“A Breath of Lucifer” - A Short Story by R. K. Narayan -1986- first published in Under The Banyan Tree and other Stories

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The Reading Life Guide to Getting Started in the Indian Short Story

R. K. Narayan on The Reading Life

R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001) should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.   I have read and posted on all his novels and several of his short stories.  Most of his work is set in Malgudi, India, a South East Indian city born in the literary works of Narayan.  My favourite novel, though I love them all, is A Tiger for Malgudi.  Short story lovers should start with the collection edited and introduced by J. K. Lumpari, Malgudi Days.  Lumpari calls him one of the greatest short story writers of the 20th Century.  I read this story in another collection Grandmother’s Tale and other Stories.  Buy Malgudi Days first.  

“A Breath of Lucifer” is set in The Malgudi Eye Clinic.  The narrator has just had eye surgery and his eyes are bandaged.  His family has hired a man to stay full time in the patient’s room, looking out for him.  The fun in the story is in the changing stories told by the caregiver and the thoughts the patient has, not being able to see.  The caregiver, he claims anyway, began his medical work in the army, in Burma.  He likes to talk a lot about his military days.  A woman comes in everyday to give the patient a sponge bath and the man impugns her character.  Something completely crazy happens at the end.

I still have at least twenty Narayan stories to read.  

You can watch episodes from  the very well done TV series, Malgudi Days on YouTube.  The stories are in Hindi, some have captions.  It is fun to read a story then watch the TV show based upon it.  

Mel u

"All Roads Lead to Malgudi...And Home" - An appreciation of R. K. Narayan by Meera Ekkanath Klein, author of My Mother's Kitchen: A Novel with Recipes - A Guest Post

Years ago I stumbled on a short story by the great Indian writer, R. K. Narayan.  I fell in love with his beautiful prose and his gentle wisdom.  I have so far read and posted on all of his novels and a number of his short stories.  I am happy to know there are still a good number of his short stories I have not yet had the great pleasure of reading.  Jhumpa   Lahiri in her introduction to an anthology of his short stories she edited, Malgudi Days, said he was one of the great short story writers of the 20th century.  Much of his work is set in a fictional city lovingly brought to life in his oeuvre, Malgudi. Malgudi is considered to be a South Indian town.  I think my favorite of his novels is A Tiger for Malgudi.  For sure Narayan  

should have gotten the Nobel Prize.

Today I am very honored to be allowed to share with my readers a very insightful essay by Meera Ekkanath in which she elegantly expresses her thoughts on R. K. Narayan and his city of Malgudi.

Bio of Meera Ekkanath Klein, author of My Mother's Kitchen:  A Novel with Recipes 

     Award-winning author, Meera Ekkanath Klein, deftly weaves her love of cooking and story-telling into an irresistible tale. My Mother’s Kitchen: A novel with recipes (2014, Homebound Publications) was selected as a Winner in the 2015 International Book Awards in the Multi-Cultural Fiction category. The book was also selected as Finalist in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards and in 2015 Beverly Hills International Book Awards, both in the Multi-Cultural Fiction category. She was one of 40 authors at the celebrated 2015 Authors on the Move fundraiser for the Sacramento Library Foundation dinner and auction.  She was featured on Capital Public Radio on April 2, 2015 and interviewed by host Beth Ruyak. She has participated in the Local Author Festival at the Sacramento Library and will be a presenter at the Great Valley Book Fest in October. She will also make presentations at the Woodland Friends of the Library annual meeting in June and at the Greenhaven/Pocket area Library in July. A former newspaper reporter and columnist, Klein, honed her writing skills in a busy newsroom. She mastered the art of Indian cooking in her own mother’s kitchen in the beautiful Blue Mountains or Nilgiris of south India. Klein currently lives in northern California and is completing a sequel to My Mother’s Kitchen, as well as a YA book based on Indian legends and mythology.

All Roads lead to Malgudi…and home!

