R K Narayan

R K NARAYAN (1906 –
2001)
 Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer
Narayanaswami
 Writer
 Best known for his fictional town of
Malgudi

 Trinity of Indian Writing In English:

Mulk Raj Ananad, Raja Rao, R K
Narayan
THEME
 He explores the everyday life of ordinary people
 In the ordinary he finds the extraordinary
 Novels and short stories are autobiographical in nature
 Explores social issues
 Conflict between tradition and modernity
  Written after the death of Narayan's
wife in 1939
THE ENGLISH  The emotions of Krishnan reflects
Narayan's own emotions on losing his
TEACHER wife (too early and too young)
(1945)  The sickness and the tragedy of it all
is also taken from his own experience
 Explores the themes of:
Life and death
Education
East – west conflict
(postcolonial sentiments)
Position of women
Marriage/ family
Life after death
Psychological impact
 Into to Krishnan – the English
teacher
 His philosophy of work (similar
to Gandhian philosophy of work
and life)
 One must not be idle
 One must live a disciplined life –
reflected in the disciplined life
he leads in the hostel
 He tries to improve his life as
well
 He believes in working for himself
 He teaches not because he loves Shakespeare or English but for the
Rs.100
 He doesn’t believe in the colonial superiority everybody else accepts
passively
 Mr. Brown reflects the English superiority
The way he is appalled that students cannot pronounce nor spell
correctly
The meeting that is called to address the issue

 Krishnan fights it (the superiority that is assumed by the English) right

from the beginning
 His life at the hostel comes to an end when his wife and daughter joins
him
MAN OF THE HOUSE – PHASE II OF HIS LIFE
 He now becomes a family man
 He hunts for the perfect home
 Susila – the wife
 Leela – the daughter
 They become the center of
Krishnan's existence now
 A devoted father and husband
 Emotional growth
 Krishnan's interactions with his wife stands witness to Narayan's
progressive attitude and mentality
 He assures his readers that women are meant for more and
better things than cooking cleaning and child-rearing
 Krishnan encourages his wife to read, write, think and have an
opinion
 Susila – the accounts keeper
 She believes in a simple and comfortable life
 She even has opinions on the number of kids she wants to have
EMOTIONAL GROWTH OF KRISHNAN
 He discovers the joy of being a husband and a father
 He becomes co-depended on his wife
 She takes care of everything at home
 He becomes a doting father and loving and accepting
husband
 His existence as the family man gives him joy
THINGS CHANGE
 Leela's third birthday – a new house – Krishnan's
father will loan them some money to get started
 Susila's saree – indigo saree – Krishnan's favourite
 House hunting starts
 They finally see a house they can consider – the
good day turns into an unforeseen tragedy
 Susila gets locked in in the toilet – everything
changes
THE DISEASE
 The happiness is cut short by Susila's illness
 She falls ill and she never recovers
 The tension, apprehension, anxiety that the family goes
through reflects Narayan's own experience
 He lost his wife Rajam to typhoid
 Krishnan nurses his wife as she wastes away
 The doctors stand by helpless
 The emotional distress Krishnan goes
through reflects the emotional distress
Narayan underwent during his own
wife's period of illness

 The death of Susila ends the first part of

the novel
KRISHNAN – WHILE SUSILA IS SICK
 He is the devoted husband
 By the wife's side always
 Feeling her, helping her
 He takes on the role of the caretaker and provider
 Yet she wastes away; she doesn’t get better

 It changes everything for Krishnan

  The opening of the novel has already
introduced us to the existing conflict in
Krishnan
 Once again, we see the rational side of
Krishnan rearing its head when the mother-
SPIRITUALITY – in-law invites a Swamiji to cast out whatever
EAST-WEST evil has taken hold of her daughter
CONFLICT  He is embarrassed by the Swamiji's presence
and further heightened when the doctor
comes to visit
 BUT the doctor has an interesting take – he
suggests a union of (western) science
and(Indian) spirituality
DEATH
 Western though and philosophy – death is the end
 Eastern philosophy:
Death is the beginning of something new
Death need not be the end

Susila's death – is not described in the novel; but the

funeral is
In Death – may not be final?
  The struggle to survive and
cope without a wife and mother
 Reflects Krishnan's
apprehension at bringing up his
daughter without letting her feel
the lack of a mother
THE THIRD PHASE  Resilience of the child: the child
PART bounces right back
 Except for a few queries
regarding her mother's where
abouts she doesn’t dwell much
on the disappearance of her
mother
  Krishnan on the other hand
cannot stand to even leave
his wife's room anymore
 They consider leaving the
house at the family's behest;
he changes his mind and
THE THIRD PART continues in the same house

 Religious believes:
 He is a rational man
  He is a rational man
 In fact, he did not put too much stock
in religious rituals
 When his mother-in-law brings the
Swamiji, exorcist, he is embarrassed
 But doctor humours him and suggests
RELIGIOUS a conjoining of science and Indian
mysticism
BELIEVES:  Yet the death of his wife, Susila opens
him up to the possibilities of life after
death
•KRISHNAN
 He is a rational man
 In fact, he did not put too much stock in religious rituals
 When his mother-in-law brings the Swamiji - embarrassed
 Yet the death of his wife, Susila opens him up to the
possibilities of life after death

 The novel introduces us the possibilities of a realm and an

understanding beyond what science can explain
WESTERN EDUCATION V/S INDIAN BELIEF

