32 MY DAYS by R.K NARAYAN
Anindita Das
Rashipuram Krishnaswami Narayanswami, commonly known as R.K Narayan, is the extensively read Indian writer in English. The subject matter of his writings includes the small incidents and happenings that he witnessed in real life. He was contemporary to novelists Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao, who were known for their non-fictional works also. Apart from the fictions, Narayan wrote many short stories, articles, sketches, essays and travel books throughout his career as a writer. Born in Madras in the year 1906, Narayan remains the widely acclaimed writer in the realm of Indian Writing in English.
However, to talk about his novels, the most fascinating fact about them is that except a single novella The Grandmother’s Tale (1993), all of his novels are set in an imaginary town called Malgudi. Many of short stories are written with Malgudi in their backdrop. Though the town existed only through his words, it created such an effect that the readers felt it to be real. Narayan commented about it as “if it’s a real town it’s a nuisance for a writer” because he thought that people would tend to find inexactness in it. As it was an imaginary one, it could fit in everywhere. The fourteen novels he wrote depict the simple life of the people of Malgudi, its politics and absurdity with all kinds of changes that actually take place in a town. Swami and Friends (1935), The Financial Expert (1952), Guide 1958), Waiting for Mahatma (1955), Mr.Sampath: The Printer of Malgudi (1949), The Man Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967) and the rest of Malgudi novels explore different issues related to Indian context, specifically to South Indian urban and semi urban life, where life is portrayed in terms of colonialism, socio-political and familial issues, put forward in a very subtle way by Narayan. He, being the witness to the British life, came across all the changes in educational system, administration, railways and so on which are manifested through his novels. Narayan viewed both the new and the old India, the transitional period, aptly embodied in his writings quite often. His stories were serialised in television which became very popular and his novel Guide (1958) was adapted as a film also.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that Narayan always kept himself aloof from the public world, he wrote his memoir My Days, which was published in the year 1974. The tradition of writing autobiographies and memoirs in English can be said to have began with some of the notable figures such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Kasiprasad Ghose who inspired Mahatma Gandhi, Lajpat Rai and Jawaharlal Nehru to write theirs. But the Autobiography of Lutullah, A Mahomedan and His Transactions With Fellow Creatures (1857) is considered to be the first one written in English. Now, the basic difference between a memoir and an autobiography is that the former is autobiographical in nature which emphasises on the author’s self in the process of development while the latter deals with the events, people and experiences that mould the personality of that person. To name a few more prominent personalities who have remarkably contributed in shaping the modern Indian history and wrote their life stories are Bipin Chandra Pal, Subhash Chandra Bose and S. Radhakrishnan. The literary figures such as Dom Moraes, N. C Chaudhuri and Mulk Raj Anand too have written their autobiographies. In Ranga Rao’s words the memoir of R. K Narayan ….. “My Days is the story of Narayan’s nurture. This memoir presents the archetypal story of a self- launched artist; we are privileged to witness here the making of an Indian novelist in English”.
My Days acquaints the readers with Narayan’s boyhood, his journey as a writer and the trauma he underwent after he lost his wife early in his life. It also reveals the circumstances revolving around the creation of his novels. Narayan begins his memoir recalling his childhood as:
He spent most of his childhood under the care of his maternal grandmother in Madras as he had many siblings and so his mother could not take care of all her children. His time was spent mostly with the pets, perhaps for the reason that he was a lonely child, who occasionally had the company of his uncle. He remembers his uncle, who was a college student then, preoccupied with photography and drama. As a student Narayan did not show much proficiency in school. But at home he was compelled to do lessons on ragas, Sanskrit Slokas, Tamil and multiplication by his grandmother. His exposure to the dual world of religion, Christianity at school and Hinduism as a Hindu Brahmin at home and vicinity left an indelible mark in his young mind. The city of Madras, the active life of his grandmother, his fears and everything else he came across is recorded in his memoir. Though Narayan was a quiet, dreamy and shy as a child, he had a very observant nature. All these experiences of his boyhood later inspired him to create the character of Swami for his first novel Swami and Friends. His mischief as a child, freaking out with his “gang” of friends in the summer breaks during his school days in Madras finds expression in his fiction. Later on, he had to make a lot of adjustments when he had to live with his family during his holidays in Mysore and the other places wherever his father was transferred time to time.
