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R. K. Narayan: The Guide (1958) Born Kasipuram Krishnaswami in 1907 in the Tami

R. K. Narayan: The Guide (1958) Born Kasipuram Krishnaswami in 1907 in the Tamil-speaking city of Madras,in southern India, R.K. Narayan spent most of his life in Mysore City, where Kannada is the dominant language. Though fluent in both languages, he chose to write in English, the language in which he had been educated. An acknowledged master, his distinguished writing career spanned seven decades of the 20th century from Swami and Friends (1935) to The Grandmother’s Tale (1993) with many works translated to fourteen languages. A famous writer and friend, Graham Greene, suggested the title of his first novel and facilitated its publication in England. Narayan resist being called “modern.” His prose is simple and his storytelling direct. A young man, he fell in love with Rajam, a young woman and had their marriage arranged. An astrologer predicted doom for their match, but Narayan paid another astrologer to give a favourable view. Five years after, Rajam died of typhoid fever and left him heartbroken. His devotion to her is depicted in the partly autobiographical novel, The English Teacher (1945). He is devoted to their only child and daughter, Hema. His essays reveal a keen interest in contemporary events. Next Sunday (1960) and Reluctant Guru (1974) contains some of his best collection of essays, and the best among them in A Writer’s Nightmare (1988). Waiting for the Mahatma is about Ghandi. Swami and Friends is a satire of his British ruled education at a Christian mission school where teachers can freely ridicule Hindu gods. He dismissed the British from his fictional world.as he reacted to the ”British Raj” with comments in the New York Times article entitled “When India Was a Colony. The India of his writings is just the India, a land rich and complex worth exploring. Of most Indian writers, Narayan is said to be the most Indian, staying close to home most of his life. His fictions are set in the fictional world of Malgudi, partly based in Mysore but with its own characteristics. His settings has been compared to Thomas Hardy’s Wessex or William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, but Narayan says he simply invented a town fit for his stories. .The place is a typical small South Indian city big enough to have a variety of petty industries and variety of characters, but small enough for people to know each other. His first three Malgudi novels were autobiographically based. The Dark Room, in which he tried to explore the plight of a woman trapped an unhappy marriage was considered a failure; so he returned to portraits of women struggling for independence as in The Guide (1958) and The Painter of Signs (1976). Narayan has been criticized for relegating women to marginalized, stereotyped roles. Like Tagore, Narayan was fascinated by women who are creative, individualistic, rebellious and who rejected traditional restrictions and social roles. Narayan’s main characters are men: imaginative but unsophisticated, .impulsive, excitable, easily influenced and ultimately self-destructive. Example is Margayya, title character of The Financial Expert (1952). He is a half conman and half fool who uses schemes to enrich himself. My Days: A Memoir (1974) is about his early life, and Mysore: A Travel Record (1946) and The Emerald Rouse (1978) are travel guides. The Guide is Narayan’s most famous and widely discussed novel, translated into Indian languages. His inspiration for writing the story is told in My Days. A practicing Hindu, meditating daily and believing in the supernatural, he was not fanatical nor even devout. The “holy men” in his works are rascals. While writing The Guide, he kept a journal of reactions to America published in My Dateless Diary: A Journal of a Trip to the United States in October 1956 (1960), in which he satirizes Westerners as he satirizes Indians in his fiction. . The novel is unique in narrative structure. The tale begins near its ending as the protagonist , Raju, tells a villager named Velan the story of his life. The novel shifts back and forth between the biographical account and the problem in which he is trapped by peasants who treat him like the Brahmins. The plot is fairly straightforward: childhood, career as shopkeeper and tour guide, relationship with dancer Rosie, jail, reluctant spiritual guide and miracle worker. Raju has something in common with its author, Narayan. Both are poor students at school. Both are tourist guides, both view the behaviour of others through a comic lens, are self-deprecating, are story tellers who prefer invention to research, .Though filled with comic incidents, it is more serious in tone than his other works. The train is introduced at the beginning. representing travel, tourism, money and excitement. Raju’s childhood memories are of his father as ambitious, gregarious and self-centered, qualities he has inherited, but he lacks the dedication and self-discipline to fulfil his ambitions. .Rosie is an orthodox dancer. Vaishnava tradition celebrates Krishna and Radha’s love which reflects mutual yearning for the human and the divine. Young women called devadasis dance the story of their romance through sensual movements called Bharata Natyam. Raju sells peppermints which gives a picture of laziness, irresponsibility and impulsiveness. Raju reminds readers of Chance, the half- witted hero of Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There: what he says is generally useless in itself, but provides an empty field to be filled in by the audience. However, Raju is silent more out of caution than lack of imagination for he can be talkative when he senses no danger. The story of Buddha is a reminder that death and suffering are universal. Raju was glad to be out of school but ironically, he is led into becoming a teacher. As “guide” who attracts followers, he is himself guided only by whim and external circumstances. He founded a new school and has a bookselling business. He tells the villagers to think for themselves, which is an easy way to escape responsibility for teaching them anything worthwhile. Raju notes that “the essence of sainthood lies in one’s ability to utter mystifying statements. Raju charms Rosie by flattering her about her dancing. He pursues Rosie, married to Marco, where adultery is viewed very seriously and can lead to a fatal end. Critics argue that their relationship is a warning against the dangers of illicit affairs, like in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and like Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. When Raju begins to have a proprietory interest in Rosie, their romance deteriorates. As Emma Bovary was destroyed by her extravagance, so Raju will be ruined by his greed for the wealth Rosie’s dancing generates. For Rosie, dancing is a form of devotion to her god; to Raju it is an erotic experience and a source of cash. In the village, Raju is adopted as holy man and his life seems an endless traditional celebration. With his perpetual feasting, he has not noticed that the region is suffering from severe drought and peasants are on the brink of death from hunger. Raju views the peasants’ disaster as an inconvenience to him. His attempt to fast to settle the rice riots was patterned after Mahatma Gandhi who fasted to quell the “communal violence” in India.. When Marco learns of his wife, Rosie’s affair, he dismisses her with “You can do what you please or go where you please” indicating lack of a husband’s affection for her. This contrast’ with Shakespeare’s Othello who strangles his wife out of jealousy . Marco’s jealousy, however, is not based on true affection. Raju treats Rosie not as a lover but as a wife, with fatal end to their relationship. Rosie’s dancing turns commercialized. Raju admits he lacks ordinary human decency. He is sent to jail for forgery, confirming his greed. Despite Raju’s unworthiness, Rosie continues to be generous toward Raju, trying to keep him out of prison. Rosie suggests a suicide pact, but she suspects he is likely to back out and let her die alone by saying he does not want to be burdened with disposing of her body. The Guide does not tell readers what happened at the end. Rather, it is an exploration of certain character and his relationship to those around him. Raju’s passive, vacillating character cannot lead to a definite conclusion. His shifting from one direction to th other cannot justify his existence or reveal the truth about hi,. Surely, ambiguity is part of Raju’s essence. The Journals of Kierkegaard: A Reaction to The Broken Engagement When Soren Kierkegaard, most influential thinker of the 19th Century, cancelled his marriage to Regina Olsen, a woman whom he dearly loved and daughter of a high- ranking civil servant in Copenhagen, everyone was shocked with disbelief. Subsequently, there ensued a relentless public persecution and indignation of public opinion against Kierkegaard. Various speculations were formed as to the cause, but the real reason behind the broken engagement remains a mystery up to the present. One speculation is that Kierkegaard might have wanted to provoke intense self-suffering so he would be more inspired to write. In one of his journal entries, he uploads/Litterature/ r-k-narayan-the-guide-1958.pdf