By Meera Ekkanath Klein

At 15 I was an established anglophile in my literary tastes. I immersed myself in authors like G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, Jane Austen and William Wordsworth, to name but a few.  What made this unusual was that I was a teenager living in the beautiful Nilgiris or the Blue Mountains of south India in the late 1970s.

So naturally my writing reflected my reading. In one essay I described the gentle rolling hills of Yorkshire and the sweet English breeze in a seaside town. My wise English teacher suggested that I write about what I knew. Write about what you see every day, she suggested. But who would want to read about the egg seller at our market or the dhobi (washer men and woman) village?

Try reading this book, she said, thrusting a copy of The Vendor of Sweets at me. The book was by some gentleman named R.K. Narayan. But he’s Indian, I protested. Try it, she urged me.

So reluctantly I opened the book and started reading. Soon I was immersed in the village life of Malgudi, a fictional place in south India.  In this village I would meet all kinds of characters and some even reminded me of my own cousins and family.  Malgudi was familiar and exotic at the same time. Mr. Narayan’s writings opened the door to a whole new world, one that was just outside my front door.

The writing was simple, direct and unassuming. I can still remember how much sense the writing made to my teenage self. Even the egg seller would find a role in Mr. Narayan’s story, I remember thinking.  As a teenager who distained all things “old,” the story about Jagan, a vendor of sweets, was timeless and relevant. I could relate to the contrast and struggles between Jagan and his son Mali. Even though I was an obedient daughter, I could feel the constraints of my life and I desperately wanted to break free, but didn’t have a clue how to do it. The Vendor of Sweets embodied my life to some extent and that ageless struggle between young and old. 

Like Mali in The Vendor of Sweets, I would eventually find my way to America. I would go on to read other Indian writers but Mr. Narayan’s writings resonated with me on a very deep level.  So it isn’t surprising that decades and decades later I would create a fictional hilltop town of Mahagiri in my own writing.

Realism is tempered with decency and goodness in my fake town. I wanted readers to feel safe and secure in the confines of Mahagiri, just as I felt when I stepped into the streets of Malgudi all those years ago. I wanted readers to enter Mahagiri and feel a sense of homecoming—a place to put up their feet and stay awhile, perhaps with a cup of cardamom tea.  Maybe we can’t go home in real life but we can in our imagination. So welcome to Mahagiri and Malgudi!

THE END

I offer my great thanks to Meera for her wonderful guest post.

You can enter the serene world of Mahagiri in award-winning author Meera Ekkanath Klein’s debut novel, My Mother’s Kitchen: A novel with recipes. Find out more at: http://meeraklein.com/

I will be doing a post on her wonderful novel, and maybe I will get very bold and try a few recipes, soon.

Mel u

"A Breath of Lucifer" by R. K. Narayan (1956? First Published in The Hindu Times)

R. K Narayan is one of my favorite writers.  I have read and posted on eleven of his novels and a number of his short stories.  J. K. Lumpari considers him one of the masters of the short story.  Most of his stories are set in the imaginary community of Narayan's creation, Malguidi, India.  Older residents of India may recall the wonderful TV series  based on his stories, Malguidi Days, many can be found on YouTube.  

One of Narayan's evident objectives was to portray people in lots of different jobs.  Today we meet Sam.  He makes his living as an attendant for the sick in hospitals.  He stays full time in a patient's room.  His current client has undergone eye surgery and is eagerly awaiting the removal of coverings over his eyes.  Sam is always talking about his time working as a medical aid in numerousGra military campaigns but he cannot quite recall any exact wars or battles he worked.  He rarely stops talking, complaining about the nurses and second guessing the doctors.  Something very unexpected happens, either the patient has a very vivid dream or Sam without authorization took him outside for a drinking party.  We learn Sam is not a perfect saint, he learned to drink while working for the military, and even though married has a long term acquaintanceship with one of Malguidi's "public women", a euphemism for what it sounds like.

This is for sure a fun story.  There is a magical quality to the prose style of Narayan I cannot quite describe.  I read this in an anthology of his short stories, Grandmother's Tale and other Stories.  It is a good collection though I would suggest you buy first the anthology his  of short stories edited by J. K. Lumpari, Malguidi Days.

