s adventures—charming and entertaining as they are. By the
delicate use of detail sympathetically observed, the author establishes for the reader the child‟s world as the child
himself sees it and beyond the adult community he will one day belong to—in Swami‟s case, the town of Malgudi,
which provides the setting of almost all Narayan‟s later novels.

Swaminathan reaches the class in time and we are introduced to the “fire-eyed Vedanayagam”, the class teacher
and also the arithmetic teacher. Swami does not like him. When the teacher was scrutinizing the home exercises,
Swaminathan began to think about the teacher‟s face:

While the teacher was scrutinizing the sums, Swaminathan was gazing on his face, which seemed so tame at close
quarters. His criticism of the teacher‟s face was that his eyes were too near each other, that there was more hair
on his chin than one saw from the bench, and that he was very bad-looking. His reverie was disturbed. He felt a
terrible pain in the soft flesh above his left elbow. The teacher was pinching him with one hand, and with the
other crossing out all the sums. He wrote „Very Bad‟ at the bottom of the page, flung the notebook in
Swaminathan‟s face, and drove him back to his seat (2-3).

Ebenezar the scripture master was a fanatic who always attacked and lampooned the Hindu gods, as a prelude to
glorifying Jesus. He asks: “Did our Jesus go gadding about with dancing girls like your Krishna? Did our Jesus

22
go about stealing butter like that arch-scoundrel Krishna? Did our Jesus practice dark tricks on those around him?”
(4). Swaminathan got up and asked, “If he

23
did not, why was he crucified?” (4). Swami puts one more question and his ear is severely pulled and pinched.

Rollicking Fun in the midst of Dreary Home Work

The school scenes are full of rollicking fun, entirely natural and convincing. Swami considers Rajam as his hero
and follows him so much so that he is nicknamed “the tail”, Rajam‟s tail. There is rivalry between Mani and
Rajam for domination in the class. Pieces of slips are passed in the class such as, “Are you a man?” or “You are
the son of a dog if you don‟t answer this” (14).

Punishment and Penance in Classroom

The teacher asks Swaminathan to stand up and asks one or two questions: “What do you know about the Indian
climate?” Swami answers, “It is hot in summer and cold in winter” (15). He was given the punishment of standing
on the bench. He was glad that he was given this supposedly degrading punishment instead of the cane. His mind
began to wander: “Standing on the bench, he stood well over the whole class. He could see so many heads, and
he classified them according to the caps: there were four red caps, twenty-five Gandhi caps, ten fur caps, and so
on” (15).

Language of Business and Children’s World

The most humorous part of the novel is the one given to the cricket match. They begin by making an album of
filched pictures of cricket players. The excitement and wrangling over the naming of the club is very interesting.
There was no end of suggestions. Finally they decided on Malgudi Cricket Club (M.C.C). A catalogue of sports
goods of a reputed firm in Madras, Messrs Binns was arranged for and an order was placed with it by captain
Rajam. The reply came with a large catalogue and they were happy that they got recognition as founder members
of the M.C.C.

24
However it was not clear whether they would send the goods or not. The firm has asked for an advance amount
of twenty five percent, but the three friends failed to understand the meaning of words like „obliged‟, „remit‟ and
‟25 percent‟. They then decided that the letter had been sent to Rajam by mistake and hence it was returned with
the following covering letter: “We are very sorry that you sent me somebody‟s letter. We are returning this
somebody‟s letter. Please send our things immediately” (120).

The whole episode is highly amusing and another tribute to R.K.Narayan‟s knowledge and understanding of
children‟s world. The boys waited eagerly for days together. But there was no response, no bats, balls and

stumps. Rajam made three bats out of the bottom of a deal wood case and also obtained three old tennis balls
from his father‟s club. A patch of ground adjacent to Rajam‟s house was to be used as the field. Pea promised to
bring the stumps but could not even after a long search. A part of the wall of Rajam‟s house was marked as the
stumps and so they began to play.

Cricket in Life

The rest of the novel deals with cricket practice and the match which was played and lost. Swami had to be absent
in the drill class for which he gave various excuses. When the Headmaster exposes him and punishes him, Swami
runs away to Madras, but collapses on the outskirts of Malgudi. This is followed by prayers and offerings to gods
if they descend from their heights and rescues him. Finally Swami returns home.

Excellent Narrative with Lively Descriptions and Conversations

Comedy also results from the novelist‟s insight into the gap between the perceptions of a boy and the perceptions
of the adults. Narayan‟s awareness of such discrepancies and incongruities is seen in the passages in which
Swami‟s father tries to teach him.Swami, come here. Where are you going? Nowhere.

Where were you yesterday at this time? Here.You are lying. You were not here yesterday. And you are not going
out now.
25
How many days is it since you have touched your books? Father asked as he blew off the fine layer of dust on
Swaminathan‟s books, and cleared the web that an industrious spider was weaving between a corner of the table
and the pile of books.Swaminathan viewed this question as a gross breach of promise. Should I read even when I
have no school? Do you think you have passed the B.A.? father asked.I mean, father, when the school is closed?,
when there is no examination, even then should I read? What a question. You must read.But father you said before
the examinations that I needn‟t read after they were over. Even Rajam does not read.

Irritants of Compulsory Learning after Class Hours

As he uttered the last sentence, he clearly remembered Rajam‟s complaint of a home- tutor who came and pestered
him for two hours a day in thrice a week. Father was apparently deaf to Swaminathan‟s remarks. He stood over
Swaminathan and set him to dust his books and clean his table. Swaminathan vigorously started blowing off the
dust from the book covers. He

caught the spider carefully, and took it to the window to throw it out. He held it outside the window and watched
it for a while. It was swinging from a strand that gleamed in a hundred delicate tints.

