A Tribute to RK Narayan

Unlike other fellow writers, he did not prefer to be distinguished himself as a social reformer or a precursor and much less a foreordainer. Nor was he be able to comment on the current literary trends of the world. Yet, his name is held in all reverence by a long list of littérateurs -- Graham Greene, John Updike, VS Naipaul, Mulk Raj Anand, Ved Mehta, Salman Rushdie, Norman Sherry, William Walsh, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Andrew Graham Yooll, etc. His works have been translated into 14 languages including Russian, Japanese and Hebrew and are read world over. Some of which have been made into films too.

The prestigious Brown University in US has nearly become a sort of literary private collection of Clinton plenipotentiary to most of his papers. Besides, American academic institutions like Mugar Memorial Library’s “Special Collection” at Boston University; the Smullyan, New York; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas, Austin; and the John J. Burns at Boston College, owns substantial materials on him.

Awards such as Padma Bhusan, AC Banson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Speaking Union’s are among other honours that were bestowed on him. However, with the passage of time, fellowships from the Sahitya Akademi, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters came his way.

Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Iyer Narayanswamy (Graham Greene had curtailed the 37-letter-name into RK Narayan!) is not unfamiliar to the Indian readers. As he passed away recently, it is worth recalling his absorbing life--crests and troughs, of a master storyteller who was arguably the finest Anglo--Indian novelist of the 20th century.

RK Narayan was born on October 10, 1906 at Chennapatna, a typical sleepy little town of Mysore. One of the distinguished traits of the Narayan family was his strict disciplinarian, conservative and absurdly opinionated father RV Krishnaswamy Iyer, who was the headmaster. The one of the story that made enough rounds, regarding his scrupulousness, was that he used to cane the young teachers if they came late to school.

At home, however, he demostrated quite differently. He hardly imposed any strictures on his four sons, especially in the choice of subjects either in school or college. Like Tagore’s father, he too refused to believe in the Indian education system. The same can be said about Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who rather aired his contempt on the education system per se and didn't send any of his three sons to school.

Of all one good thing which has come forth of his being the headmaster, was that his children had unlimited access to dabble with books and journals that the library used to subscribe and although his talented uncle TN Seshanchalam ignited Narayan’s curiosity in literature, the spark actually started catching fire when he used to spent long-hours in the school library.
Small wonder it was here that he acquainted himself with the works of Shaw, Belloc, Bennet and Chesterton and developed a nose for perspicaciousness, and later on cultivated a sense of critical judgement. It is ironic that being armed with such a background he could not qualify in his university entrance examination and that too astonishingly not once but twice because he failed in English!!

But the truth, however, as one biographer aptly registers is that Narayan was quintessentially a reclutant pupil prone to day-dreaming in class and thoroughly at sea at such subjects as arithmetic. “This two-year respite from formal education allowed him to read, muse, take long walks (miles together at a time), savour nature and try his hand at writing.” In the meantime, he would write stories and read them to his friends who were uncritical because he would offer them coffee and snacks.

Most of his earlier pieces were returned by the editors with rejection slips, which were “cold, callous, impersonal” and sometimes “mocking”. By then, Narayan not only knew the hardships a budding writer has to sustain with, but more cardinally, to be a writer, they are the indispensable requisites. Not surprisingly, his will to become a fulltime writer had never wavered, in fact, it was invariably running through his veins.