R. K. Narayan
R. K. Narayan | |
|---|---|
| File:RKNarayan.jpg | |
| Born | October 1, 1906 Madras, India |
| Died | May 13, 2001 |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Genre | Fiction |
R. K. Narayan(October 1, 1906 - May 13 2001) born Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami[1] was one of the well known and most widely read Indian novelists writing in English.
R.K. Narayan was essentially a storyteller, whose sensitive, well-drawn portrayals of twentieth-century Indian life were set mostly in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. Most of Narayan's work, starting with his first novel Swami and Friends (1935) captures many Indian traits while having a unique identity of its own. He was sometimes compared to the United States writer William Faulkner, also whose novels were grounded in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the humour and energy of ordinary life.[2]
Narayan lived till ninety-five, writing for more than fifty years, and publishing till he was eighty seven. He wrote fifteen novels, five volumes of short stories, a number of travelogues and collection of non-fiction, English translation of Indian epics, and the memoirs “My Days”.[3]
Birth
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras, India .His father was a provincial head-master. He was the third of eight surviving children. His full name was Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami. In South India, the given name(s) is/are usually written last. His first name is a toponym and his second name is a patronym. For this reason, all of Narayan's brothers have the same first two names see, for example, R. K. Laxman. The writer became R. K. Narayan at the suggestion of Graham Greene, who felt his full name was simply too long.
Childhood
Narayan's mother, Gnanambal, was quite ill after his birth and enlisted a wet nurse to feed her young son. When she became pregnant again, two-year-old Narayan was sent to Madras to live with his maternal grandmother, Parvathi, who was called "Ammani." He lived with her and one of his uncles, T. N. Seshachalam, until he was a teenager. He only spent a few weeks each summer visiting his parents and siblings. Narayan grew up speaking the Tamil language and learned English at school. In his autobiography, My Days, Narayan writes of visiting his parents in Mysore and being unable to understand the shopkeepers, who spoke Kannada, a language he later learned.
Education
After completing eight years of education at the Lutheran Mission School close to his grandmother's house in Madras, he studied for a short time at the CRC High School. When his father, Rasipuram Venkatarama Krishnaswami Iyer, was appointed headmaster of the Maharaja's high school in Mysore, Narayan moved back in with his parents. To his father's consternation, Narayan was an indifferent student and after graduating, he failed the college entrance exam in English because he found the primary textbook too boring to read. He retook the exam a year later and eventually obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Mysore.
One of the few Indian-English writers who spent nearly all his time in India,he went abroad to the United States in 1956 at the invitation of the Rockfeller Foundation. Narayan's first published work was the review of a book titled “Development of Maritime Laws of 17th-Century England".[4]. He began his literary career with short stories which appeared in The Hindu, and also worked for some time as the Mysore correspondent of Justice, a Madras-based newspaper.He also took up teaching at a government school, but left the job within two days.”[5]
Writing style
His novels are characterised by Chekhovian simplicity and gentle humour.He told stories of simple folks trying to live their simple lives in a changing world. Characters in his novels were very ordinary down-to-earth Indians trying to blend tradition with modernisation, resulting in often tragi-comic situations. His writings style was simple, unpretentious and witty-conveyed, with a unique flavour as if he were writing in the native tongue. His writing career began with Swami and Friends. At first, he could not get the novel published. Eventually, the draft was shown to Graham Greene by a mutual friend, Purna. Greene liked it so much that he arranged for its publication. Greene was to remain a close friend and admirer of his. After that, he published a continuous stream of novels, all set in Malgudi and each dealing with different characters in that fictional place. Autobiographical content forms a significant part of some of his novels. For example, the events surrounding the death of his young wife and how he coped with the loss form the basis of The English Teacher.Mr. Narayan became his own publisher,when World War II cut him off from Britain.
Many of Narayan's works are rooted in everyday life, though he is not shy of invoking Hindu tales or traditional Indian folklore to emphasize a point. His easy-going outlook on life has sometimes been criticized, though in general he is viewed as an accomplished, sensitive and reasonably prolific writer.
Death
R.K.Narayan passed away on May 13, 2001, Due to cardio-respiratory failure, He was 95.
Bibliography
Fiction
- Swami and Friends 1935
- The Bachelor of Arts 1937
- The Dark Room 1938
- The English Teacher 1945
- Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi 1949
- 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 1976
- A Tiger for Malgudi 1983
- Talkative Man 1986
- The World of Nagaraj 1990
- Grandmother's Tales 1993
Non-Fiction
- Next Sunday 1960
- My Dateless Diary 1964
- My Days 1974
- The Emerald Route 1980
- A Writer's Nightmare 1988
Short Stories
- An Astrologer's Day and Other Short Stories 1947
- Lawley Road 1956
- A Horse and Two Goats 1970
- Reluctant Guru 1974
- Malgudi Days 1982
- Under the Banyan Tree 1985
- Salt and Sawdust 1993
Mythology
- Gods, Demons and Others 1965
- The Ramayana 1972
- The Mahabarata 1972
TV and Movie Adaptions
"The Guide", was made in English and Hindi by Dev Anand, was commercially a most successful venture, but Narayan was not happy with the screen adaptation of his novel. His other novel which was made into a film was "Mr. Sampat", by S.S. Vasan of Gemini Films.
Swami and Friends and Malgudi days were adopted by the late Actor-Director Shankar Nag, was shoot in the Western ghat town of Agumbe near the South Karnataka coast served as the backdrop for Malgudi, complete with statue of the British personage. it was serialised & telecast on the Indian National Telivion network Doordarshan
Awards and Recognisation
Mr. Narayan won numerous awards and honours for his works. He won national prize of Sahitya Akademi, the Indian literary academy award,for "The Guide" in 1958. He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan coveted Indian award for distinguished service to literature in 1964. In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was an honorary member of society. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1989 and elected an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1982. The universities of university of mysore, university of Delhi, Leeds, and Yorkshire, conferred honorary doctorates on him.
Trivia
- R.K. Narayan was short listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times, but he never made it all the way. One of the jokes in the literary circles was that the Nobel Committee and the western readers ignored his books because of the misleading titles. Many people apparently thought that they were self-help books on various subjects (The English Teacher, The Painter of Signs, etc)!!
- His works were translated into every European language as well as Hebrew.
- His admirers included Somerset Maugham, John Updike and Graham Green, who called him the "novelist I admire most in the English language".
References
See also
External Links
5070 - New York Times obituaries R. K. Narayan, India's Prolific Storyteller]