Look sharp. Do you want the whole day to throw out the spider? father asked. Swaminathan suddenly realized
that he might have the spider as his pet and that it would be a criminal waste to throw it out. He secretly slipped
it into his pocket and, after shaking an empty hand outside the window, returned to his duty at the desk.

Look at the way you have kept your English text! Are you not ashamed of yourself? (84).

Stream of Thought or Stream of Consciousness? Complex Child Psychology

Swaminathan picks up the oily red-bound Fourth Reader, opens it, and bangs together the covers in order to shake
off the dust, and then rubs violently the oily covers with his palm. His father asked him to get a piece of cloth.
Swami wonders, “If one has got to read even during the holidays, I don‟t see why holidays are given at all” (85).
He was worried that Rajam and Mani are waiting for him. If father cannot find any work to do, why shouldn‟t he
go and sleep. Finally he pulled out a piece of cloth under the baby and was off. Mother came with the baby and

26
complained to father, “Look at that boy, he has taken the baby‟s cloth. Is there no body to control him in the
house. I wonder how long his school is going to be kept closed” (86).

Half an hour later Swaminathan sat in his father‟s room in a chair, with a slate in his hand and pencil ready. Father
dictated a problemRama has ten mangoes with which he wants to earn fifteen annas. Krishna wants only four
mangoes. How much will Krishna have to pay?Swaminathan gazed and gazed at this sum, and every time he read
it, it seemed to acquire a new meaning. He had the feeling of having stepped into a fearful maze.

His mouth began to water at the thought of mangoes. He wondered what made Rama fix fifteen annas for the ten
mangoes. What kind of man was Rama? Probably he was like Shankar. Somehow one couldn‟t help feeling that
he must have been like Shankar, with his ten mangoes and his iron determination to get fifteen annas. If Rama
was like Shankar, Krishna must have been like the Pea. Here Swaminathan felt an unaccountable sympathy for
Krishna

27
problem. He told his father that he could not do the sum because they are not taught this kind of thing in the class.
But the father persisted:Father seemed to delight in torturing him. How could he know? How could he know what
that fool Krishna would pay?

Look here, boy. I have half a mind to thrash you. What have you in your head? Ten mangoes cost fifteen annas.
What is the price of one? Come on. If you don‟t say it—I am not going to leave you till you tell me how much a
single mango costs at fifteen annas for ten. Give me the slate, Father. I will find it out. The price of one mango is
three over two annas. Very good, simplify it further.It was plain sailing after that. Swaminathan announced at the
end of half an hour‟s agony: Krishna must pay six annas, and burst into tears (89).

A Novel of Episodes Strung Togher!

The various episodes in the novel show that like other young characters of Narayan, Swami is also witty and
intelligent in everything except in his studies. Children enjoy acting like adults and Swaminathan is no exception.
Rajam poses as a big officer and scolds the cook in order to impress upon his friends. Swaminathan shows himself
off by entertaining his friends in his father‟s room and claims it as his own.

Mani, Rajam and Swaminathan act like police inspectors and hold a cart driver on the charge of trespassing. They
ordered the boy to get down, and said that they were the police, and that the culvert was weak, they will not permit
him to move on, unless he showed them his pass. The boy had no pass, he was frightened, and begged and prayed
to them to let him move on. They asked him a number of questions:

What is your name? asked Rajam Karuppan answered the boy. Age? I don‟t know, sir.Y
don‟t know? Swami, write hundred, said Rajam No sir, no sir, I am not a hundred.Mind your
business and hold your tongue. You are a hundred. I will kill you if you say no. What is your
bullock‟s name? I don‟t know, sir. Swami, write “Karuppan” again. Sir, that is my name, not
the bullock‟s.

They ignored this and Swaminathan wrote Karuppan against the name of the bullock. Where are you going?
Sethur. Swaminathan wrote it down. How long will you stay there? It is my place, sir.If that is so, what brought
you here? Our headman sent ten bags of coconut to the railway shed Swami noted down his name, address, etc.,

28
in the notebook which he always carried with him. The three friends signed the page, tore it and gave it to the
driver. He was then allowed to move on.

Narayan, Humour, Child Psychology and Socialization

According to S.C.Harrex, Narayan “finds the child a natural medium for humour both because the child has an
innate sense of fun and capacity for joy, and because the child is often unconsciously funny, particularly when it
is being most serious or when it adopts grossly exaggerated attitudes”(52).

Narayan tries to understand the world of children—their likes and dislikes, whims and fancies and portrays them
from a child‟s perspective. He makes use of exaggeration as a device to raise the humorous effects. For example
look at the following passage with a heightened tone:

Then there was Mani, the Mighty-Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom
brought any books to the class, and never bothered about home-work. He came to the class, monopolized the last
bench, and slept bravely. No teacher ever tried to prod him. It was said that a new teacher who once tried it very
nearly lost his life.Sometimes Narayan portrays the world of children in mock-heroic fashion. The description
of the fight with ink bottles between Swaminathan and others is a good example.

Mani did some brisk work at the school gate, snatching from all sorts of people ink-bottles and pens, and destroying
them. Around him was a crowd seething with excitement and joy. Ecstatic shrieks went up as each article of
stationery was destroyed. One or two little boys feebly protested. But Mani wrenched the ink-bottles from their
hands, tore their caps, and poured ink over their clothes. He had a small band of assistants, among whom

Swaminathan was prominent. Overcome by the mood of the hour, he had spontaneously emptied his ink-bottle
over his own head and had drawn frightful dark circles under his eyes with the dripping ink Even in the quarrel
between Mani and Rajam, Narayan adopts a serio-comic attitude. They withdraw all

29
30
diplomatic relations and talk, as at the international level, through a third party. In this context
O.P.Saxena observes “Narayan‟s characters with their quaint behaviour, exaggerated traits of
their temperament and clumsy habits come quite close to those of Chaucer and Dickens. But
whereas the oddities seem to have been appended to the adult characters of Chaucer and
Dickens from outside, they go so well with Narayan‟s children” (63).

