grandpa of indian writings in english and perhaps the first one to be celebrated abroad though he did not get million dollor advance that authors today get. i have been more fond of his non-novel writings. very british style english and his choice of words was so perfect that it reminded wodehouse at times. brother of RK Laxman, a celebrated cartoonist of Times of India, he has a subtle sense of humor which often made the writings lively.
One of my favorite writers of all times. I grow up reading his short stories and novels. Swami (his first) is my all time favorite followed by Malgudi Days.
I think that the current generation of Indian writers owe a lot to RK Narayan. No doubt that his style cannot be replicated but the legacy can be.
May his soul rest in peace.
Ahmadi yar, I know that you are an intellectual 'n all but there got to be some writers in the world that you haven't read. No? Com'on.
Rom, RK Narayan is often times compared to Chekov. And yes, there are a few writers whose work I am not familiar with (although I can’t think of any at this moment). To not to be familiar with RK Narayan’s work is like not knowing how to eat. Just in case if you already didn’t know that I am more passionate about literature than anything else. A good read is more orgasmic than any other experience. Very few writers have come close to Narayan in terms of configuration and conformation.
If you had gotten your butt in action and posted about someone who inspired you, we would all be familiar with who you read. Sadi Sobi is very upset with you. It’s still not too late to do it.
[QUOTE]
Originally posted by NYAhmadi:
**
I am more passionate about literature than anything else. A good read is more orgasmic than any other experience. **
Ur poor wife - Such harsh competition from a guy who aint even alive anymore. Poor thing
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/frown.gif
** If you had gotten your butt in action and posted about someone who inspired you, we would all be familiar with who you read. Sadi Sobi is very upset with you. It’s still not too late to do it. **
Nah don’t worry about it NYA, i don’t get upset easily. In all honesty i did have an ulterior motive behind asking Romaan to tell me about his inspirations. I won’t go into any details here cuz it’s a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng story. His failure = My success. Sam knows what i’m talking about
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif
Can I pick some1 else ???
Sobz, unless there are some deep kinky prospects, how can I let you 'lose'?
Quit it with the cyber rape and tell me if ur actually gonna post anything. I've got a list of people who i'd actually like to *choose *
Quit with your cyber rap and move on with your life, it sounds like a broken record now.
No thankyou. I refuse to let this game go to waste cuz of ur lazy antics. Just say Yes or No - How difficult could that be
So let me get this straight, you want me to write something on inspiration (I have yet to look up dictionary for that word) just because you say so?
Ok, u know something Romaan … don’t u dare post a thing. I knew it was way beyond ur intellectual capabilities.
Like I could give a sh*t
http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/rolleyes.gif
So NYA, do I have ur permission to pick some1 else ???
So NYA, do I have ur permission to pick some1 else ???
<<
Did not you read the ZZ's post girl. RK narayan is dead. I guess we would have to wait for your next inspirational article:)
Roman janab aithey intellectualism di gall ho rahi ay..tusi jao...te jaa ke gannay choopoo.
Like, since when you required permission of anyone to do anything here?
Rom, don't you ever get tired of playing god?
No Naik, but I do get tired of writing.
As a Mysorean born and bred, R.K. Narayan has been an important part of my childhood. I was so happy to see that frontline has dedicated it cover this week to him. See http://www.frontlineonline.com/fl1811/fl181100.htm
if you want more info.
MY AMERICA
Author: R.K. Narayan
Source: October 1985 issue of Frontline
At the American Consulates the visa issuing section is kept busy nowadays as more and more young men seek the Green Card or profess to go on a student visa and many try to extend their stay once they get in. The official handles a difficult task while filtering out the "permanents" and letting in only the "transients". The average American himself is liberal-minded and doesn't bother that more Indian engineers and doctors are swamping the opportunities available in the country possibly to the disadvantage of the American candidate himself.