"The Judge" by R. K. Narayan (reprinted in Grandmother's Tale and Other Stories)

R. K. Narayan is one of my very favorite writers.  I have read all of his novels and a number of his wonderful short stories, mostly set in the imaginary south India community of Malguidi. 

A recurring Malguidi character known as "the teller of tall tales" is talking about his time working as a judge.  One of his many family members had seen a notice advising experienced journalist, as he was, to apply for a job as a judge.  We are along for the very interesting successful  job interview.  

The heart of the story is multi suspect murder case.  The judge decides guilt and punishments, there is no jury.  A man was pulled of a full passenger bus and beaten to death.  Of course the driver and the passengers claim pepper was thrown in their eyes preventing them from seeing anything.  The judge knows they are just afraid to testify.  There are seven defendents and the case is being dragged on by the defense attorney.  The judge wants give some defendents the death penalty and msybe let the younger ones go but he cannot quite make up his mind.

The ending is hilarious and very easy to visualize.

The editor of The Grandmother's Tale and other Stories did not include the orginal date and place of publication.  They should have

Mel u

"Grandmother's Tale" by R. K. Narayan (1994)

A Story Based on Family History.   Among the Very Last Work of R. K. Narayan

R. K. Narayan is one of my favorite writers.  I have read and posted on thirty five of his works.  His failure to win a Nobel Prize is a travesty. 

Narayan stopped writing in 1994 when his daughter died of cancer.  "Grandmother's Tale" is one of the very last of his works.  It is not set in his imaginary community of Malgudi but draws from his own families history.  The story takes Narayan, he identifies his role in the story, back to his days when he was at home living with his parents.  "Grandmother's Tale" is structured as if it were the author's grandmother telling him a story about her mother, his great grandmother.   It is a beautiful story that shows us much about the nature of arranged marriages and the status of women in society in the early 20th century.   We also come to understand how impacting being married prior to puberty was on the lives of girls. Once a girl is married, which can be at age ten or less, she can no longer go out to play among her peers but must stay inside as befits a married woman. Education stops.   The marriage, as we learn in the narrative, is not customarily consummated until the girl reaches puberty and their is a separate ceremony marking this.   

The story is not just your standard one person telling another a story narrative.  There is a lot of interaction between Narayan and his grandmother.  The way the story is told tells a lot about the relationship.  It was, I admit, fun to see Narayan told off by his grandmother!  I don't want to tell the story but it is really a captivating account of a marriage which shows the hidden strength of the grandmother and her willingness to be ruthless, some would say cruel and deceptive to preserve her marriage. We do see her travel across India alone in search of her runaway fiancé.   It was fascinating to see her revert to a proper subservient home bound wife once she got what she wanted.

As far as I know this story can only be read in The Grandmother's Tale and Other Stories.

Narayan, Wife, and Daughter

Mel u

"Guru" by R. K. Narayan. (1972). A post in observation of his 108th Birthday

R. K. Narayan is one of my favorite writers.  I have, I believe though maybe I have missed some, read and posted on all his novels and a number of his short stories.  Jhumpa Lahari classifies him among the greatest of 20th century short story writers and, for what it worth, so do I.  English was not the first or primary language of most of his first target readers.  (Many of his works were first published in the Hindu Times.). I lack the ability to describe it but there is something wonderful about his prose.   Most of his fiction is set in the imaginary south Indian city of Malguidi.  Yesterday Google Indian observed the occasion of his 108th birthday with a Doodle.  My posts on Narayan have been recommended by The Economic Times of India.  Narayan should have gotten the Nobel Prize.

To those wanting to read the short stories of Narayan I highly recommend a collection of thirty stories edited and elegantly introduced by Jumpa Lahari, Malguidi Days.