In the description of Ebenezer‟s scripture class, “Tears rolled down Ebenezer‟s cheeks when
he pictured Jesus before him. Next moment his face became purple with rage” (4). As Cynthia
Vanden Driesen observes: “Often it is through the presentation of the exaggerated working of
Swami‟s over-active imagination that the comic effect is created” (169). A good example is
his imaginative involvement with Rama and Krishna, which prevents his working out a
problem in arithmetic.

Narayan has shown remarkable insight into the psychology of a child, and his analysis of a
child‟s thought processes is really creditable. Children are instinctive by nature. They have
strong imaginations and vivid sensations. They see life as black or white, bigger than reality
and their enemies seem demons, their friends angels, their joys and sorrows are absolute and
eternal. The children have a tendency to exaggerate, and it requires great psychological insight
and understanding to paint the world from a child‟s point of view.

In this respect, Narayan has shown great penetration and skill in depicting the rainbow- world
of childhood and early boyhood. There is hardly anything about child-life which has not been
depicted in this novel. The readers are told of their hatred of Mondays, their joys and sorrows,
their boyish enjoyments, and their petty-quarrels.

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Narayan has not only vivified the child‟s world, but also rendered the world of the grown-ups
as it appears to children. Swami‟s friendship with Somu, Shankar, and the Pea is scholastic
and impersonal. Swami, Mani and Rajam remain together as friends, and at the end of the
novel, Rajam leaves Malgudi. The readers hope that their friendship matured further and they
did stand together through thick and thin

meanings, one plausible and the other real, is a good example. Misunderstanding and mistaken
identity also cause the humour of situation. The present article

focuses on how R.K.Narayan produces humour effectively through situation and character in
the novel Swami and Friends.

Realism of Children’s World in Swami and Friends

Swami and Friends (1935), Narayan‟s first novel, is remarkable for his understanding of child
psychology and for his depiction of the buoyant world of school boys in a realistic and
convincing manner. About this book Graham Greene wrote:

It was Mr.Narayan with his Swami and Friends who first brought India, in the sense of the
Indian population and the Indian way of life, alive to me… Swami is the story of a child written
with complete objectivity, with a humour strange to our fiction, closer to Chekhov than to any
English writer, with the same underlying sense of beauty and sadness

32
Narayan as he is widely known was born during the British colonial rule in India. In his obituary
Barbara Crosette writes about Narayan and Malgudi thus: 'In the 1930's, he (RK Narayan)
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. His books accurately portray an India that hovers between the unchangingly rural
and the newly industrial and that is still filled with individualistic, often eccentric personalities
that recall his imagined universe.'

This novel is however more autobiographical than others. It recounts Narayan's own happy
days with his wife Rajam, who died after contracting typhoid. They had only 5 short years
before she passed away. He sincerely and truly loved her, and after her demise Narayan plunged
into a period of 'darkness' and was obsessed by the thought of communicating with her. One of
the glaring facts that meets the reader's eye is the restrain with which the married couple express
their love so unlike the demonstrative love that is seen today both in real life and the media.

Dialogues

Krishna the central character of the novel is an English teacher at the same college he attended
as an under graduate student. Krishna's wife Susila is with her parents, some miles away as she
had recently given birth to their daughter Leela. (It is an Indian custom that a pregnant mother
should stay with her own

mother, and the midwife still takes precedence over a hospital, a doctor or nurse). When the
story opens we see a very nervous and anxious Krishna expecting the arrival of his wife and
daughter to Malgudi where he is an English Teacher in the Albert Mission College. His visions
of the misfortunes that would befall on mother and child on their train journey are almost
comical to the point of being preposterous.

33
However, as the days go by Krishna learns that his love for his wife and child surpasses
everything he imagined previously. The early years of marital bliss and the deep bond that
develops between the husband and wife becomes the center of Krishna's life. He feels Leela,
his daughter completes his perfect world. But as all good things must come to an end, so does
his, with the mysterious ailment that comes over Susila. In the days before antibiotics were
discovered, it was not until late that a proper diagnosis was made as to the exact nature of the
ailment, which they later learned was typhoid. After a long period of illness she finally dies
bringing nothing but sorrow and misery to Krishna. His grief was boundless and infinite;
Krishna almost sank to the depths of melancholy and desolation. He then decided to put all his
love and zest for life to bringing up his daughter who in her innocence did not know or question
about her mother. He became both mother and father to the child and did not wish his parents
to bring her up. Although eventually after a period of time relents and decides that the best
course of action is for his parents to bring up Leela.

Events take an unexpected turn when he is able to 'communicate' with his dead wife through a
medium. This brings him solace and he lives to 'communicate'

with her during the weekly 'sittings' as he calls them. It is unknown why Narayan included an
episode such as this, full of the fantastic, to an otherwise 'believable' story. However it is a
known fact that he was obsessed by the thought of communicating with his own wife, in his
misery. This puzzles the reader, especially the Western reader, who is brought up with a solid
disbelief of anything from the nether world. Though to the Indian reader, and most importantly
to Narayan, who actually experienced this tragedy and wrote after it, the communication
between his dead wife and himself was nothing out of the ordinary, but a means of achieving
solace and reconciling life and death as we see at the end of the novel.