I discussed the subject with Prof. Ainslee Embree of Columbia University who has had a long association with Indian affairs and culture. His reply was noteworthy. "Why not Indians as well? In course of time they will be Americans. The American citizen of today was once an expatriate, a foreigner who had come out of a European or African country. Why not from India too? We certainly love to have Indians in our country."
There are however, two views on this subject. The elderly parents of Indians settled in America pay a visit to them, from time to time (on excursion round ticket), and feel pleased at the prosperity of their sons or daughters in America. After a Greyhound tour of the country and a visit to Niagara, they are ready to return home when the suburban existence begins to bore them whether at New Jersey, or The Queens or the Silicon Valley neighborhood of California. But they always say on their return, "After all our boys are happy there. Why should they come back to this country, where they get no encouragement?"
EXASPERATION
Our young man who goes out to the States for higher studies or training declares when leaving home, "I will come back as soon as I complete my course, may be two years or a little more, but I will definitely come back and work for our country, and also help our family..." Excellent intentions, but it will not work that way. Later when he returns home full of dreams, projects, and plans, he only finds hurdles at every turn when he tries for a job or to start an enterprise of his own. Form filling, bureaucracy, caste and other restrictions, and a generally feudal style of functioning, exasperate the young man and waste his time. He frets and fumes as days pass with nothing achieved, while he has been running around presenting or collecting papers at various places.
He is not used to this sort of treatment in America, where, he claims, he could walk into the office of the top man anywhere, address him by his first name and explain his purpose; when he attempts to visit a man of similar rank in India to discuss his ideas, he realizes that he has
No access to him but can only talk to subordinate officials in a hierarchy. Some years ago a biochemist returning home and bursting with proposals was curtly told off by the big man when he innocently pushed the door and stepped in. "You should not come to me directly, send your papers through proper channels." Thereafter the young biochemist left India once for all. Having kept his retreat open with the help of a sympathetic professor at the American end. In this respect American democratic habits have rather spoilt our young men. They have no patience with our official style or tempo, whereas an Indian at home would accept the hurdles as inevitable Karma.
The America-returned Indian expects special treatment, forgetting the fact that over here chancellors of universities will see only the other chancellors, and top executives will see only other top executives and none less under any circumstance. Our administrative machinery is slow, tedious, and feudal in its operation, probably still based on what they called the Tottenham Manual, creation of a British administrator five decades ago.
LACK OF OPENINGS
One other reason for a young man's final retreat from India could also be attributed to the lack of openings for his particular qualification. A young engineer trained in robotics had to spend all his hours explaining what it means, to his prospective sponsors, until he realized that there could be no place for robots in an over-crowded country.
The Indian in America is a rather lonely being, having lost his roots in one place and not grown them in the other. Few Indians in America make any attempt to integrate in American cultural or social life. So few visit an American home or a theater or an opera, or try to understand the American psyche. An Indian's contact with the American is confined to his colleagues working along with him and to an official or seminar luncheon. He may also mutter a "Hi!" across the fence to an American neighbor while lawn mowing. At other times one never sees the other except by appointment, each family being boxed up in their homes
Securely behind locked doors.
After he has equipped his new home with the latest dishwasher, video, etc., with two cars in the garage and acquired all that the others have, he sits back with his family counting his blessings. Outwardly happy, but secretly gnawed by some vague discontent and aware of some inner turbulence or vacuum, he cannot define which. All the comfort is physically satisfying, he has immense "job satisfaction" and that is about all.
ENNUI
On a week-end he drives his family fifty miles or more towards another Indian family to eat an Indian dinner, discuss Indian politics, or tax problems (for doctors particularly this is a constant topic of conversation, being in the highest income bracket). There is monotony in this pattern of life. So mechanical and standardized.
In this individual, India has lost an intellectual or an expert; but it must not be forgotten that the expert has lost India too, which is a more serious loss in the final reckoning.