"Guru", set in Malguidi, is a kind of rambling story centering on a sixty year old married man with two grown and themselves married daughters.  He is a government agent.  When a poor person needs to apply for help from a government program, the man decides if they will get aid or not.  Tipping is expected based on how much aid you will get.  It is no huge income but it allowed him to support his wife and daughters.  His wife is always complaining about how cheap he is and he complains of her indifference to his lifetime of labor for his family.  We learn about the daughters, their spouses and their arranged marriages.  He regrets he has no son to light his funeral pyres.  His brother has five sons so he legally adopts his twelve year old nephew, to disastrous results.

"Guru" was fun to read.  It gives a good picture of a marriage, one of the things Narayan is very good at.  I read it in a Harper E a Book, Grandmother's Tales and other Stories.  Stick for your first venture into his short stories to Jhumpa Lahari's collection of his work.  

Mel u

"The Hungry Child" by R. K. Narayan (1967)

R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001,India) is a great master of the short story and is the author of thirteen wonderful novels.  Almost all of his work is set in an imaginary town in South India, Malgudi.  Older readers may recall the many TV shows based on his stories.  Consistently for years my posts on his work have been among the most viewed items.  I am proud that my posts on his work have been endorsed by The Econmic Times of India.  In her introduction to a collection of his short stories, Malgudi Days, Jhumpa Lahari speaks of his beautiful deceptively simple prose and groups him with the great short story writers of the last century.    I strongly urge anyone into the short story begin reading Narayan's work.  

"Hungry Child" first appeared, as did much of Narayan's work, in The Hindu Times, Lahari has kindly included this not previously anthologized story in Malgudi Days. A man is at a giant festival and hears a loud speaker announcement saying a seven year old boy has been separated from his patents and is at the command center.  On an impulse the unmarried childless sign painter with an on but mostly off relationship with a woman who advocates stringent birth control as a way of helping Indian society decides to claim the boy as his son.  The boy seems hungry so he gets him some food. He begins to wonder if the boy was abandoned and starts to imagine himself as the father of the boy.  Intermingled with this he cannot help think about his girl friend Daisy, the birth control advocate.  He tells himself if she had more old fashioned attitudes they would be married and he would already have at least two children.  He has been not working hard at his sign business lately but he tells himself that he must get serious if he is to adopt the boy.  They wander through the massive crowd and the boy keeps wanting more food.  Then he yells out "Dad" and runs up to a couple.  The man cuffs his ear and tells the boy "you have made us sick with worry".  His mother hugs him.  The man's fantasy is shattered.

In just a few masterful pages Narayan lets us see deeply into the man, his loneliness and cravings.  

"Engine Trouble" by R. K. Narayan (1972)

R. K. Narayan should have won the Nobel Prize.   I have, I think, read and posted on all of novels and a number of his short stories.  Many of his works of fiction are set in the imaginary community of Malgudi, India.   Narayan wrote in English, publishing many of his stories originally in The Hindu.   There was a long running TV series (in Hindu) based on his stories, Malguidi Days.  You can watch many of the episodes, including this story, on Youtube.

"Engine Troubles" opens as a traveling carnival has stopped for a few days in Malguidi.  Narayan does a very good job in just a few paragraphs letting get a feel for the impact of the carnival.  The story is told in the first person and it was great when our narrator won a lottery.  The prize was a road engine.  If you are like me, you might not be sure what a road engine is but it is not for sure a car or a truck.  It is a steam roller used in paving.

Once he wins his troubles really begins.  He has to pay rent to the city to leave it on the vehicle, nobody can be found who knows how to drive it.   He thinks maybe he can sell it but nobody seems to want it.  A friend offers to let him store it for free so he hires an elephant and fifty porters to move this very heavy road engine.  This goes terrible wrong, the elephant injures a knee and a wall gets wrecked.  His wife is getting mad and may leave him because of all the expenses.  Things seem like they just keep getting worse for him.  

The story ends well.  "Engine Troubles" is not one of his more famous stories but it was a lot of fun to read.  I read this story in an excellent anthology of Narayan's short stories edited and introduced by Jhumpa Lahari.  Lahari, as do I, considers Narayan one of the twentieth century masters of the short story.  