From a man dependent on his wife and daughter for happiness, and later the medium he
becomes self- reliant and realizes that happiness- or in his case peace of mind and equanimity
comes from within. He strives to achieve this sense of peace, very unlike the effervescent one

34
he experienced with his wife and daughter, through meditation and 'withdrawing from adult
world and adult work into the world of children.' But this serenity, the 'inner peace' that so
eludes him at first comes to him when he least expects it, in the middle of the night when he
has given up everything - cleansed himself of all worldly possessions, his wife, his daughter, a
good income in the form of a respected job and salary. He truly transcends life and death when
he is finally able to communicate with Susila his wife, and now his mentor. Narayan explains
it thus: "The boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved. It was a moment of rare,
immutable joy - a moment for which one feels grateful for Life and Death.

While literary critics argue about the exact nature of this 'meeting' stating that it is real, unreal,
unbelievable & dreamlike; it is more appropriate to view in terms of Krishna's inner self-
development. He has finally reached that stage of self-reliance, where he is able to be whole
by himself, to find happiness within, where he believes his dearest wife, his companion in life,
is with him always.

From predictability to unpredictability.

Krishnan repeatedly finds himself being drawn out of situations which ought to have been
predictable and ordered by events which are spontaneous and unpredictable, and it is clear that
he finds spontaneity and unpredictability to be stimulating and life- enhancing, while
predictability and order, although providing a cushion of comfort and security, is ultimately
stifling and deadening

Susila, his wife, brings unpredictability into his life at every turn. For example when they go
to look at a house she wants to make a long diversion to walk by the river and bathe her feet,
where the rational orderly Krishnan would have naturally taken the most direct route, and it is
clear that he finds her unpredictable behaviour a source of delight and inspiration.

The turning point of the story arises from Susila's unpredictability. When they go to look at the
house we could not possibly predict that she would go for a walk on her own, get stuck in a
contaminated lavatory, and then become ill.

35
The futility of clinging to the belief that life can be orderly, predictable, and knowable is shown
in two central, and symmetrical, predictions which occupy a prominent place in the novel. The
first is the doctor’s assertion that typhoid, which Susila has contracted, ‘is the one fever which
goes strictly by its own rules. It follows a time-table‘ and that Susila will be well in a few
weeks. But in spite of his further assurances that her attack is ‘Absolutely normal course. No
complications. A perfect typhoid run' Susila dies.

The other prominent demonstration of the futility of believing that life can be knowable and
predictable is seen in the headmaster's belief in a prediction made by an astrologer, 'who can
see past present and future as one, and give everything its true value' that he will die on a given
date. But although (just as the doctor had asserted that Susila's typhoid was 'A perfect typhoid
run') the headmaster has found that his 'life has gone precisely as he predicted', the headmaster
lives.

Both of these episodes show the limitations of man’s ability to know and predict the world.
The truth is that we cannot know, and cannot predict, and any view of life, whether deriving
from modern western science, or ancient eastern mysticism, which disregards the unknowable
and sees only what is supposedly known, and supposedly predictable, is hopelessly inadequate.

From the academic world to the 'law of life'

While these episodes fail to provide Krishnan with anything rational to believe in, they do bring
him face to face with the reality of life and death, and confronting the realities of life without
retreating into the safe cerebral world of literature and philosophy is an important component
of his journey.

In coming to terms with the death of his wife literature, philosophy, and rationalism, are no use
to him. They are all illusions, and the journey he is on involves leaving illusions behind. The
truth Krishnan wants to discover cannot be found in Shakespeare, Carlyle, or Plato, it is found
only among real people leading real lives, it is 'the law of life'.

From adulthood to childhood

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Children are very much in evidence throughout 'The English Teacher', and are important guides
for Krishnan on his journey. The children who help to show him the way are the younger
children, his own daughter, Leela, and the children at the nursery school she attends.

The most prominent character in the novel, after Krishnan and his family, is the headmaster of
Leela's school. He is a champion of childhood, having devoted his life to children since
receiving the prediction that he would die, and believes they are ‘angels’, ‘the real gods on
earth’, and employs what he calls ‘The Leave Alone System’ in his school.

In the second half of the novel Krishnan’s discovery of children as an effective countermeasure
against ‘the curse of adulthood’, and the opening of his mind that he is experiencing through
meditation, pave the way for his resignation from his old job and the adoption of a more genuine
lifestyle.

From west to east

Another component of Krishnan's journey is that he encounters the coexistence of western and
native cultural attitudes, which also represent the attitudes of Indians of a newer and older
generation. For example when Susila is ill she is treated both by a doctor who

practises western scientific medicine, and by a Swamiji who uses mystical methods of healing.
The Swamiji is summoned by Susila’s mother, representing an older generation than Krishnan
himself, who believes the ‘Evil Eye’ has fallen on her daughter, and it is notable that Krishnan
feels ‘ashamed’ that the doctor finds the Swamiji in the house, showing that he is alienated
from, and embarrassed by, the native culture of the older generation of his own country.

The final stage of Krishnan’s journey takes him further from the from the western intellectual
frame of mind, inherited from the British, in which he was embedded at the opening of the
novel, and further towards native Indian spiritual practices. To reach his goal of ‘a harmonious
existence’ he takes up his deceased wife’s psychically-communicated challenge, which he
receives initially through a medium, to develop his mind sufficiently to communicate with her
psychically himself, and bridge the gap between life and life-after- death. Although initially he
had been bemused by his wife’s devotional practices, mocking her with ‘Oh! Becoming a
yogi!’ he now relies on her to guide him, from beyond the grave, in his ‘self-development’.