Another activity which had a great impact on Narayan’s writing career is reading. He became an avid reader since a very young age. He had the privilege of accessing books from the library of the school where his father was a teacher. As in My Days he writes:
Reading had been a passion for Narayan. When he failed in his university entrance examination, he got ample time to pursue his practice of reading. He was immensely influenced by the views of Rabindranath Tagore on education and his poetry as well. His reading included the “World Classics” and the fictions with tragic ending.
In My Days Narayan tells about all the ups and downs of his writing career. First of all, it was not an easy task to take up writing as a profession at that time. He was discouraged by many, calling it unwise to consider writing as means of earning. But Narayan was determined. Henceforth, after a few vain attempts on engaging himself in any other livelihood, including a school teacher, he thus expressed:
Thus, his writing career began, though not very smoothly. His father thought it to be a waste of time to spend on the huge typewriter and called it “that road roller”, which Narayan used for typing. He then moved to Bangalore, as his grandmother was there to revive from her illness. After sometime, Narayan all set, embarked on his journey as a writer. He thus expresses:
There was no looking back then onwards. One after another he penned down his fictions, though not without occasional hindrances. The raw material for his writing was the life itself. He drew his inspiration from the mundane, transforming it to be real in the readers’ minds. He talks about it in My Days as:
In a similar context, Narayan once remarked “I write only because I’m interested in a type of character and I’m amused mostly by the seriousness with which each man takes himself”. The idea that he formed over the years in terms of people he observed, situations that came his way were finely sieved into the stories he wrote, almost all of them set in Malgudi. He did not wish to provide any kind of moral lessons to the readers. He wrote “mostly under the influence of events occurring around” him. He also credits the writers he read and liked for the style he adopted. Writing for Narayan was a gradual process. Once when his father’s best friend passed away, he wrote a poetic prose piece on ‘Friendship”, then he composed “Divine Music”. He read out the pieces to his brother Seenu and a close group of friends seeking out their critical viewpoints, but not much to his satisfaction. He sent the manuscripts to London and would wait for the postman to arrive, but it was not as easy as it appeared to him initially. Publishing was a huge labour at that time. Narayan had to face several rejections from many publishers of London, with which he became habituated in a little while. But he kept “…hoping for a warm letter or a cheque to fall out; but a neatly printed rejection slip was pinned to the manuscript”, though he did not give up and remained persistent. He had a similar experience at the time of publishing his first novel Swami and Friends. It was difficult for a struggling writer to get his work published. His friend Purna, who went to Oxford later, produced the manuscript to Graham Greene. Since then onwards that the literary friendship of Narayan and Greene began and the latter became instrumental in the publication of a number of Narayan’s works.
A lot many other facets of Narayan’s life are revealed through his memoir, his looking for love, friendship, relationships with his wife, daughter and other members of the family, his view on religion, education and so on. Everything seems to have been the raw materials for his writings. Narayan once remarked “To be a good writer anywhere, you must have roots, both in religion and in family….I have these things”. The fact that he hailed from a typical uncomplicated South Indian joint- family, where everyone lives in the same house in sheer harmony, acted as the foundation for Narayan’s writing. Even in his personal life, it is due to the support of his family that he could raise his motherless daughter without any difficulty. In every crisis, the family was together. His marital life too never encountered any conflict. His marriage to Rajam seems to be a plot of a novel. It was at the young stage of his life, when he was an aspiring writer, he was fascinated by beautiful faces of girls, and finally he fell in love with his wife seeing her drawing water from a tap in the street. He pursued his love and married Rajam at the time when marriages were mostly arranged, and that too against the astrological prediction that he would become a young widower if he tied the nuptial knot with her. Regarding religion and education Narayan opines that “Next to religion, education was the most compulsive force in a family like ours”. As an orthodox Hindu, Narayan believed in Hindu Philosophy which calls for carrying on with the life-role assigned to every human being. But his views on education did not conform to the idea hold by his family members. He was entirely against the examination system with its “unwarranted seriousness and esoteric suggestions”. It was even after many years also his views on education did not alter much, as “School, college, lectures and examination were never things that Narayan either enjoyed or excelled at”.