The Financial Expert by R. K. Narayan, 1952

R. K. Narayan should have won the Nobel Prize.  I have posted on several of his novels and a number of his short stories.  There is no bad Narayan, as far as I know any way. Older people from Indian have probably seen TV shows and movies based on his work.  Lots of TV shows based on Malguidi stories can be found on YouTube. J. L. Lahari (as do I) considers him one of the greatest of 2Oth  century short story writers.  My favorite of his novels is A Tiger for Malgudi (if you are new to Narayan start with this), the consensus best novel is The Guide.  I don't disagree but A Tiger for Malguidi with one hilarious turn of event after another will hook you on his work. His prose is exquisite and his people are real.  If you like short stories, the volume to have is the collection edited and introduced by J. L. Lahari, Malguidi Days. 

My posts on R. K. Narayan have been endorsed in The Ecomonic Times of India and are viewed every day by people all over the subcontinent.  

Most likely only those really into Narayan will read The Financial Expert. It is set in Malguidi, the city, considered to be in South India, created by Narayan.  Every novel and story reveals a bit more about the city, normally by focusing on someone in a job.  There is even a story about one of the cities pickpockets.  This novel is about a man who brokers loans and gives financial advise to people who are below the social or economic level of the customers Malguidi banks want.  

Narayan is great at making families come to life.  Almost all his characters have arranged marriages and expect the same thing for their children.  In just a few lines he can lay out the dynamics of a marriage.  The one child, a son, of this family is the very spoiled apple of his parents eye.  He is greedy, demanding and a general pain.  Married to a bride his father picks, at 18 as normal, he is an abuser and likes hookers (or as they are called in Malguidi, "Public Women".  Before marrying he kind of ran away to the bigger city of Madras and did work way below his station until his father drug him home.  There is a terrible just totally of the wall episode I will leave unspoiled.  It flabbergasted me and I loved it.  

This is a book for fans.  Start where I suggested.  

"Fellow Feeling" by R. K. Narayan

"Fellow Feeling" by R. K. Narayan (1961, 13 pages)

March 1 to March 31

An Indian Master of the Short Story Visits ISSM3

1906 to 2001

Chennai, Tamil Nadu

India

Because of all of the posts still in the works I am keeping ISSM3 open until April 7.  You still have plenty of time to participate and I hope you will-e mail me if interested

In The Lonely Voice  -  A Study of the Short Story (1963) Frank O'Connor said the Irish short story was in danger of being surpassed by Indian writers.   He does not say who he meant but he had to have had R. K. Narayan in mind.  I have read and posted on eight of novels and a good numbers of his short stories.  Jhumpa Lahiri in her introduction to a collection of his short stories she edited lists what she sees as the greatest short story writers of all time.  From Ireland we have Frank O'Connor and from India R. K. Narayan, from America she suggests Flannery O'Connor.

  In the Q and A sessions done so far this month, several people list Lahiri as among their favorite contemporary short story writers.  R. K. Narayan wrote exactly the kind of short stories Frank O'Connor admired.  His prose style has a bit of an odd cadence, that of someone writing in a second language, but once you get used to it you will crave more.  Like many other short story writers, he wrote within the confines of the space and requirements of magazine editors.

R. K. Narayan matters a lot to me as a reader and as blogger.  More people come to my blog to read posts on him than any other writer I have posted on, with Katherine Mansfield a close second.  The Economic Times of India has endorsed my posts on him to their high status readers.  Through this I further developed my interest in short stories of the Indian subcontinent and discovered lots of amazing writers.  People from all over the world came to my blog to read these posts, not because they are the best posts but because they are the only ones on these stories.  Indirectly through this I was asked to join the board of directors of a new very exciting literary journal, The Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts.  So this is why Mr. Narayan is joining us today.  New short story writers should read his stories and learn how he creates characters we care about and a real world in a town he created, Malgudi.  (You can watch the TV series of a few years ago based on that in Youtube-even the ones in Hindi are really enjoyable.)   Sometime later in the year I am planning to devote six weeks to the Indian short story (at least) and I will post more on him then, for sure.

