R.K.

Narayan

10 October 1906 – 13 May 2001

Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (better known as R.K.

Narayan;) was an Indian writer and novelist known for his work set in the
fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian
literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.

Narayan's mentor and friend Graham Greene was instrumental in getting

publishers for Narayan's first four books including the semi-autobiographical
trilogy of Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher.
Graham Greene upon reading Swaminathan and Tate, took it upon himself to
work as Narayan's agent for the book. He was also significant in changing the
title to the more appropriate Swami and Friends, and in finding publishers for
Narayan's next few books. While Narayan's early works were not commercial
successes, other authors of the time began to notice him. Somerset Maugham,
on a trip to Mysore in 1938, had asked to meet Narayan, but not enough people
had heard of him to actually effect the meeting. Maugham subsequently read
Narayan's The Dark Room, and wrote to him expressing his admiration. Another
contemporary writer who took a liking to Narayan's early works was E. M.
Forster, an author who shared his dry and humorous narrative, so much so that
Narayan was labeled the "South Indian E. M. Forster" by critics.

In 1941, he founded his own publishing house and his works quickly found a
permanent and favorite place in the bookshelves of almost all the Indian
homes.

The fictional town of Malgudi was first introduced in Swami and Friends. The
Financial Expert was hailed as one of the most original works of 1951
and Sahitya Academy Award winner The Guide was adapted for the
film (winning a Filmfare Award for Best Film).

Narayan highlights the social context and everyday life of his characters. He has
been compared to William Faulkner who created a similar fictional town,
Yoknapatawpha County and likewise explored with humor and compassion the
energy of ordinary life.
Malgudi is a fictional fully urban town in southern India, conjured by Narayan.
He created the town in September 1930, on Vijayadashami, an auspicious day
to start new efforts. He first saw a railway station, and slowly the
name Malgudi came to him.

Narayan is credited with bringing Indian writing to the rest of the world. He has
been regarded as one of India's greatest writers of the twentieth century.

R.K.Narayan was born in a Tamil Brahmin family on 10 October 1906

in Madras (now Chennai, Tamil Nadu), British India. He was one of eight
children; six sons and two daughters. Narayan was second among the sons; his
younger brother Ramachandran later became an editor at Gemini Studios, and
the youngest brother Laxman became a cartoonist. His father was a school
headmaster, and Narayan did some of his studies at his father's school. As his
father's job entailed frequent transfers, Narayan spent a part of his childhood
under the care of his maternal grandmother, Parvati. During this time, his best
friends and playmates were a peacock and a mischievous monkey.

His grandmother gave him the nickname of Kunjappa, a name that stuck to him
in family circles. She taught him arithmetic, mythology, classical Indian music
and Sanskrit. According to Laxman, the family mostly conversed in English, and
grammatical errors on the part of Narayan and his siblings were frowned
upon. While living with his grandmother, Narayan studied at a succession of
schools in Madras. Narayan was an avid reader, and his early literary diet
included Dickens, Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy. When he
was twelve years old, Narayan participated in a pro-independence march, for
which he was reprimanded by his uncle; the family was apolitical and
considered all governments wicked.

Narayan moved to Mysore to live with his family when his father was transferred
to the Maharajah's College High School. The well-stocked library at the school
and his father's own fed his reading habit, and he started writing as well. After
completing high school, Narayan failed the university entrance examination and
spent a year at home reading and writing; he subsequently passed the
examination in 1926 and joined Maharaja College of Mysore. It took Narayan
four years to obtain his bachelor's degree, a year longer than usual. After being
persuaded by a friend that taking a master's degree (M.A.) would kill his
interest in literature, he briefly held a job as a school teacher; however, he quit
in protest when the headmaster of the school asked him to substitute for the
physical training master. The experience made Narayan realize that the only
career for him was in writing, and he decided to stay at home and write novels.

His first published work was a book review of Development of Maritime Laws of
17th-Century England. Although the writing did not pay much (his income for
the first year was nine rupees and twelve annas), he had a regular life and few
needs, and his family and friends respected and supported his unorthodox
choice of career. In 1930, Narayan wrote his first novel, Swami and Friends, an
effort ridiculed by his uncle and rejected by a string of publishers. With this
book, Narayan created Malgudi, a town that creatively reproduced the social
sphere of the country; while it ignored the limits imposed by colonial rule, it
also grew with the various socio-political changes of British and post-
independence India.