The quality of life in India is different. In spite of all its deficiencies, irritations, lack of material comforts and amenities, and general confusion, Indian life builds up an inner strength. It is through subtle inexplicable influences (through religion, family ties, and human relationships in general). Let us call them psychological "inputs" to use a modern terminology, which cumulatively sustain and lend variety and richness to existence. Building imposing Indian temples in America, installing our gods therein and importing Indian priests to perform the puja and festivals are only imitative of Indian existence and could have only a limited value. Social and religious assemblies at the temples (in America) might mitigate boredom but only temporarily. I have lived as a guest for extended periods in many Indian homes in America and have noticed the ennui that descends on a family when they are stuck at home.
Children growing up in America present a special problem. They have to develop themselves on a shallow foundation without a cultural basis, either Indian or American. Such children are ignorant of India and without the gentleness and courtesy and respect for parents, which forms the basic training for a child in an Indian home, unlike the American upbringing whereby a child is left alone to discover for himself the right code of conduct. Aware of his child's ignorance of Indian life, the Indian parent tries to cram into the child's little head all possible information during an 'Excursion Fare' trip to the mother country.
DIFFERING EMPHASIS
In the final analysis America and India differ basically, though it would be wonderful if they could complement each other's values. Indian philosophy lays stress on austerity and unencumbered, uncomplicated day-to-day living. On the other hand, America's emphasis is on material acquisitions and a limitless pursuit of prosperity. From childhood an Indian is brought up on the notion that austerity and a contended life is good. And also a certain other- worldliness is inculcated through the tales a grandmother narrates, the discourses at the temple hall, and through moral books. The American temperament, on the contrary, is pragmatic.
INDIFFERENCE TO ETERNITY
The American has a robust indifference to eternity. "Visit the church on a Sunday and listen to the sermon if you like but don't bother about the future," he seems to say. Also, "dead yesterday and unborn tomorrow, why fret about them if today be sweet?" - he seems to echo Omar Khayyam's philosophy. He works hard and earnestly, and acquires wealth, and enjoys life. He has no time to worry about the after-life; he only takes the precaution to draw up a proper will and trusts the Funeral Home around the corner to take care of the rest. The Indian who is not able to live on this basis wholeheartedly, finds himself in a half-way house; he is unable to overcome the inherited complexes while physically flourishing on the American soil. One may hope that the next generation of Indians (American-grown) will do better by accepting the American climate spontaneously or in the alternative return to India to live a different life.
R. K. NARAYAN
http://www.time.com/time/asia/arts/magazine/0,9754,128162,00.html
The Master of Small Things
V.S. Naipaul pays tribute to the life and work of the late author
BY V.S. NAIPAUL
In 1950, in my first term at Oxford, my father wrote and asked me to send him books by R.K. Narayan. The name was new to me. My father was a journalist. He also wrote stories, in English, about our rural Trinidad Indian community; and he was always on the lookout for Indian writers in whose work he might find encouragement. Narayan, writing in English about small people in a small south Indian town, would have been especially interesting for my father. I went to Blackwell’s, the Oxford bookseller, and in the secondhand section found three Narayan titles. One was The Bachelor of Arts.
Chandran was just climbing the steps of the college union when Natesan, the secretary, sprang on him and said, “you are just the person I was looking for. You remember your old promise?” “No,” said Chandran promptly, to be on the safe side.
I was immediately enchanted. I got to know that opening by heart, and for many years allowed it to play in my head when I was trying to summon up a new book, hoping that what would come to me would be as easy and direct and ironical, as visual and full of movement. Narayan has always struck me as a natural writer, someone who overcomes difficulties by not seeing that they exist; and perhaps it never occurred to him that the way he used English to describe provincial Indian life was magical.
All languages have their own heritage, and English (forgetting American for the moment) cannot easily escape its associations with English history, English manners, Shakespeare, Dickens, the Bible. Narayan cleansed his English, so to speak, of all these associations, cleansed it of everything but irony, and applied it to his own little India. His people can eat off leaves on a floor in a slum tenement, hang their upper-cloths on a coat stand, do all that in correct English, and there is no strangeness, no false comedy, no distance.
