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Chapter Two R. K. Narayan: My Days and Khushwant Singh: Truth, Love and a Little Malice • Chapter II (i) R. K. Narayan: My Days, (ii) Khushwant Singh: Truth, Love and a Little Malice The present chapter discusses the autobiographies of those writers who made a mark on the literary scene of India which, in some ways, is of basic significance. They are R. K. Narayan and Khushwant Singh. They come from two different states of India. There is a lot of difference in their background, their financial condition, their environment and the way they were brought up. It will be interesting to see the journey of these two in the world of letters and thought as depicted in their autobiographies. R. K.Narayan: My Days R. K. Narayan is that name without which the history of Indian English literature cannot be complete. Narayan was among the famous trio of Indian English fiction, the other two being Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. Everybody, who has read his novels or has seen the television serial, Malgudi Days based on Narayan's celebrated book Swami and Friends is enchanted by Narayan's brilliant powers of minute observation, skill of sketching characters, use of lucid language and the way he has created a tiny piece of India in his celebrated imaginary town of 'Malgudi'. He uses conventional style of writing and it is deceptively simple. It is like the traditional story teller. However, in his writing, a comic and sarcastic surface exists above deeply serious depths. His autobiography is no exception to it. Before we go to My Days proper, it is suitable to know a few personal details of R.K. Narayan's life. He was bom on October 10, 1906 at Number 1, Vellal Street in Purusawalkam, Madras (Chennai). His father was a provincial head master who h^dlQ^o to 21 different places due to transfers. Narayan spent his early childhood with his maternal grandmother and uncle in Madras. He used to spend only a few weeks each summer visiting his parents, brothers and sisters wherever they used to be stationed. He studied in different schools at Mysore. When his father was appointed headmaster of the Maharaja's High School in Mysore, Narayan moved there with his parents. Narayan obtained his Bachelor's Degree from Mysore University in 1930. At first he tried different jobs such as an employment in the Mysore Secretariat and later on as a teacher, but they could not suit him. He decided to devote almost whole life as a writer. He started by writing short stories which appeared in The Hindu. He married Raj am in 1934. For some days he worked as a newspaper correspondent for a Madras-based newspaper. Justice to support his family. Soon they had a daughter, Hemavati. In 1939 the greatest tragedy of his life took place, his wife died of typhoid. He has written about this time in his autobiographical novel The English Teacher. He began his writing career as a novelist with Swami and Friends in 1935. Most of his work including Swami and Friends is set in the fictional town of Malgudi which replicates India in the microcosm. He told stories of ordinary people trying to live their simple lives in a changing world. Narayan writes about the Southern part of India which he knows from his birth. He always writes about the lower middle class and their everyday problems of living. He depicts commonplace situations, but succeeds in making them uncommon by attributing universality to them with the magic touch of his genius. Narayan's writing style is marked by subtle humour. R.K. Narayan's works include a huge bulk of writing. Novels- 22 Swami and Friends (1935, Hamish Hamilton), The Bachelor of Arts (1937, Thomas Nelson),r;2e Dark Room (1938, Eyre).The English Teacher (1945, Eyre),Mr Sampath (1948, Eyre),r/2e Financial Expert (1952, Mtihacn), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955, Methuen),r/2e Guide (1958, Methuen),r/ze Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961, Vik\ng),The Vendor of Sweets (1967, The Bodley Head),r/ze Painter of Signs (1977, Heinemann), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983, ¥ie'mQmann),Talkative Man (1986, Heinemann),T/ze World of Nagaraj (1990, HQmemann),Grandmother's Tale (1992, Indian Thought Publications) Short story collections: Malgudi Days (1942, Indian Thought Publications), An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories (1947, Indian Thought Publications), Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956, Indian Thought Publications), A Horse and Two Goats {\970),Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories {\9^5),The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1994, Viking). Non Fiction: The Ramayana (1973, Chatto & Windus), My Days: Autobiography (1974, Indian Thought Publications, Indian Reprint 2000) The Mahahharata (1978, Heinemann), Reluctant Guru (1974, Orient Paperbacks), The Emerald Route (1980, Indian Thought Publications), A Writer's Nightmare (1988, Penguin Books). He won numerous awards and honors for his works. These include: Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide in 1958; Padma Bhushan in 1964; and AC Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature in 1980; he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1982. