NARAYAN, R. K.

NARAYAN, R. K. (1906–2001), renowned author of novels, short stories, and essays Regarded by many critics as India's greatest writer in English, R. K. Narayan's birth name, Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayanaswami, was shortened at the suggestion of his first English publisher for the convenience of Western readers. Born on 10 October 1906 in Madras (Chennai), he was the third of eight children of Gnanambal Iyer and Rasipuram Iyer. His father was a well-educated school teacher in the education department in the princely state of Mysore, but Narayan was brought up in Madras by his maternal grandmother. In his memoir, My Days (1974), as well as in his last novel, The Grandmother's Tale (1992), he acknowledged his debt to her, not only for maternal care but also for a deep introduction to South Indian traditional culture. His knowledge of the wealth of Hindu legends and myths reflects her storytelling, but she also taught him Sanskrit, the classical language of religion and literature, as well as Tamil, the South Indian language rich in song and poetry. From her he learned to understand and enjoy classical Canatic music, one of the most complex of Indian musical systems. In his old age, he remarked that "We don't have that kind of granny nowadays."

While immersed in his grandmother's culture, at the same time he was also introduced to the greatest literature of the West, thanks to an uncle—a college student who lived in the family house—who was taking part in a production of William Shakespeare's Tempest. Narayan knew it, he said, before he knew anything else. Part of Narayan's greatness as a writer is explained by the "Indianness" of his early upbringing as well as his love of English literature, acquired from his father and his college teachers. No other Indian writer reflects so unselfconsciously the seamless inheritance of these two rich, but very different, cultures. Of the many Indian writers in English, none impresses readers as does Narayan, conveying an authentic voice of the unique historical experience of the making of modern India in the context of the modern West, mediated through the imposition of British rule on a traditional society. An interviewer once asked Narayan whether the creative writer is a free spirit or a spokesman of the community in which he lives. A writer, Narayan replied, must be a free spirit if he is to be a creative writer, but he is always a spokesman of the community in that he is a product of his society. So a writer must keep a tricky balance between the two.

Narayan's formal introduction to Western learning began in 1912, when he began attending kindergarten in Madras, at a school founded by Swedish Lutherans. Readers of his novels, as well as of his memoir and his collection of essays, conclude that he hated school, but his unhappiness appears to be the normal response of an intelligent child being taught by boring, unimaginative teachers. He hated arithmetic, dreaded exams, and, like the schoolboys in his novels, welcomed the freedom of summer holidays. "No child with red blood in his veins," he said in A Writer's Nightmare (1956), "could ever think of its school with unqualified enthusiasm." Narayan neatly summarized his views on childhood by saying that children are "existentialists," living in the moment, sometimes happy, sometimes miserable. He was, he insisted, the same person that he had been eighty years before: "Inside, the sense of awareness, of being, is the same throughout. The chap inside is the same, unchanged." When he graduated to the better-known Madras Christian College High School, the "chap inside" rejoiced in having nicer classrooms, a good library, and educated, reasonable teachers, but his father summoned him to Mysore to live with his siblings, one of whom, R. K. Laxman, was to become India's best-known political cartoonist and the illustrator of many of Narayan's books. In Mysore, where he was to live most of his life, he attended Maharajah's Collegiate High School, where his father was headmaster. The great bonus of being the headmaster's son was that he had free range of the library, and he read voraciously, including the romantic poets and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy, as well as those of contemporary writers like Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli, his favorite. Through English journals, he became familiar with all the literary greats of the era, including G. B. Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Thomas Hardy. He also learned about American writers through Harper's and the Atlantic. People unfamiliar with the fascination that England had for educated Indians of that time speak of the English language being "forced" on Indians, but nothing could be further from the truth. English was the key to another world, sought with eagerness by young Narayan. Despite his eclectic reading, for two years in succession he failed the university entrance examination, the first time in English, the second in Tamil literature. In My Days, he says his failure in English was due to concentrating on Dickens and poetry, while the questions were from the dull books he had left unread.

After managing to pass the exams, he attended Maharaja's College, got his bachelor of arts degree, and, when nothing else was available, took a job as a teacher. By his own account he was a disastrous failure, and after two attempts at maintaining discipline, gave it up and went home, deciding to devote himself full time to becoming what he always wanted to be—a writer. "I want to finish my novel," he announced, "and when it is published, it will solve all problems." Making a living from writing novels in India, especially in English, was virtually unknown, and the comment of an old friend expressed the almost universal reaction of his family and friends: "Unwisdom! Unwisdom! You could write as a hobby..The notion is very unpractical" (My Days, p. 92). Making a living became an urgent necessity in 1934, however, when Narayan, defying the customs of his society, did not settle for a marriage arranged by his family; he fell in love with a beautiful girl, Rajam Iyer, and made the arrangements himself. Two years later, their daughter Hema was born. She became his lifelong companion.

