ADALYA JOURNAL ISSN NO: 1301-2746

Dr.G.Kamatchi, M.A., M.Phil, Ph.D.

Guest Lecturer,

Department of English,

Government College for Women (Autonomous),

(Affiliated to Bharathidasan University)

Kumbakonam– 612001.

Cell No: 8667272324.

E.mail: [email protected]

AN ECO-CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INDIAN SCENARIO WITH REFERENCE TO NOVELS OF R.K.NARAYAN

ABSTRACT

Of late the literary critics, poets and the novelist pay full attention on the importance and analyse in deep level, the thick bondage between the nature and the society. The authors have become the eco-conscious and environment care takers in their presentation. They take more serious thinking in presenting the issues in a fittest manner and make the readers to fall in line the nature and eco-activities.

The authors like R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao, Kamala Markanday, Anita Desai, and Kiran Desai are some important examples. They have applied the best presentation in the literatures to impress the importance of the environment in depth. This has created an important observation by the readers and brought the scenario to a good level on the key parameters of the environment. The healthy environment becomes a dare necessity for the humans. They made it to feel the environment is the life blood and to be cared all thorough the life. The paper is done on an elaborate way on the presentation of the author. R.K.Narayan. The terminology ‘Environment and Eco- criticism’had drawn the attention even at the nineteenth century.

Key Words : Eco-criticism, Ecological, Nature, Landscape and Pollution.

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AN ECO-CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INDIAN SCENARIO WITH REFERENCE TO NOVELS OF R.K.NARAYAN

Eco-Critical is the study of literature and the environment from an multiple point of view, where the scholars of literature analyze texts that provide environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. Ecocriticism, in its simplest possible terms, is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. The holistic approach of Ecocriticism maintains that literature cannot be approached in a way that sets man and nature in opposition to each other. Instead, it examines man as a part of ecosystem.

A close relationship between Nature and literature have shared in almost all cultures of the universe.The writers of today in order to understand this intimate relation between the two components have textualised the entire analyses. But these ecosystems have been adversely affected by the ever-increasing population and wealth of mankind. Under these circumstances it was impossible for literature, well known for reflecting the contemporary issues, to remain unaffected by these depletions. The word ‘ecocriticism’ first appeared in William Rueckert’s essay “LiWhen we talk about Man- Nature relationship there are two beliefs which need to be analysed viz.

The Eastern belief and the Western belief: The Eastern belief propagates that Man and Nature complement each other by sharing the responsibilities of creation and its sustenance. In the absence of Nature man cannot exist. He will be lost. But the Western belief opposes this eco-affable notion. The western concept places man as superior to Nature where he acts as the master of Nature. He acts as a selfappointed authority. This belief system claims the superiority of civilization over nature. . Under the influence of this belief, Man has always tried to conquer Nature without ever stopping and giving a thought to the end result. Such environmental crises that Nature has been portrayed as benign and the creator and as well as aggressive and destructive and depending upon the situation, mood and need of the story, these qualities are applied accordingly.

R.K. Narayan is a regional novelist like Faulkner and Hardy. He too has created a fictional town called on which all his stories are based. It is the only locale of his eleven novels and many short stories. It is difficult to comprehend his art and mind comprehensively

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without a thorough understanding of his Malgudi – the fictitious appellation given by him to the region. Its geography and life in his variegated shades and forms has been painted in his prose narratives. It is true that the action in his novels centres round Malgudi; though literally.

Malgudi is the fictional setting of R.K.Narayan’s all novels and stories. Malgudi is also an imaginary South Indian town round which R.K.Narayan has woven the complex pattern of the lives of his character. The traditional elements such as the Portrayal of Indian family, dominating husband, submissive wife, innocent children with many inhabitants, the village environment – all these clearly manifest traditional perspective in this novel.

The principal land marks of Malgudi – Malgudi Station, the Central Co-operative land Mortgage Bank, the Bombay Anand Bhavan, Kabir Street, Lawley Extension, The Royal Hair – Cutting Saloon, the statue of Sir Fredrick Lawley, the office of ‘Banner’, the Sarayu River, Nallappa’s Groves, Mampi Hills, Hotel, Cinemas, Colleges – all these make strong social frame work which the juxtaposition of the age old conventions and the modern characters provide much of comedy.