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1989. Besides, he was also conferred honorary doctorates by the University of Mysore, Delhi 23 University and the University of Leeds. He died in Madras at the age of 94 on 13th May, 2001. When we turn to My Days the first thing that strikes us is Narayan's urge to be a writer. It was something unusual in the India of his times. Writing could not be a profession to provide a person a comfortable way of life. Narayan had to face it in his life when he wrote humorous articles at ten rupees a time for the weekly Merry Magazine or to accept the government proposal to write a book for the Karnataka State. However, he decided to be a writer very early in his life and stuck to his decision. He fulfilled his promise given to himself and became an internationally successful writer. He brought the world alive as he saw it. My Days was published in 1974. Almost all critics opine that Narayan's autobiography reads like a novel. The world he has depicted in his novels appears factually in his autobiography. Narayan enjoyed his childhood living with his grandmother and maternal uncle. His full name was Rasipuram Krishnaswami (lyyer) Narayan, later shortened to R. K. Narayan on the advice of Graham Greene, and his first publisher, Hamish Hamilton. His childhood was happy compared to his brothers and sisters who lived with father, a very strict person at school and at home as well. When we try to understand the art of a particular writer it can be useful to trace the various influences working on him that shaped him. These can be many and diverse, not necessarily uniform and single. They may not be necessarily 'literary' also. To be a writer is a complex process. For example, the earliest influence on Narayan was of his grandmother. The most lovable person of Narayan's family was his grandmother, with whom he spent his childhood in Madras. She looked after his needs, taught him multiplications, the Tamil alphabet, Sanskrit shlokas in praise of Saraswati, the goddess of learning, and even to sing 24 classical melodies. What was most important was that she kept a strict watch on his behaviour. It was through his grandmother that Narayan inherited Brahmin orthodoxy. He recalls: "My Grandmother's preoccupations were several and concerned a great many others, she was a key figure in the lives of many. My Grandmother was an abiding influence. "(Narayan, 2000: 29) .His grandmother's prerogative was limited to the house and the households around it. She ran the house with the skill of an economist. Their large house had been partitioned and rented out as offices, shops and apartments. Grandmother had kept only three rooms. Narayan understood the reason only after he grew up, "I did not realize at that time how much she (grandmother) depended on the rents for our survival." (p.28). She was a strong religious woman. She was a devoted gardener, who grew more than twenty varieties of hibiscus and several kinds of jasmine and desperately tried to help certain delicate plants to survive that grew on the heights of Bangalore. But the low marine air of Madras was not suitable to these plants. She was a match-maker, a reader of horoscopes and an advisor on marriages. Sometimes she gave herbal medicine for scorpion bite, cough, paralysis, convulsions and even snake bites. She was a loving mother too. Before going to her daughter she prepared sun dried edibles every year. It is, at this stage, interesting to see how this grandmother (re)appears in some of Narayan's works. Swami's grandmother is an ignorant but kind and gentle old lady, who lived in an ill-ventilated dark passage between the front hall and the dining room as it was a custom of those days that a widow should live a secluded life. However, she was an important part of Swami's life : "After the night meal, with his head on his granny's lap, nestling close to her, Swaminathan felt very snug and safe in the faint atmosphere of cardamom and cloves." (Narayan, 1983: 21). Swami shares every little secret of his school with his granny; who would narrate stories of Harishchandra to him. Swami's grandmother is the prototype of nearly all the Indian grandmothers, who uphold the traditional values of the 25 Indian society.