The novel that he was writing was Swami and Friends, which drew very heavily upon his school experiences and was set in Malgudi, the imaginary South Indian town that figures in many of his later books. "As I sat in a room nibbling my pen, Malgudi with its little railway station swam into view, all ready made with a character called Swaminathan running down the platform" (My Days, p. 79). For most foreign readers, Malgudi is their entry into the complex world of India, in many ways physically chaotic but with a carefully articulated social order. There was little hope of a novel of this kind, written in English, being published in India, but in any case his dream was to find a publisher in England, and against all probability his dream came true. Swami and Friends was rejected by a number of publishers, but he had sent the manuscript in 1935 to a friend, Purna, who was studying at Oxford, who persuaded Graham Greene, already one of England's most famous authors, to read it. Greene was delighted with the novel and recommended it to Hamish Hamilton, the publisher. Purna was able to send Narayan a telegram: "Novel taken. Graham Greene responsible" (My Days, p. 115). This was the beginning of a friendship that was of great importance to Narayan, for it brought him into the literary and academic world of Great Britain and the United States. He and Greene corresponded regularly, and Greene read and commented on his manuscripts, though they met only once, in 1956.

Other novels followed regularly, all marked by kindly ironic wit as he observes the comic absurdities in the lives of many of his characters; at the same time, he conveys the disappointments and tragedies of their everyday lives as they confront the conflicts engendered by their ambitions, their weaknesses, their self-delusions, and society's demands. His second novel, The Bachelor of Arts, published in 1937, is also autobiographical, and in some ways is his most humorous book, ending with the central character falling in love and marrying, euphoric in his happiness. His next novel, The Dark Room (1938), explores new territory, perhaps less successfully, with the story of a woman who, against all conventions, leaves her bullying husband.

There was a long break before The English Teacher was published in 1945 (in the United States it was published under the title Grateful for Life and Death). It is the most somber of Narayan's novels, and the most autobiographical. The story of the death of the young wife of a struggling schoolteacher replicates the death of Narayan's wife in 1939, leaving him utterly bereft, with his small daughter. Unable to work, he turned to spiritualism, and he believed that a medium had put him in contact with her. The friendship of the English mystic Paul Brunton helped him to return to writing in 1945, and Narayan began editing a literary journal, Indian Thought. He gave this up, however, to become his own publisher. Narayan entered a new and fruitful period, publishing some of his work in both England and the United States, including The Financial Expert (1952); The Guide (1958), which many readers consider his best work; The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961); The Vendor of Sweets (1967); and The Painter of Signs (1976). The Guide was made into a widely publicized but unsuccessful movie, which many reviewers, including Narayan himself, considered a serious distortion of the novel. In addition, he published collections of short stories, essays, and notable retellings of the great Sanskrit epics The Mah?bh?rata (1978) and The R?m?ya?a (1972).

In 1956 he made his first visit outside India, stopping in London, where for the first time he met Graham Greene, on his way to the United States. There he met many authors, film personalities, and intellectuals. In My Dateless Diary (1960) he gives a humorous but very penetrating account of American life, including delightful meetings with actress Greta Garbo, who wanted him to discuss mysticism, which he felt unable to do. He subsequently became fond of travel, traveling often to London and New York as well as to many cities in Europe and Asia. He received numerous literary honors in foreign countries, as well as one of India's highest national awards, the Padma Bhushan. In 1985 the president of India appointed him a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, as one the country's most distinguished citizens; there, he took a special interest in the welfare of children. This was in keeping with his literary work, which, as an obituary declared, expressed "a philosophic depth and a strikingly original moral analysis" (Manchester Guardian).

Ainslee T. Embree

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Only the dates of the first publication of Narayan's books are given above, because almost all of them were published by different publishers in India, Great Britain, and the United States, and often by more than one publisher in the same country. The best biographical study is Susan Ram and N. Ram, R. K. Narayan (New Delhi: Viking, 1996), which relates the novels to Narayan's life. John Updike wrote a sensitive appreciation of his work in "Books," in The New Yorker, 12 Sept. 1974, pp. 80–82. Narayan has been the subject of many critical studies. N. P. Nair, Irony in the Novels of R. K. Narayan and V. S. Naipaul (Trivandrum, Kerala: CBH Publications, 1993), offers interesting insights and has an almost complete listing of Narayan's many books. Michael Pousse, R. K. Narayan: A Painter of Modern India (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), stresses the value of his writings for their insights into Indian culture. Geoffrey Kain, editor, R. K. Narayan, Contemporary Critical Perspectives (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1993), examines many of his works. While these are all useful, Narayan's artfully crafted autobiographical works give insights into his life and work. These include My Day (New York: Viking Press, 1974) and My Dateless Diary (Mysore: Indian Thought Publications, 1960), as well his collections of essays, including A Writer's Nightmare (New Delhi: Penguin, 1988). An early insightful American review is found in Glendy Dawedeit, Washington Post, 3 November 1956, E, p. 6). An affectionate obituary by Susan and N. Ram appeared in The Guardian (Manchester, U. K.), on 14 May 2001. Narayan gave a selection of his private papers to Mugar Library at Boston University.