 Death as the end – western belief

 Death as the possibility of something new – Indian
philosophy

 Susila's death opens him to new possibilities

 When the boy delivers the letter, Krishnan is willing to
follow it up rather than dismiss it
 SPIRITUAL GROWTH
 There starts the spiritual growth of Krishnan
 Though slightly skeptical in the beginning, he later whole
heartedly gives himself to the possibilities of all that his
wife suggests through the letter
 By the end he is able feel his wife
 HOW DOES IT ALL START? - THE
SPIRITUAL GROWTH
 The kid who comes searching for Krishnan with the letter
 The letter takes him to a Sanyasi who can commune with the
dead and Susila has been talking to him

 Sanyasi is not an expert at it yet

 Krishnan is skeptical at first but soon becomes a believer
 His renewed communication with Susila breaths a new life into
him
 His rational side disappears quickly
  The communication with the other
side brings a lot of respite
 He never once ignores the needs
of the young daughter
 He is a hands-on father through
and through

BELIEVER?
 He finds time to contact his wife in
the nether world and it invigorates
him'
 At the same time, he meets the
headmaster of the school that
Leela volunteers to go to
SANYASI
 A man close to nature – he takes care of his own garden and
the grounds in the village
 He is chosen a medium to communicate with the living
world by the spirits
 He spends time away from the hustle and bustle of life and
communes with nature, its peace and serenity
 Susila communicates with Krishana and allays his mind – he
is with him always, even when he does not know it
 She has become their guardian angel
A WEIGHT IS LIFTED
 Susila is at peace with her existence in the other world
 She wants to help Krishnan find peace as well
 "Nowadays I went about my work with a light heart. I felt as if a dead
load had been lifted. The day seemed full of possibilities of surprise
and joy. … The sense of futility was leaving me." - he finds a new
lease on life

 In the reveling of possibilities, we are introduced to a new character –

the headmaster
THE HEADMASTER
 The headmaster runs a school that reflects the old system
of Indian education
 Children aren't cooped up in a building but is left free to
touch feel and consume the elements of nature
 Education is imparted via stories
 And the kids love it

 This is in stark contrast to the system under which Krishnan

himself teaches
THE SCHOOL
 The school offers an alternative to the English system
represented through the college
 The English system of education presented as an
oppressive system
 It makes us employees of the western system
 ‘I am up against the system, the whole method and
approach of a system of education which makes us morons,
cultural morons, but efficient clerks for all your business
and administrative offices.’ - Krishnan
 Colonial paranoia
THE SCHOOL
 The college – western thought
 The headmaster's school – eastern thought
 Headmaster's own family life is in stark contrast with
Krishnan's
 Headmaster's children run wild; wife is bitter – bitterness
springs from the material possession she feels entitled to
 She is unhappy with the simple life the headmaster offers
THE SCHOOL
 Krishnan and the headmaster forms a kind of comradery though
Krishnan is uncomfortable with the way he treats his wife and
children

 Krishnan is the one he comes to in time of need – he a believer

in the Indian philosophy and his jataka has noted the exact date
of his death
 In fact, he reveals that the jataka has guided him through every
day of his life
 He has been living by what it has prescribed
OVERINDULGENCE?
 The jataka has runout of days and things for the
headmaster do and he is convinced that he is going to
die that very night
 He has come to ask Krishnan to take care of his school
when he dies
 Krishnan is flabbergasted yet curious
 The headmaster has outdone himself – he had it all
wrong
OVERINDULGENCE? • Reason is still
important?
 He doesn’t die • Is he willing thigs to
 He also now finds a new lease on life happen?
• Is he becoming a better
 His school starts doing well. person with this
 He can pay his staff information or quite the
opposite?
 Even Krishnan takes up a job at the • A criticism of blind
school faith?
• t
KRISHNAN'S GROWTH
 A few weeks that the Sanyasi away – Krishnan is unable to
communicate with Susila
 This puts a damper on things
 His solitary and empty exitence had come to an end with this
new means of communication; but the days that the Sanyasi is
away once gain brings a heaviness and deperation
 This is soon dispersing with the Sanyasi's suggestion to try and
chanalise the energy across distances
 Krishnan also decided to work on becoming a medium
LEELA GOES WITH HIS MOTHER
 Leela joins her grandmother
 She flourishes under their care

 As Krishnan gets closer to unveiling the other side, he is

willing to let go of all that once grounded him; material and
human love that made him part of the material world
 He quits his job; he becomes a teacher at the school run by
the headmaster – he like the Sanyasi is close to nature
KRISHNAN'S GROWTH – SPIRITUALLY, AS A
MEDIUM
 After many weeks of trial and error he is finally able to
communicate with his wife without the help of a third party
 The veil between this world and the next is dropped
 He may be able to communicate and even feel the
presence of the sprit world
INDIGO SAREE/ JASMINE SMELL
 The colour and smell is used to establish associations
 Saree she wore when Krishnan saw her the first time, is the
same saree she wore to on the house hunting day; last time
he saw her healthy
 The jasmine reminds him of her; everything about her
smelled like jasmine
 Susila talks about her saree – make him a believer
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT
• The psychological impact of religion and spirituality
• We see it working differently on each one of the three
characters: Krishnan, sanyasi, the headmaster

• Krishnan: its rejuvenates him; finds a new vitality and

possibilities; gives him the courage and conviction to
tread the untrodden path
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT
• Sanyasi: takes it all in its stride; he is neither
perturbed nor flustered by his newfound capability as
a medium

• The headmaster: he is willing to leave everything to his

fate.
He never once questions; he lives every single day of his
life as prescribed by the jathaka; he has given himself
and his life (wife & children, extended family) to be
determined and lead by what is mentioned there