"Fellow Feeling" is set in a third class compartment on a train in India.  There car is not real crowded.   Our lead character is a Brahmin, once the ruling elite of India, near him is a man sleeping in his spot on the train.  Then a loud mouthed bully gets on the train and the fun begins.  The man at once hates the Brahmin because of old caste resentments. He blames the Brahmins, who are not supposed to eat meat, for driving up the prize of meat by buying it in secret.   The argument between the two men shows the effects of the decline in the caste system and its lingering power.  The conversation is really a lot of fun to read as the man goes on an on attacking the Brahmins.  Soon things advance and it comes close to a fight.  I will leave the rest of the story untold.

Narayan really makes us feel we are on a third class compartment on the train.  A lot of his stories are about two people seeing the same events in a different way and this story also is about that.  But really it is just a slice of small town life in India 1962 or so.  His characters are perfect, we even understand where the bully is coming from.  

Mel u

Waiting For Mahatma by R.Narayan

Waiting  for Mahatma by R. K. Narayan  (1955, 137 pages)

A Very Powerful Political Novel

Gandhi Comes To Malgudi

Indian Literature Posts


The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project


I think it took a great deal of real courage to write and publish Waiting  for Mahatma in 1955.    The novel, set largely in his fictional city of Malgudi India, begins around 1939 and ends in 1947, just before the partitioning of India.    


So far I have posted on 31 of Narayan's (1906 to 2001-India)  short stories and four of his sixteen novels.    (There is background information on him in my prior posts.)     Waiting  for Mahatma centers on a young man named Sriram who lives with his grandmother.   He is in love with and wants to marry a young woman who is involved with Mahatma Gandhi's movement to achieve Indian independence and this draws him into becoming  active himself.


Big news comes to Malgudi.   Ghandi is coming for a speaking engagement.    The town leaders are thrown into a frenzy of planning.   It is decided that Ghandi will stay in the mansion of the wealthiest man in Malgudi.   When Ghandi arrives, he decides that instead he wishes to stay in the home of a street sweeper.   This produces great turmoil and debate but there is no going against the word of Ghandi, at least publically.   One of the very interesting things in the novel was seeing that not every one revered Ghandi even though everyone is supposed to.    Sriram's grandmother saw him just as someone who would get her grandson in trouble, and she was sure right on that.   Others thought he was working behind the scenes with the British to get himself made the Emperor of India.    It was a bit amazing and shocking when Ghandi appears as a character in the novel.   Narayan makes seem human and more than human.   Just the few speeches he makes show an almost transhuman wisdom.   For example he told the Indians for them to become independent with their hearts full of bitterness to each other was worse than staying under the British.   Narayan lets us feel we know a little bit like what it must have felt like to be in Ghand's  presence.   


There is just a huge amount in this novel.   Reading it for sure deepened my meager understand of Indian history.   Sriram ends up in prison and we endure this time with him.   When he gets out of prison he does not know if WWII is over or if India has become independent (the time of his release is early 1947).    Narayan ends the novel (he is brilliant at ending his fictions-not an easy thing to do) in just a shocking event that took so much sheer nerve to include in his book.


This novel is beautifully written.   I was interested in and liked all the central characters.   Maybe the character of the girl friend of Sriham could be a bit more filled out but maybe not.    The grandmother is just a marvel.   You can tell she is just one step away from calling Ghadhi a pompous fraud but she always catches herself.   


This is a really good novel.   I totally endorse it  for all and see it as must reading for those into literature about the era of the British Raj and the struggle for Indian Indepence.   Narayan brings cosmic events down to the streets and homes of Malgudi in a brilliant and loving fashion.


The next of his works I will read will be The Financial Expert.


Please share your experience with Narayan with us.   