It is his merit and his charm that he wrote from deep within his community. There is, or used to be, a kind of Indian writer who used many italics and, for the excitement, had a glossary of perfectly simple local words at the back of his book. Narayan never did that. He explains little or nothing; he takes everything about his people and their little town for granted; there is no distance between the writer and his material. It is what still distinguishes him from most Indian writers. It is a subtle point, this question of the writer’s distance; but what can be said is that Narayan doesn’t put his people on display.
Narayan waited long for proper recognition. He was middle-aged when he began to travel outside India. In 1961 (when, ironically, he published an uninspired book) he was in London, at the end of some kind of foreign tour. A friend in the BBC Indian Service, knowing of my admiration for Narayan, quite unexpectedly brought him one evening to my flat in South London.
Narayan was 54; I was 29. I was moved by the graciousness of the older man in making the long journey. I would willingly have gone to see him; but perhaps it was his tribute to the New Statesman, for which at the time I was reviewing.
He was what his writing suggested: small and elegant, with the fineness of feature of the south Indian Brahman. He said he had been to see Graham Greene (about to publish A Burnt-Out Case), who had long championed his writing, and who had in 1937 written the foreword to The Bachelor of Arts.
I asked whether he liked Greene’s own work. He said, with the Indian affirmative swing of the head, that he did, very much. That was not easy to believe; it seemed more like friendship. But many years later—when I saw that Narayan was more than his comedy, that just below there was the Hindu idea of the world as illusion—it occurred to me that in Greene’s religious side Narayan must have found some little echo of his own.
He was not interested in Indian politics or Indian problems. He said in his calm way, “India will go on.” And that was unexpected, after the bad history of India, the invasions and the dispossessions, and after the rigors of the recent independence struggle. But it was in keeping with the mystical, almost Gandhian, idea of India he had laid out in 1949 in Mr. Sampath (in the United States, The Printer of Malgudi): the idea of an eternal India, ever healing, ever renewed. He had been too long away from India, he said. He was getting restless; he needed to go for his walks, to be among his characters.
Those small-town characters were the stuff of his novels. They were enchanting; but all their ambitions or philoso-phical inclinations were mocked by their modest means and their limited world. That was the basis of much of Narayan’s human comedy, and it was like an extension of his religious sense.
As Narayan had begun, so he continued. Fame, when it came, ensured that he remained the man of Malgudi. He couldn’t develop. He could only go for a walk and look for a new character.
In 1919, as a schoolboy of 12, Narayan took part in a pro-independence march in the city of Madras. His uncle rebuked him, and told him he was not to take part in politics; all governments were wicked. The story is in Narayan’s autobiography, My Days. And, while the British ruled, Narayan never wrote about the independence movement. Waiting for the Mahatma appeared only in 1955. I do not hold this against him. He might have been looking for peace, but Malgudi was also a delicate literary creation. Much depended on the notion of the timelessness of the petty life there, the true India just going on. The high feelings of the independence movement would have been too radical for it.
If Malgudi wasn’t able to hold the independence movement, it wasn’t able later to hold the great social changes, the general opening up, that began to come to India with independence. When Narayan tries to deal with that opening up, his fine humor can turn to a gross kind of satire. In one late novel, for instance, a Malgudi man returns from the United States with a Korean wife and a story-writing machine.
Narayan’s mystical idea of an eternal India is antihistorical. But without that idea, and its associated religious sentiments, he would not have arrived at his remarkable way of looking and his peerless humor. A more clear-sighted man would not have been able to filter out or make harmless the distress of India, as Narayan does in Malgudi. But then we wouldn’t have had the great early books.
I have grown to feel that he is in some ways like Gandhi. Gandhi’s first book, Indian Home Rule, published in South Africa in 1909 when he was 40, is full of religious idiocies. No one would have prophesied a future for him. But he had in a heightened way Narayan’s mystical idea of an eternal India; and look what happened to him. Narayan, with his glories and limitations, is the Gandhi of modern Indian literature.
thanks durango, i think naipaul has said it pretty well.