37
In the final chapter the issues of the novel come to a head with Krishnan’s resignation from his
post as English teacher and his psychic reunion with his wife. In his attack on the system he is
rebelling against he criticises not English Literature itself 'for who could be insensible to
Shakespeare’s sonnets, or Ode to the West Wind’ but India’s adherence to an educational
system which stifles the spirit of its students and alienates them from their native culture:

BASIC PLOT

“The English Teacher”, written by R.K. Narayan tells a story of an English-teaching college
professor, namely Krishna who leads a mundane, routine hostel life, even though he had
recently been married and has a kid.
The story pulls off by when his immediate family at Malgudi advise him to settle down in a
rented home with his wife (Susila) and his girl infant (Leela). Though initially, the new state
of affairs does scare him, with time, his love for his wife and kid deepens and like any other
small closely-knit family, the three of them become inseparable. All’s well when one day
Krishna and Susila set off to find a new place for themselves and quite unpredictably, Susila
gets terribly bitten by unknown species of insects after which she develops an incurable bout
of typhoid which results in her untimely death on bed. Krishna’s life thereafter, is in pieces as
he finds that with Susila, has gone his loveliest part of life. Depressed, saddened, Krishna
becomes a person with a soul gone astray; a hardened receptacle of condolence and sympathy,
when one day he receives a letter. What follows is a series of unbelievable supernatural
accounts, which will have you hooked till the climax. What is in that letter? Is Susila still alive?
Does Krishna become successful as a single parent? For all these answers, you have to read the
book. You might get a taste of what happens next in my review further, but I have tried to keep
the suspense part in wraps.

MY VIEWS:

What instantly makes “The English Teacher” likeable is its cohesive story-line. There’s
primarily one plot, that of Krishna’s family, and even though scores of characters enter the

38
frame, they are described in a way they affect Krishna’s life. However much description the
stray characters may demand, they still remain

relegated to the background, with Krishna, Susila and Leela hogging all the limelight as the
principal characters here. The style of narrative is life-like and light in the first pages, and
becomes heady and over bearing in the second. Ample relief comes in the form of Leela’s
character who tugs at your heart everytime she interprets something vaguely with her naviety
and innocence.

The story pulls off neatly with Krishna adjusting himself to the daily chores. With sly bits of
humour and an ample doze of domesticity being thrown in, the first few pages are a delight.
The author masterfully sets the mood where the reader is transformed into a small, beautiful
world of Krishna’s family, and by giving chunks of description of their daily chores, make the
characters instantly identifiable and likeable. What follows then is a heart-rending description
of Susila’s deterioration, which is so vividly deciphered, that it lingers on for days after you
have read the book. Of course, the meatiest and probably the most fruitful phase of the book
starts after Susila’s death, when Krishna has supernatural encounters via a farmer. The way the
encounters have been written, completely leaves the reader numb.

For a taster read this:

“He (the farmer) poised his pencil over the pad and waited. Suddenly the pencil began to move.
Letters appeared on paper. The pencil quivered, as if with life. It moved at a terrific speed
across the paper. It scratched the paper and tore the lines up into shreds and came through. It
seemed to be possessed with immense power. My friend said with a smile...”

The best thing about all the encounters described was that they had a positive effect on
Krishna’s life, they

made him more developed as a human being and is not just there to instigate cheap thrills or
horror. Besides, the descriptions of the after-life and the other world are so well penned, that
they leave you speechless. What also astonishes is the way the novel progresses. The story
doesn’t seem to be authored, but merely transcribed by the bounds of fate (as in real life),
making it look more autobiographical (I read in R.K. Narayan’s autobiography—My Days,

39
that this book is actually semi-autobiographical, and that the experiences mentioned are true,
and date back when he lost his real wife—Rajam).

Characterisation: *****

Brilliant is the word. All the characters in the book are so wonderfully fleshed out and presented
in such a crystalline manner, that each of them leaves a lasting effect. Be it the plethora of
emotions that Krishna goes through, or the helplessness of Susila in her last days, or for that
matter even Leela’s purity and innocence as a child, every character is extremely well-
etched. Besides, sewing in private reflections of Krishna brings the reader even more closer to
each of the characters, as he sees each of them through Krishna’s eyes. Scores of other
characters like Leela’s headmaster, Krishna’s parents and Susila’s parents register an equally
deep impact on the reader’s psyche.

Language and Literature Value: ****

The English Teacher would have probably been way off the mark, had it not been for Narayan’s
flawless language. The language is devoid of any unnecessary pompousness and grandiose that
is so very visible in today’s authors. A fabulous command over the medium means that it does
satiate the reader’s literary buds. From the domestic details in the first half to the excruciating
agony of Susila’s death and then the

positivity in the supernatural second half, a fabulous flow is thoroughly maintained with an
inexplicable blend of subtle humour and strained tragedy. Vividity in language is also in full
form, which makes the book highly page-turning.

SOME FINAL WORDS....