R. K. Narayan with his wife Rajam

While vacationing at his sister's house in Coimbatore, in 1933, Narayan met and
fell in love with Rajam, a 15-year-old girl who lived nearby. Despite many
astrological and financial obstacles, Narayan managed to gain permission from
the girl's father and married her. Following his marriage, Narayan became a
reporter for a Madras-based paper called The Justice, dedicated to the rights of
non-Brahmins. The job brought him in contact with a wide variety of people
and issues. Earlier, Narayan had sent the manuscript of Swami and Friends to a
friend at Oxford, and about this time, the friend showed the manuscript
to Graham Greene. Greene recommended the book to his publisher, and it was
finally published in 1935. Greene also counseled Narayan on shortening his
name to become more familiar to the English-speaking audience. The book was
semi-autobiographical and built upon many incidents from his
childhood. Reviews were favorable but sales were few. Narayan's next novel The
Bachelor of Arts (1937), was inspired in part by his experiences at college, and
dealt with the theme of a rebellious adolescent transitioning to a rather well-
adjusted adult; it was published by a different publisher, again at the
recommendation of Greene. His third novel, The Dark Room (1938) was about
domestic disharmony, showcasing the man as the oppressor and the woman as
the victim within a marriage, and was published by yet another publisher; this
book also received good reviews. In 1937, Narayan's father died, and Narayan
was forced to accept a commission from the government of Mysore as he was
not making any money.

In his first three books, Narayan highlights the problems with certain socially
accepted practices. The first book has Narayan focusing on the plight of
students, punishments of caning in the classroom, and the associated shame.
The concept of horoscope-matching in Hindu marriages and the emotional toll
it levies on the bride and groom is covered in the second book.

Rajam died of typhoid in 1939. Her death affected Narayan deeply and he
remained depressed for a long time. He never remarried in his life; he was also
concerned for their daughter Hema, who was only three years old. The
bereavement brought about a significant change in his life and was the
inspiration behind his next novel, The English Teacher. This book, like his first
two books, is autobiographical, but more so, and completes an unintentional
thematic trilogy following Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts. In
subsequent interviews, Narayan acknowledges that The English Teacher was
almost entirely an autobiography, albeit with different names for the characters
and the change of setting in Malgudi; he also explains that the emotions
detailed in the book reflected his own at the time of Rajam's death.

Bolstered by some of his successes, in 1940 Narayan tried his hand at a

journal, Indian Thought. With the help of his uncle, a car salesman, Narayan
managed to get more than a thousand subscribers in Madras city alone.
However, the venture did not last long due to Narayan's inability to manage it,
and it ceased publication within a year. His first collection of short
stories, Malgudi Days, was published in November 1942, followed by The
English Teacher in 1945. In between, being cut off from England due to the war,
Narayan started his own publishing company, naming it (again) Indian Thought
Publications; the publishing company was a success and is still active, now
managed by his granddaughter. Soon, with a devoted readership stretching
from New York to Moscow, Narayan's books started selling well and in 1948 he
started building his own house on the outskirts of Mysore; the house was
completed in 1953.
After The English Teacher, Narayan's writings took a more imaginative and
creative external style compared to the semi-autobiographical tone of the
earlier novels. Soon after, he published The Financial Expert, considered to be
his masterpiece and hailed as one of the most original works of fiction in
1951. The inspiration for the novel was a true story about a financial
genius, Margayya, related to him by his brother. The next novel, Waiting for the
Mahatma, loosely based on a fictional visit to Malgudi by Mahatma Gandhi,
deals with the protagonist's romantic feelings for a woman, when he attends
the discourses of the visiting Mahatma.

The Guide was written while he was visiting the United States in 1956.
Narayan's book The Guide was adapted into the 1965 Hindi film Guide, directed
by Vijay Anand. An English-language version was also released. Narayan was
not happy with the way the film was made and its deviation from the book; he
wrote a column in Life magazine, "The Misguided Guide," criticizing the film.

On a visit to England, Narayan met his friend and mentor Graham Greene for
the first and only time. On his return to India, The Guide was published; the
book is the most representative of Narayan's writing skills. The book won him
the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1960.

Narayan's next novel, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, was published in 1961. The
book was reviewed as having a narrative that is a classical art form of comedy,
with delicate control. By this time Narayan had also achieved significant
success, both literary and financial. He had a large house in Mysore, and wrote
in a study with no fewer than eight windows; he drove a new Mercedes-Benz, a
luxury in India at that time, to visit his daughter who had moved
to Coimbatore after her marriage. With his success, both within India and
abroad, Narayan started writing columns for magazines and newspapers
including The Hindu and The Atlantic.

In 1964, Narayan published his first mythological work, Gods, Demons and
Others, a collection of rewritten and translated short stories from Hindu epics.
Like many of his other works, this book was illustrated by his younger
brother R. K. Laxman.

Narayan's next published work was the 1967 novel, The Vendor of Sweets. It
was inspired in part by his American visits and consists of extreme
characterizations of both the Indian and American stereotypes, drawing on the
many cultural differences. However, while it displays his characteristic comedy
and narrative, the book was reviewed as lacking in depth.

Meanwhile, Narayan remembered a promise made to his dying uncle in 1938,

and started translating the Kamba Ramayanam to English. The Ramayana was
published in 1973. Almost immediately after publishing The Ramayana,
Narayan started working on a condensed translation of the Sanskrit epic,
the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata was published in 1978.