Memory and trauma play integral parts in My Days. Narayan’s novel The English Teacher (1945) is replete with the memories of his dead wife. His wife Rajam dies of typhoid in 1939. He shared an incredibly wonderful relation with his wife, and so he always remembered her fondly. When they got married, Rajam was very young. But, she could manage her household duties quite efficiently. She got along well with all the members of Narayan’s family. She had also been much practical on her approach towards life. At that time, Narayan was scripting The Dark Room (1938), with his heroine Savitri as the central character. According to him he wrote the novel as he realised:
However, contrary to Savitri’s husband in the novel, Narayan loved his wife dearly and remained faithful to her even after her death. He never remarried, though he had been advised by many. He went into a bout of depression, a sort of “numbness” following her death. So badly affected by her death, it took him six years to retrieve to writing, as he says:
While he was going through that crucial period, on the suggestion of a friend, he took psychic help to cope with it, with the help of Raghunatha Rao and his wife. At this juncture he was encouraged by Graham Greene and Dr. Paul Brunton who told him “You will write a book which is within you, all ready now, and it is bound to come out sooner or later, when you give yourself a chance to write”. After a lot of practise, “psychic experience” became a regular part of his life. He could communicate with his dead wife with the help of the process. He began to feel her presence around him during the sessions. It actually helped him tremendously to get himself out of the traumatic experience and move on with his life.
Since then another aspect of his personality evolved which carried him forward then onwards. It thus resulted in his maturity as a writer. These entire experiences of Narayan’s own life echo in the highly autobiographical novel The English Teacher, as he remarks:
His life took off once again after he had regained himself from the loss. Soon after, he started publishing his own journal Indian Thought. But it did not last long, as Narayan himself was not satisfied with it. Another incident in Mysore provided him with the setting of his novel Guide. It was during a severe drought, a prayer for rain was organised by the municipal council, which lasted for eleven days and it rained on the twelfth day. In the later period while he was travelling in America, the idea developed and took the shape of the novel which became extremely popular. Narayan mentions in the memoir about actor and producer Dev Anand , who approached him for making a film on the novel.
Nevertheless, on reading his memoir it becomes comprehensible that Narayan was the product of the society he belonged, as V.S Naipul opines that Narayan “operates from deep within his society”. It seems to be evident from the fact that Narayan chiefly wrote about the middle class which he belonged to. He portrayed it with all its flavour- happiness, sorrows, tears and smiles. This is what is also reflected in his fictional world. He was criticised not to have written about the poor classes of people, particularly the peasants. But the reason behind it might be that he was more comfortable in writing about what he had actually experienced, rather than trying his hand on something he did not know much.
Narayan’s voyage of life as a whole entailed various hardships. There have been a lot of compromises made to sustain the tempo of life. It was the period when Narayan was struggling to take up a profession when his father was retired and “all sorts of readjustment” had to be made. They could not afford a big house like the one they were living before due to the scanty pension of his father. For Narayan it was a shift from his comfort zone, where he had dreamt and imagined which facilitated his writing. Even after his marriage, in order to have a steady income, he had to work as a reporter in a newspaper called The Justice. He had to write for many other publications against his wish and taste only to earn a little money. He recalls in the memoir:
Money was a big worry. When a cheque was delayed, it caused all kinds of embarrassment for me. My budget was precisely framed. I had to find money to pay for my share of experiences at home, also for face powder or soap that my wife would ask for.