Malgudi is of all absorbing interest to the readers of R.K.Narayan. It is not a mere geographical expression; it has a distinct personality of its own. We always feel the touch of Malgudi as it appears as familiar as our home town. The setting of Malgudi is quite distinctive and most part of its, is descriptive. The places of Malgudi are not overshadowed by the people who inhabit it. There are characters that give meaning to the places of Malgudi and make them real and life-like. The sense of familiarity of the streets and lanes of Malgudi is homebred. It helps the readers to be intimate. It creates a deeper and better understanding of its people and places.

Malgudi like other places of India is a town where castes and occupations are stable. Marriages are arranged. Astrology is generally accepted, though it is not always practiced. Malgudi is related to each and every one since long with minor changes here and there. The great charm of R.K.Narayan lies in making Malgudi, its people and their values real for the readers. His most serviceable tool in establishing the intimate sense of reality are keen observation, sympathy, unfailing human and gentle satire, still we live in the same familiar surroundings of Malgudi.

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There are familiar faces and places - Market Road in the life line in Malgudi. Anderson Lane, Kabir Lane, Albert Mission School, Lawley Extension. The Central Co- operative Land Mortgage Bank, England Banking Corporation and the Sunrise Pictures give the town a distinct personality and peculiarity. The word and word of Malgudi is warm and intimate. It is life-like and interesting with smells, sights, sounds and flavours of its own.

The Financial Expert is a regional novel. The entire scene except Madras episode takes place in Malgudi. In this novel we are told of the Market Road, lawley Road, Vinay Mudali Street, the Railway Station, the Town Bank, The Co-operative Land Mortgage Bank, the Garden printery, the Town Elementary School, the Memphi Hills and Lawley Extension etc.,

Margayya transacts his business in front of the Co-operative Land Mortgage Bank, and lives in Vinayak Mudali Street, the Book Domestic Harmony Publishers in Gordon printery. Balu is admitted in the town Elementary School. Margayya deposits his money in the town Bank. Balu lives in a magnificent residence situated at Lawley Extension. It is named after Sir Fredrick Lawley, but later it’s renamed as ‘Gandhi Nagar’. Balu’s Wife is the daughter of a tea estate owner at Memphi Hills. Margayya goes to Madras in search of Balu by train.

Malgudi has its centres of recreation too. It has two clubs one English club and the other Indian club. In the Financial Expert we learn that Dr.Pal, the Palace Talkies which shows both Tamil and English films. Dr.Pal and Balu often go to cinema.

Malgudi is to be imagined as a medium-sized South Indian town, reminding us of both Mysore and Bangalore. There is an imaginary river flowing part this town, and behind the river lie to equally imaginary Mempi Hills. In fact, the Malgudi novels of R.K.Narayan, including the Financial Expert, remind us strongly of the Wessex novels of Thomas Hardy. Wessex was the title which Thomas Hardy gave to the region in which placed the action most of Lib novels. Wessex is an imaginary name, as is Malgudi. Thomas Hardy used the name “Wessex” for the region in which his native country of Dorset was situated; and in the same manner R.K.Narayan gave the name Malgudi to be Southern town in which he placed the action of most of his novels. In this connection it is to be recalled that R.K.Narayan is himself a Southerner, with Tamil as his native language.

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The Financial Expert, the hero Margayya had five phases of his development. The Financial adviser to the peasants, with his grey, discoloured, knobby tin trunk, transacting business under a banyan tree in front of the Malgudi Central Co-operative Bank, the prosperous publisher (in collaboration with the printer Mr.Madan Lal) of domestic Harmony(Originally entitled a Bed-Life, or the Science of Marital Happiness). Financial adviser and money-lender to the peasants, with his own office in Market Road, the financial wizard who receives deposits and pays fabulous rates of interest and, the insolvent Margayya, with a prospective return to where he had started from.

R.K.Narayan’s India is symbolized by Malgudi, an imaginary town and locale of his novels. Since the early thirties the town has grown into a good city and gradually has added studios, hotels, a railway station and ultramodern flats in the extension area. It is a town of pariahs, potters, printers, lawyers, teachers and small and big businessmen. It has grown from a rural looking, conservative and backward town into a town of tourist interest. R.K.Narayan is called a regional novelist because he does not want to go outside Malgudi locale. Malgudi is his Wessex. He can be compared to Thomas Hardy in this respect.

