Summary of English Essays (Literature)

Sunday, 6 October 2019

My Days by R.K. Narayan- summary

My Days

R.K. Narayan

R.K Narayan is one of the leading writers of Indian English Literature. The prose piece ‘My Days’ is an
extract from his autobiography My Days. In this part he talks about his infatuation over several girls and
his love for a woman and finally how it has ended up in marriage in a humoristic manner.

The beginning of the prose shows him as an immature one who falls in love with all the girls whom
he comes across. He begins in a funny way about his love sickness and his longing for love. In 1920’s the
society in which he was brought up was a strict one where boys and girls were segregated.  The books he
read prepared his mind to fall in love with someone, whereas his society restricted it. Due to this he
suffered with impossible love sickness. He fell in love with many but everything was one sided. Any girl
who looked at him immediately became his lady love. Thus he fell in love with a girl in green sari who
lived in the next street of the narrator. She was a sister- in –law of an engineer. He followed her everyday
and wished to do some engineering business. It might help him to have contact with her brother-in –law
and thus he could propose her. But suddenly the girl was not seen anywhere. Before falling in sadness,
the narrator found another lady love who used to stand on the terrace to dry her hair. She was not a
beautiful girl but he loved her. Later he realised that she was looking at all who pass by the street. This
made him to lose interest on her. Soon he found another girl who got his attention. She was going to
Maharani College and this too was a one-sided love. Though one-sided, such interest made him to feel
with purpose.
Among his friends, they discussed about girls and this created an urge for him to fall in love. This
took him to an extent of falling in love with a lady doctor, a British lady, who attended his mother. Later
he describes about his infatuation for a pen friend, who lived in England. Every week they wrote letters.
She wrote impersonal letters about her hobby and other things. Whereas, he wrote personal letters filled
with his emotions towards her. She objected to receive such letters from him but continued to write,
which encouraged him to write.

The narrator finally experiences the real love. In July 1933, he went to Coimbatore to drop his sister.
As he did not have any urgency to return, he stayed in his sister’s house for some time. There he got
glimpse of a girl and attracted towards her. She used to come out of her house only to fetch water from
the street pipes and returned home immediately. He loved her and longed to get full vision of her. Her
father, a school headmaster, was a friend of his sister’s family. The narrator became friendly with the
girl’s father. As they both loved books and literary matters, they became close. Every day he met the girl’s
father in the school campus and discussed about worldly affair.

One day when the girl’s father was chatting politics with him, the narrator finally announced his
love for the girl. Due to his societal constraints he could not express his love to the girl so he uttered his
desire to the girl’s father about marriage. The girl’s father was shocked and did not know to react. In his
society, only parents decide about marriages but here the narrator spoke directly to the girl’s father about
his interest towards the girl. Diplomatically the father said that this has to be consulted with the family
members and then the horoscope should be matched. Another day the girl’s father asked him what he
would do for living. This question has made the narrator to understand the headmaster’s interest on him.
As his work “How to write Indian Novel” got published recently in a famous magazine ‘Punch’, he
confidently boosted up about his promising carrier as a freelance writer. When the girl’s father asked
him to get some work in Bangalore with his father’s influence, the narrator rejected this idea by
explaining his economical principle. Neither his economic principle nor his expression of interest for the
girl in modern ways damaged his marriage proposal. His horoscope played a villain role in his life. As
they are from the conservative family, they bothered much about the matching of the horoscope. So the
headmaster rejected his proposal for the marriage. The narrator suffered with a feeling of love failure.
He could not eat food, stayed alone by rejecting other’s company. He used to go for walk in the evening
without looking at others and by avoiding the direction of the street tap. He even self-dramatised the
situation which was viewed with sympathy by others. His sister tried to cheer him up in many ways. He
wrote a play named “The Home of Thunder” during that time which was a tragedy where all the
characters die. That drama reflected his sad mood.

The headmaster was moved by the narrator’s pensive mood. The headmaster discussed the
horoscope with his colleagues. Finally he sent the narrator to meet an old man Chellappa-Sir regarding
the horoscope match. The old man was shouting with anger that he is not Brahma to change the
horoscope. If they want to proceed with the marriage by leaving the matching of horoscope, they could
continue with that. But the position of the stars could not be altered by humans. Finally the marriage was
conducted grandly in spite of all the difficulties.

Sujaritha Saravanan at 23:20

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5 comments:

ShoneSunny 5 July 2020 at 18:51

Thank you mam for your post
Reply

Unknown 25 November 2020 at 19:21

Nice
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DEEPAK KUMAR JENA 3 December 2020 at 05:56

Very authentic description
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Unknown 24 December 2020 at 04:49

Llr questions
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Dr.S.A.Grande (PHD) 3 February 2021 at 08:04

Well
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About Me
Sujaritha Saravanan
Dr. S. Sujaritha is at present working as Assistant Professor of English, Pondicherry University Community College,
Puducherry. Her Ph.D is on diaspora literature and Bakhtin’s theory of ‘chronotope’ and her research field of interests are
Postcolonialism and Feminism. She has published twenty four papers in national and international journals and
anthologies. Three more papers are accepted for publishing in national and international anthologies and journals. At
present she is working on diaspora writers.
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