Even though I had loved R.K. Narayan’s other works, this one will always hold a special place
in my heart. For it displays love in its purest form. The love that binds Susila to Krishna to
Leela. So pure is their love, that even mortality doesn’t snatch away any of its dew- drop
freshness and in turn make it eternal. The characters or the scores aren’t settled. Their feelings,
their desires are dissolved, recycled and restated...and in a very novel way, the story shows
how love can make a person...a better human being

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R. K. Narayan: R. K. Narayan (October 10, 1906 – May 13, 2001), shortened from Rasipuram
Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (Tamil: ரரரரரரரரர ரரரரரரரரரரரரர ரரரரரர
ரரரரரரரரரரரர) was an Indian author whose works of fiction include a series of books about
people and their interactions in an imagined town in India. 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 semiautobiographical
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. 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. R. K. Narayan Born October 10, 1906 Madras, British India (now Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India)
Died May 13, 2001 (aged 94) Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Occupatio n Writer Nationalit y Indian Genres
Fiction, Mythology, and Nonfiction Notable award(s) Padma Vibhushan, Sahitya Akademi Award, AC
Benson Medal, Padma Bhushan Life: Early years: 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 reprimanded by his uncle; the family was apolitical and

41
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 well-stocked 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 country; while it ignored the limits imposed
by colonial rule, it also grew with the various sociopolitical changes of British and post-independence
India. Turning point: 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 nonBrahmins. 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 1935. Greene also counseled Narayan on shortening his name to become more familiar
to the English-speaking audience. The book was semi-autobiographical and built upon many incidents
from his own childhood. Reviews were favorable 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 book also received good reviews. In 1937,

42
Narayan's father died, and Narayan was forced to accept a commission from the government of
Mysore as he was not making any money. In his first three books, Narayan highlights the problems
with certain socially accepted practices. The first book has Narayan focusing on the plight of students,
punishments of caning in the classroom, and the associated shame. The concept of horoscope-
matching in Hindu marriages and the emotional toll it levies on the bride and groom is covered in the
second book. In the third book, Narayan addresses the concept of a wife putting up with her husband's
antics and attitudes. Rajam died of typhoid in 1939. Her death affected Narayan deeply and he
remained distressed for a long time; he was also concerned for their daughter Hemalatha, 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. Narayan's first choice for the journal's name was Indian Thoughtless, but he
decided to shorten it to Indian Thought as it amounted to the same. 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 1945. In between, being cut off from England 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 1953. The busy
years: After The English Teacher, Narayan's writings took a more imaginative and 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
1951. 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

43
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. Lyle Blair of Michigan State University Press (Narayan's
U.S. publisher), Narayan and Anthony West of The New Yorker 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 1958. 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. Narayan's next novel, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, was published in 1961. 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,

44
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. Narayan's next published work was
the 1967 novel, The Vendor of Sweets. It was inspired in part by his American visits and consists of
extreme characterizations of both the Indian and American stereotypes, drawing on the many cultural
differences. However, while it displays his characteristic comedy and narrative, the book was reviewed
as lacking in depth. This year, Narayan traveled to England, where he received the first of his honorary
doctorates from the University of Leeds. The next few years were a quiet period for him. He published
his next book, a collection of short stories, A Horse and Two Goats, in 1970.Meanwhile, Narayan
remembered a promise made to his dying uncle in 1938, and started translating the Kamba
Ramayanam to English. The Ramayana was published in 1973, after five years of work. Almost
immediately after publishing The Ramayana, Narayan started working on a condensed translation of
the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata. While he was researching and writing the epic, he also published
another book, The Painter of Signs (1977). The Painter of Signs is a bit longer than a novella and makes
a marked change from Narayan's other works, as he deals with hitherto unaddressed subjects such as
sex, although the development of the protagonist's character is very similar to his earlier creations.
The Mahabharata was published in 1978. The later years: Narayan was commissioned by the
government of Karnataka to write a book to promote tourism in the state. The work was published as
part of a larger government publication in the late 1970s. He thought it deserved better, and
republished it as The Emerald Route (Indian Thought Publications, 1980). The book contains his
personal perspective on the local history and heritage, but being bereft of his characters and creations,
it misses his enjoyable narrative. The same year, he was elected as an honorary member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and won the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of
Literature. Around the same time, Narayan's works were translated to Chinese for the first time. In
1983, Narayan published his next novel, A Tiger for Malgudi, about a tiger and its relationship with
humans. His next novel, Talkative Man, published in 1986, was the tale of an aspiring journalist from
Malgudi. During this time, he also published two collections of short stories: Malgudi Days (1982), a
revised edition including the original book and some other stories, and Under the Banyan Tree and
Other Stories, a new collection. In 1987, he completed A Writer's Nightmare, another collection of
essays about topics as diverse as the caste system, Nobel prize winners, love, and monkeys. The
collection included essays he had written for newspapers and magazines since 1958.Living alone in
Mysore, Narayan developed an interest in agriculture. He bought an acre of agricultural land and tried
his hand at farming. He was also prone to walking to the market every afternoon, not so much for
buying things, but to interact with the people. In a typical afternoon stroll, he would stop every few

45
steps to greet and converse with shopkeepers and others, most likely gathering material for his next
book. In 1980, Narayan was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament,
for his contributions to literature. During his entire six-year term, he was focused on one issue—the
plight of school children, especially the heavy load of school books and the negative effect of the
system on a child's creativity, which was something that he first highlighted in his debut novel, Swami
and Friends. His inaugural speech was focused on this particular problem, and resulted in the
formation of a committee chaired by Prof. Yash Pal, to recommend changes to the school educational
system. In 1990, he published his next novel, The World of Nagaraj, also set in Malgudi. Narayan's age
shows in this work as he appears to skip narrative details that he would have included if this were
written earlier in his career. Soon after he finished the novel, Narayan fell ill and moved to Madras to
be close to his daughter's family. A few years after his move, in 1994, his daughter died of cancer and
his granddaughter Bhuvaneswari (Minnie) started taking care of him in addition to managing Indian
Thought Publications. Narayan then published his final book, Grandmother's Tale. The book is an
autobiographical novella, about his great-grandmother who traveled far and wide to find her husband,
who ran away shortly after their marriage. The story was narrated to him by his grandmother, when
he was a child. During his final years, Narayan, ever fond of conversation, would spend almost every
evening with N. Ram, the publisher of The Hindu, drinking coffee and talking about various topics until
well past midnight. Despite his fondness of meeting and talking to people, he stopped giving
interviews. The apathy towards interviews was the result of an interview with Time, after which
Narayan had to spend a few days in the hospital, as he was dragged around the city to take
photographs that were never used in the article. 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. Literary review Writing style: Narayan's writing style was simple and
unpretentious with a natural element of humour about it. His writings focused on ordinary people,
reminding the reader of next-door neighbors, 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, 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. According