Mel u

Swami and Friends by R. K. Narayan

Swami and Friends by R. K. Narayan (1935, 78 pages)

  School  Days in Malgudi

The Reading Life R.  K. Narayan Project

Indian Literature

Swami and Friends is R. K. Narayan's (1906 to 2001-India) first longer work of fiction.    I began reading Narayan with the title story in his 1947 collection of short stories, The Astrologer's Day and Other Tales.    I then happily read the other 29 stories in the collection.    I agree with Jhumpa Lahiri in classifying Narayan among the great short story writers of the 20th Century.     (There is background information on Narayan in my prior posts).     Most of his fiction is set in the imaginary town of Malgudi, India.   Each story is a completely stand alone work but the more you read, the more you understand the world of Malgudi.    As I read the short stories and then The Man Eater of Malgudi I thought, "there is a good TV series in these stories" and then I found out there have been numerous TV shows, series, and movies made based on the world of Malgudi.    All of his stories are written in English and have their own beautiful rhythm.   

Swami and Friends  centers on a boy in a private school.   This book is really one that should be read by those into Asian colonial fiction as it shows how the teachers try to turn the students away from the religion they were born into toward the religion of the English, Christianity.    The teachers (all Indians themselves) mock the religion of their students, equating it to idol and devil worship.    It was great to see the students fight back against this.   It is an all boys school (as I guess there were no mixed school) that is run as a profit making enterprise.    Some of the teachers are very dedicated, some oppose British rule and some totally adopt an attitude of complete servility in the hope it will allow them to advance.   We see concerned parents at school conferences,  we get to listen in as couples talk about their hopes and concerns for their boys,  and we get to hear a speaker demanding Independence for India.   

The dominant passion of the boys is cricket.   It was a lot of fun to see them form the Malgudi Cricket Club and watch their big game against another school.   

Narayan is a master at making people come to life in just a few sentences.   He is great at depicting relationships.   We see the shifting balances of power among the school boys (this may be a commentary on Indian politics of the 1930s). Malgudi might not be Bonbay but it is not isolated from politics.    There is real passion in this speech by an opponent of British rule who is trying to stir the emotions of the people of Malgudi  and I think it took courage to include it in Swami and Friends:


"We are slaves to-day,' he shrieked, 'worse slaves than we have ever been before.

Let us remember our heritage. Have we forgotten the glorious periods of Ramayana This is the country that has given the world a Kalidasa, a Buddha, a

Sankara. Our ships sailed the high seas and we had reached the height of

civilisation when the Englishman ate raw flesh and wandered in the jungles, nude."

Parts of this speech are beyond the understanding of Swami and his friends but they do understand this:

"'Just think for a while. We are three hundred and thirty-six millions, and our

land is as big as Europe minus Russia. England is no bigger than our Madras

Presidency and is inhabited by a handful of white rogues and is thousands of miles

away. Yet we bow in homage before the Englishman!"

Swami and Friends also deals directly with conflicts between Hindus (as Swami and his friends were) and people of the Islamic faith.   Of course Narayan did not know in 1935 of the millions of deaths that the Partition of India would produce but he knew there was a deep malaise along a religious divide even in Malgudi.

"He is a nice Mohammedan, belongs to our class.' 'In the Board High School?'

There was just a suspicion of a sneer in his tone. Swaminathan preferred to ignore

this question and continued, 'He has a bicycle. He is a very fine Mohammedan,

calls Mohammed of Gazni and Aurangazeb rascals.'

'What makes you think that they were that?'

'Didn't they destroy our temples and torture the Hindus? Have you forgotten

the Somnathpur God? . . .'

'We brahmins deserve that and more,' said Rajam. 'In our house my father

does not care for New-Moon days and there are no Annual Ceremonies for the

dead.' 

There is a lot in this rich book I have not covered.    Narayan is great with conversations and relationships.    Swami and Friends ("Swami" is the name of the boy the story centers on) is easy to read and follow.    I like his prose style a lot.    This is a delightful funny book  from which there is a lot to be learned.

I would put it as near must reading for those interested in fiction centering around issues related to the British Raj.

I was sent this work and three other novels by Narayan by a very kind reader in New Delhi who wishes not be named.   I think I will next read The Printer of Malgudi.,

Please share  your  experience with Narayan with us.

Mel u