R.K.Narayan creates his fictional word of Malgudi as an essentially Indian society or town. The Indianans and Indian society sensibility pervaded the whole place. R.K.Narayan’s Malgudi is also a microcosm of India. It grows and develops and expands etimes it is to be material town, and sometime, like Egdon Heath in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, it is character itself. It is almost everything under the sky – roads, schools, colleges, the hotels, the clubs, the Municipal Board, the gutter, the new extensions, the Mempi Hills, the pond, the lotus, the retreat, the ruined temples and the like. It is also the thought and feeling of persons.

In the novel , the author attacks on the environment stability of Malgudi town. Krishna the English teacher wants to settle down with his wife at Malgudi. He goes in search of a house with his better –half. Bad luck, misfortune had clustered on him. While checking a house, his wife Susila unexpectedly and unfortunately happened to fall prey with a contaminated stuff in the toilet room. This had turned Susila to get into the grips of acute typhoid.

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In those days the environment aspect is put into multiple attacks and the air, water and other factors go polluted, causing dreaded diseases having no access to get the solution immediately. This is the information the author wants to convey. It is a noteworthy that R.K.Narayan had such an experience in his personal life. The feeling of the author is so much described to the readers through the role of Krishna and Susila. The advancement of medical sciences was far below on these days, pulling the environment to degrade heavily.

Malgudi in The English teacher in many-sided. It is Malgudi railway station, Municipality, Albert Mission College, the Head-masters School, village, Variety Hall, Bombay Anand Bhavan restaurant, Trichy Trunk Road, Krishna Medical Hall, Ellaman Street, Market Road, Bombay Cloth Emporium, the Head-master’s School Kaveli, the lotus, the retreat, the tamarind tree, the casuarinas tree, Jasmine and so on.

Krishna, the central Characters of R.K.Narayan’s The English Teacher, undertakes an emotional, intellectual and spiritual journey. At the start off he is an English teacher, living and teaching at the identical school where he was when a pupil, and at the finish we see him resigning his post, beginning function at a nursery school, and leaving to communicate psychically with his dead wife.

Krishna’s change comes about not as a result of any grand program or ambition, but as a result of services of difficult circumstances which arise as soon as he begins to take steps away from the cloistered and protective environment of his school.

Krishna is under the control of his school. Krishna doesn’t really care about his job. He is willing to take a very boring, monotonous and pointless job just to obtain the money. It indicates that he has forgotten why he took job (as an English teacher), in the first place; he has little enthusiasm and passion he had for his job.

R.K.Narayan takes pleasure in describing some of the superstitions which are parts of Indian culture. The mother-in-law of Krishna is superstitions. She is convinced that the evil eye has fallen on her daughter and that at the new house a malignant sprit had attacked her. She believes in exorcism, and invites an exorcist to drive away the evil spirit. Even Shanker, the doctor of Susila exposes his superstitions nature when he says, “When we understand it (exorcism) fully … we doctors will able to give mere complete cares” (TET,85).

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Thus Malgudi, a small south Indian town, provides the setting for all his novels. He pictures the town, the railway station, which has a small platform with a banyan tree, a station master and two trains a day, one up and down train. R.K.Narayan deals with the physical features, way of life of the people, customs, beliefs and manners. He depicts the socio-cultural milieu and the changes that occur in the place over the years. He shows how the place and the people are interlinked and interdependent and one cannot exist without the other. The College and the hostel were situated within hundred yards. This complex was existing very near to the River Sarayu. Krishna being a hostalite used to walk in the morning at the river bank. He gets rejunuvation in walking over the dump sand in the morning. He enjoys the workers getting ready for the day’s activities. They visit the river for a cool bath and washing their dress materials. The river has a dense banyan trees which is the shelter for thousands of birds. Their noise in the morning greets the day. The environment is so conducive; the people at Malgudi cannot part the River Sarayu.

In this paper auother bringing the real and true picture of the sequences successfully.Thus, through his elaborate and sensitive presentation, Narayan stands out as another spokesman of ecological movement and enigmatic Nature.

WORKS CITED

1.Narayan,R.K. .Cennai:Indian Thought Publications,2006.

2.Sharma,.P.D.Ecology and Environment,Meerut:Rastogi Publication

3.www.asle.org/site/resources/ecocritic

4.Narayan,R.K. The English Teacher. Laxmi Narayan Agarwal,Agra.2003.

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