46
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 short-story
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 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: Illustration of
Lawley Statue, Malgudi by R. K. Laxman. 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 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

47
comparison to Malgudi, a place that Greene characterized as "more familiar than Battersea or Euston
Road", 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. Critical reception:
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 labeled the "South Indian E. M.
Forster" 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 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 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 Shashi Tharoor, 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 behaviors 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 simple and display a lack of interest in politics, he delivers his narrative with an artful and

48
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 vicechancellor 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" 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", applies equally to Narayan. Awards and honours: Narayan won numerous awards during the
course of his literary career. His first major award was in 1958, the Sahitya Akademi Award for The
Guide. Six years later, he received the Padma Bhushan during the Republic Day honours of 1964. In
1980, he was awarded the AC Benson Medal by the (British) Royal Society of Literature, of which he
was an honorary member. In 1982 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of
Arts and Letters. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times, but never won
the honor. Recognition also came in the form of honorary doctorates by the University of Leeds
(1967),the University of Mysore (1976) and Delhi University (1973).Towards the end of his career,
Narayan was nominated to the upper house of the Indian Parliament for a six-year term starting in
1989, for his contributions to Indian literature. A year before his death, in 2000, he was awarded
India's second-highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan. Legacy: 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

49
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. —Graham Greene. List of works: Novels: 1. Swami and Friends (1935,
Hamish Hamilton) 2. The Bachelor of Arts (1937, Thomas Nelson) 3. The Dark Room (1938, Eyre) 4.
The English Teacher (1945, Eyre) 5. Mr. Sampath (1948, Eyre) 6. The Financial Expert (1952, Methuen)
7. Waiting for the Mahatma (1955, Methuen) 8. The Guide (1958, Methuen) 9. The Man-Eater of
Malgudi (1961, Viking) 10. The Vendor of Sweets (1967, The Bodley Head) 11. The Painter of Signs
(1977, Heinemann) 12. A Tiger for Malgudi (1983, Heinemann) 13. Talkative Man (1986, Heinemann)
14. The World of Nagaraj (1990, Heinemann) 15. Grandmother's Tale (1992, Indian Thought
Publications) Non- fiction: 1. Next Sunday (1960, Indian Thought Publications) 2. My Dateless Diary
(1960, Indian Thought Publications) 3. My Days (1974, Viking) 4. Reluctant Guru (1974, Orient
Paperbacks) 5. The Emerald Route (1980, Indian Thought Publications) 6. A Writer's Nightmare (1988,
Penguin Books) Mythology: 1. Gods, Demons and Others (1964, Viking) 2. The Ramayana (1973, Chatto
& Windus) 3. The Mahabharata (1978, Heinemann) Short story collections: 1. Malgudi Days (1942,
Indian Thought Publications) 2. An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories (1947, Indian Thought
Publications) 3. Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956, Indian Thought Publications) 4. A Horse and Two
Goats (1970) 5. Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985) 6. The Grandmother's Tale and
Selected Stories (1994, Viking) . Adaptations: Narayan's book The Guide was adapted to film as Guide,
a Hindi movie directed by Dev Anand. An English language version was also released. Narayan was not
happy with the way the film was made and its deviation from the book; he wrote a column in Life
magazine, "The Misguided Guide," criticizing the film. The book was also adapted to a Broadway play
by Harvey Breit and Patricia Rinehart, and was staged at Hudson Theatre in 1968 with Zia Mohyeddin
playing the lead role and a music score by Ravi Shankar. His novel Mr. Sampath was made into a Tamil
film, Miss Malini, starring Pushpavalli and Kothamangalam Subbu. A Hindi version with Padmini and
Motilal was also produced by Gemini Studios. Another novel, The Financial Expert, was made into the
Kannada movie Banker Margayya. Swami and Friends, The Vendor of Sweets and some of Narayan's
short stories were adapted by actor-director Shankar Nag into the television series Malgudi Days.
Narayan was happy with the adaptations and complimented the producers for sticking to the storyline
in the book References:  www.google.com  www.rknarayan.com  Books on RK Narayan 
www.wikipedia.com RK .NARAYANAN Dnyanasadhana College Thane [W] Bachelor of Mass Media
FYBMM- II Semester-2010-2011 Subject: English Literature Topic: RK Narayan Submitted to: Prof.
Sonali Submitted by:  Priyanka A. Mhoprekar Roll No: 28  Aarti S. Kaintura Roll No: 19  Utkarsh

50
Arya Roll No: 03  Rayon ver Roll No:  Pratik Patil Roll No:  Sanal Iyer Roll No:  Pratik Yerunkar
Roll No: Acknowledgement : First of all I would like to thank Prof. Miss Sonali Ma’m who has given us
the opportunity to work on the project together and also thank her for her support and guidance. I
would like to thank group members of my team for their cooperation in this project and lastly I would
like to thank my parents and other friends who helped me in giving me the required information which
was necessary for my project. Contents: 1] Introduction about RK Narayan 2] His life-Early years 3]
Childhood 4] Turning point 5] The busy years 6] The later years 7] His writing style 8] His Malgudi Days
Book 9] Critical reception 10] Awards and Honors 11] Legacy 12] List of works 13] Adaptations 14]
References

1. Iyengar, K. R. (1995). Indian Writing in English, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers. Pvt. Ltd.,
pp-365. Print.