In 1983, Narayan published his next novel, A Tiger for Malgudi, about a tiger
and its relationship with humans. His next novel, Talkative Man, published in
1986, was the tale of an aspiring journalist from Malgudi.

Living alone in Mysore, Narayan developed an interest in agriculture. He bought

an acre of agricultural land and tried his hand at farming.

In 1980, Narayan was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the
Indian Parliament, for his contributions to literature. During his entire six-year
term, he was focused on one issue—the plight of school children, especially the
heavy load of school books and the negative effect of the system on a child's
creativity, which was something that he first highlighted in his debut
novel, Swami and Friends. His inaugural speech was focused on this particular
problem, and resulted in the formation of a committee chaired by Prof. Yash
Pal, to recommend changes to the school educational system.

Narayan fell ill and moved to Madras to be close to his daughter's family. In
1994, his daughter died of cancer and his granddaughter Bhuvaneswari (Minnie)
started taking care of him in addition to managing Indian
Thought
Publications. Narayan then published his final book, Grandmother's Tale. The
book is an autobiographical novella, about his great-grandmother who
travelled far and wide to find her husband, who ran away shortly after their
marriage. The story was narrated to him by his grandmother, when he was a
child.

During his final years, Narayan, ever fond of conversation, would spend almost
every evening with N. Ram, the publisher of The Hindu, drinking coffee and
talking about various topics.
He died on 13 May 2001, in Chennai at the age of 94.

Writing style

Narayan's writing technique was unpretentious with a natural element of humor

about it. It focused on ordinary people, reminding the reader of next-door
neighbors, cousins and the like, thereby providing a greater ability to relate to
the topic. Unlike his national contemporaries, he was able to write about the
intricacies of Indian society without having to modify his characteristic
simplicity to confirm to trends and fashions in fiction writing.

Awards

Narayan won numerous awards during the course of his literary career. He won
his first major award, in 1960, the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide. When
the book was made into a film, he received the Filmfare Award for the best
story. In 1964, he received the Padma Bhushan during the Republic
Day honors. In 1980, he was awarded the AC Benson Medal by the
(British) Royal Society of Literature, of which he was an honorary member. In
1982 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters.[78] He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature multiple times,
but never won the honor. In 1986, he was honored by Rajyotsava
Prashasti from Government of Karnataka.

Recognition also came in the form of honorary doctorates conferred by

the University of Leeds (1967), Delhi University (1973) and the University of
Mysore (1976). Toward the end of his career, Narayan was nominated to
the upper house of the Indian Parliament for a six-year term starting in 1989,
for his contributions to Indian literature. A year before his death, in 2000, he
was awarded India's second-highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.

R. K. Narayan Museum, Mysore

Narayan's greatest achievement was making India accessible to the outside

world through his literature. He is regarded as one of the three leading English
language Indian fiction writers, along with Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. He
gave his readers something to look forward to with Malgudi and its
residents and is considered to be one of the best novelists India has ever
produced. He brought small-town India to his audience in a manner that was
both believable and experiential.

In mid-2016, Narayan's former home in Mysore was converted to a museum in

his honor. The original structure was built in 1952. The house and surrounding
land were acquired by real estate contractors to raze down and build an
apartment complex in its stead, but citizens groups and the Mysore City
Corporation stepped in to repurchase the building and land and then restore it,
subsequently converting it to a museum. The museum admission is free of
charge and it is open between 10.00 am and 5.00 pm except on Tuesdays.

On 8 November 2019, his book Swami and Friends was chosen as one of BBC's
100 Novels That Shaped Our World.

Works
Novels

 Swami and Friends (1935, Hamish Hamilton)

 The Bachelor of Arts (1937)
 The Dark Room (1938)
 The English Teacher (1945)
 Mr. Sampath (1948)
 The Financial Expert (1952)
 Waiting for the Mahatma (1955)
 The Guide (1958)
 The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961)
 The Vendor of Sweets (1967)
 The Painter of Signs (1977)
 A Tiger for Malgudi (1983)
 Talkative Man (1986)
 The World of Nagaraj (1990)
 Grandmother's Tale (1992)
Non-fiction

 Next Sunday (1960)

 My Dateless Diary (1960)
 My Days (1973)
 Reluctant Guru (1974)
 The Emerald Route (1980)
 A Writer's Nightmare (1988)
 A Story-Teller's World (1989)
 The Writerly Life (2001)
 Mysore (1944)
Mythology

 Gods, Demons and Others (1964)

 The Ramayana (1972)
 The Mahabharata (1978)
Short story collections

 Malgudi Days (1942)

 An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories (1947)
 Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956)
 A Horse and Two Goats (1970)
 Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories (1985)
 The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1994)