I have been trying to write a story for a long time. However lack of information on one of the main characters does not allow me to proceed. I decided to take this time and write about the god of fiction (according to me) – R.K.Narayan.
I have almost read all of his novels except a few, which I will read very soon. I have read some of his books numerous times, never getting bored of it. The characters are etched too deeply, that you start to visualize them in your mind. He does not focus too much on the appearance of the character except using words like she looked frail, slender and so on. He focuses more on the activities of the character which seems to define the personality.
I have been reading – Mr.Sampath for the third time (it is one of my favorite – a slightly philosophical book). He introduces a character – the future landlord of an editor of a magazine Srinivas. The character is introduced bathing in the street tap. Srinivas hears all the landlord’s tenants cursing the landlord as being miserly. Srinivas then proceeds to the landlord’s house along with him and finds his home very simple without any furniture. The landlord does not have any respect for families or children or has any emotional attachment to anything which is conveyed in about 3 pages of the narrative. This kind of description creates a deep impression in our mind. I have seen other Indian authors describe characters page after page and the characters still appear to be on a different planet and we do not find any emotional connect to them. Yet, Narayan effortlessly gives us insights into the beleifs of the character through their actions. Seemingly a very interesting part of Narayan’s writing is he does not talk about the appearance of the character, yet in our minds we have a very good image of how the character looks like.
I would rate two of his books as the best – probably because they have a strong female protagonist and deal with very deep topics of our existence – “The Guide” and “The Painter of Signs”. I have written a lot about “The Guide” (even though I have made few more discoveries about that book), let me write about “The Painter of Signs”.
“The Painter of Signs” is a book about a man called “Raman” who paints sign boards. He believes that marriage is a waste of time and that a human being should attribute time to more worthwhile pursuits. In the meantime he meets “Daisy” a birth control administrator, whose job is to control the population of a few areas. As the story progresses, we realize that Narayan is trying to explore the idea of sex and the impact it has on human beings through this book. Raman is a guy who thinks that thoughts of sex are futile and he should never think of it. Yet, he is constantly drawn to it. Again, Narayan does not merely say he is trying to take sex thoughts out of his mind. He describes a scene where Raman sees a woman washing clothes in the river and that Raman glanced at her thighs and found them enchanting. Raman then warns himself not to think of women as commodities. Narayan’s style somehow reminds me of the way we are asked to interview in present day. Merely saying that we are hardworking and have presence of mind is not suffice, rather we need to provide examples of where we have exhibited such behavior. Narayan’s books become succinct because he does not even devote a single page to descriptions except for Malgudi.
He picks a street from Malgudi for every character. Raman lives in Ellaman street, the TM lives in Kabir Street, Nagaraj lives in Kabir street as well, Sampath near New Extension and so on. The City of Malgudi somehow reveals itself with every novel of his.
In the Painter of Signs, Daisy is a very bold woman who is not ashamed to talk about sex in public. She educates villagers of safe sex practices. Raman is drawn to Daisy, who in Narayan’s mind is a very epitome of sex. She is described as a very fickle woman who changes her mind everyday (Similar to Jessie in Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya). We also learn that Daisy is extremely passionate , ambitious , unconventional and believes only in logic when we hear about her story of how she ran away from home. Raman is constantly struggling to make her accept his love for him.
The novel has many humorous moments. When he suspects that Daisy would have complained to the police about him . He uses the word “Daisyism” to describe his feelings for her. The instances where he tries to get her out of his mind by wearing glasses that made her look very disfigured.
It also has a lot of philosophical bits where he reads a message that says “This too shall pass” indicating his attraction to Daisy is temporary, seeming to indicate that sex is a very temporary thing. The novel ends with a line that says “Raman cycled towards Boardless, the place which had more stability and permanence ‘indicating that work or the duty towards the society is a permanent thing in the world