2. Kehily, M.J. & Swann, J. (2003). Children′s Cultural Worlds (Wiley & OU Childhood). John
Wiley & Sons.

3. Cranston, M.(1982). Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work, Norton.

4. Narayan, R.K. (1996). Naga, 'Malgudi Days' Indian. Thought Publications, Chelmai, pp217-
227. Print.

5. Narayan, R.K. (1935).Swami and Friends, Indian Thought Publications, Chennai, pp l1- 46.
Print.

6. Narayan, R.K. (1975).A Shadow, 'Let's Go Home' and other stories', Ed. Meenakshi
Mukhelji, Orient Longman Private Limited, Mumbai.

51
7. Jha, Gauri S. (2006). Current Perspectives in Indian English Literature, Atlantic.

Khatri ,Chhote ,Lal ,R.K.Narayan Reflections and Re-evaluation(Sarup @Sons,New Delhi

,2006)[1}
Walsh,William,R.K.Narayan(Allied Publishers ,New Dehli ,2006)[2]
Mukherjee,N.k.Indian Writing in English(Sterling publishers pvt.Ltd ,New Delhi ,2002)
K.R.S. Iyenger:Indian Writing in English(Sterling Publisher,1990).
Naraya, R.K., The Dark Room ,(Indian Thought Publication,Mysore,1970).
R.K.Narayan,The Guide(Indian Thought Publication,Mysore.1958).
Graham Greene. List of works: Novels: 1. Swami and Friends (1935, Hamish Hamilton) 2. The Bachelor
of Arts (1937, Thomas Nelson) 3. The Dark Room (1938, Eyre) 4. The English Teacher (1945, Eyre) 5.
Mr. Sampath (1948, Eyre) 6. The Financial Expert (1952, Methuen) 7. Waiting for the Mahatma (1955,
Methuen) 8. The Guide (1958, Methuen) 9. The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961, Viking) 10. The Vendor
of Sweets (1967, The Bodley Head) 11. The Painter of Signs (1977, Heinemann) 12. A Tiger for Malgudi
(1983, Heinemann) 13. Talkative Man (1986, Heinemann) 14. The World of Nagaraj (1990, Heinemann)
15. Grandmother's Tale (1992, Indian Thought Publications) Non- fiction: 1. Next Sunday (1960, Indian
Thought Publications) 2. My Dateless Diary (1960, Indian Thought Publications) 3. My Days (1974,
Viking) 4. Reluctant Guru (1974, Orient Paperbacks) 5. The Emerald Route (1980, Indian Thought
Publications) 6. A Writer's Nightmare (1988, Penguin Books) Mythology: 1. Gods, Demons and Others
(1964, Viking) 2. The Ramayana (1973, Chatto & Windus) 3. The Mahabharata (1978, Heinemann)
Short story collections: 1. Malgudi Days (1942, Indian Thought Publications) 2. An Astrologer's Day and
Other Stories (1947, Indian Thought Publications) 3. Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956, Indian
Thought Publications) 4. A Horse and Two Goats (1970) 5. Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories
(1985) 6. The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1994, Viking) . Adaptations: Narayan's book
The Guide was adapted to film as Guide, a Hindi movie directed by Dev Anand. An English language
version was also released. Narayan was not happy with the way the film was made and its deviation
from the book; he wrote a column in Life magazine, "The Misguided Guide," criticizing the film. The
book was also adapted to a Broadway play by Harvey Breit and Patricia Rinehart, and was staged at
Hudson Theatre in 1968 with Zia Mohyeddin playing the lead role and a music score by Ravi Shankar.
His novel Mr. Sampath was made into a Tamil film, Miss Malini, starring Pushpavalli and
Kothamangalam Subbu. A Hindi version with Padmini and Motilal was also produced by Gemini
Studios. Another novel, The Financial Expert, was made into the Kannada movie Banker Margayya.
Swami and Friends, The Vendor of Sweets and some of Narayan's short stories were adapted by actor-
director Shankar Nag into the television series Malgudi Days. Narayan was happy with the adaptations

52
and complimented the producers for sticking to the storyline in the book References: 
www.google.com  www.rknarayan.com  Books on RK Narayan  www.wikipedia.com RK
.NARAYANAN Dnyanasadhana College Thane [W] Bachelor of Mass Media FYBMM- II Semester-2010-
2011 Subject: English Literature Topic: RK Narayan Submitted to: Prof. Sonali Submitted by:  Priyanka
A. Mhoprekar Roll No: 28  Aarti S. Kaintura Roll No: 19  Utkarsh Arya Roll No: 03  Rayon ver Roll
No:  Pratik Patil Roll No:  Sanal Iyer Roll No:  Pratik Yerunkar Roll No: Acknowledgement : First of
all I would like to thank Prof. Miss Sonali Ma’m who has given us the opportunity to work on the
project together and also thank her for her support and guidance. I would like to thank group members
of my team for their cooperation in this project and lastly I would like to thank my parents and other
friends who helped me in giving me the required information which was necessary for my project.
Contents: 1] Introduction about RK Narayan 2] His life-Early years 3] Childhood 4] Turning point 5] The
busy years 6] The later years 7] His writing style 8] His Malgudi Days Book 9] Critical reception 10]
Awards and Honors 11] Legacy 12] List of works 13] Adaptations 14] References

R.k.narayan,The Bachelor of Arts ( Indian thought publication ,Mysore,

1972).76.G.N.Agnihotri, Indian Life and Problems in the novels of Mulk Raj Anand ,Raja Rao
and R.K.Narayan (Saru publishing House,New Delhi, 1984).

53