Financial constraints were always there. His father’s demise aggravated the situation, but he, together with his brothers, somehow was able to manage it. Narayan’s family lived in a rented house. His father did not seem to have afforded a house of his own. They have been asked to vacate the house after living in it for fourteen long years. It was difficult to adjust the family which extended with the passage of time to accommodate in a smaller house and with the limited income of Narayan and his brothers it was hard to meet the soaring rents of big houses. The problem was solved with the effort of Narayan, as one of his acquaintances referred his daughter’s house which was to be rented. It shows how he had always been responsible towards his family. Later on, even when he had his own house, he lived with his family in the rented house, using the new one as his writing retreat.
My Days elucidates storyteller Narayan’s life as a mixed bag, seasoned with different flavours. Something which is strikingly noticeable all throughout his memoir is that he made the utmost use of everything that came his way. Success did not come easily to him. His early novels did not receive much commercial success. But he began to be noticed by contemporary writers like Somerset Maugham and E.M Forster, a long lasting friendship was established with Graham Greene, and a spiritual relation was made with Paul Brunton. When Maugham visited Mysore in 1938, he wanted to meet Narayan. But ironically, no one in Mysore knew who the writer Narayan was and so the meeting did not take place. In his personal front also the demise of his wife was a massive set back. However, after much effort he was rejuvenated and it became a turning point for him. His erstwhile avoidance of the “tough old classics” and Tamil literature, as suggested by his uncle, though forgotten, might have remained at the back of his mind and he got interested on those in the later period. In the year 1968 he was fascinated by Kamban and wrote a prose narrative on Ramayana and translated the Mahabharata. His works began to be published in America in the year 1953. After his daughter’s marriage in the year 1956, he started travelling. Till then his financial condition became quite stable. In the concluding chapters of the memoir Narayan, talks about his “non-literary interests, “arm-chair” agriculture”, which he found to be extremely engrossing. He indulged himself in farming, though not directly but through an expert, after making a lot of study about it as he was motivated by the idea of “back to the soil”. Unfortunately he realised that agriculture did not prove to be a profitable venture for him. In between, he carried out some activities to render a little contribution towards the society. He wrote letters to the newspapers about “corruption and inefficiency” of the administration and endeavoured to save the trees of Mysore. A time was reached when he transformed into a complete professional with “books, agents, contracts and plenty of letter writing”. The rest of his time he spent at his daughter’s place in the company of his grandson.
All throughout, Narayan lived a life of simplicity. Nothing got into his head, neither failure nor success. He was always fascinated by the lives of ordinary men and women, their commonplace existence with all sorts of tastes and tests of life. He appears to have been shaped by the enormous credence of the innate tradition of India, resulting in a balanced individuality, little subdued yet resolute. The credit of bringing Indian writing in English to the greater world goes to him. His creation of the fictional town of Malgudi, which was purely experiential, was duly identified by readers with its characters and incidents. Conferred with many awards, including Sahitya Akademi (1961), Padma Bhusan (1964) and Padma Vibhusan (2000) and honorary degrees by various universities, Narayan’s literary contribution has been recognised, both in India as well as in abroad. In the year 1989 he was appointed as the member of the Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. He lived till the age of ninety five. He expressed his desire to write another novel even while in his deathbed. In the year 2001 he took his last breath, bidding adieu to all his reader fans and providing a strong base for the contemporary Indian writers writing in English.
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Reference
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- Sarbani, Putatunda., R. K Narayan: Critical Essays (ed.), New Delhi: PHI Learning Private Limited, 2012.
- Rao, Ranga., R.K. Narayan. NewDelhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2004.
- Sinha, RCP., The Indian Autobiographies in English, New Delhi: Author House, 2013.
- Walsh, William. R.K Narayan: A Critical Appreciation. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Limited. 1983.
- http://theglobaljournals.com/paripex/file.php?val=April_2013_1366123296_945cb_84.pdf.
- https://csrags.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/review-of-my-days-autobiography-of-r-k-narayan/
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