R.K.Narayan’s oeuvre
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SWAMIYUM SNEKITHARKALUM: Rs. 90. IRUTTU ARAI (Tamil): Rs. 100. R. K. Narayan; Vikatan Prachuram, 757, Anna Salai, Chennai-600002.
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Prema Nandakumar
In the 1930s and 1940s Tamil children learnt their mother tongue more by reading Ananda Vikatan than by studying in schools. The then editor of the weekly Kalki Krishnamurthi gave importance to translations from Indian languages but R.K. Narayan’s The Dark Room was perhaps the first translation into Tamil of an English novel by a Tamilian. When we read the translation then and down these seven decades we assumed R. K. Narayan w
as the translator. There was no clue that the actual translator was V. Krishnaswami. This important information is one of the gifts of the R.K. Narayan centenary issues of “Swamiyum Snekitharkalum” and “Iruttu Arai”.
Extraordinary career
The other gifts are the novels, which sweep before us a genuine picture of the childhood and boyhood of Swami and the Ibsenesque exploration of domestic discord that victimises Savitri in the Tamil milieu of those days. These two novels were among the opening chords of an extraordinary career by an Indian writing in English.
R.K. Narayan (1906-2001) chose the uncertainties of a writer’s profession rather than an academic career. By simply remaining in contact with the reader’s psyche through the repetition of a geographical background which kept expanding with each novel, and peppering it with characters whom you could neither love passionately nor intensely hate, Narayan became truly a creator of the golden mean that might not zoom to dizzy heights but certainly does not plummet down to the deeps. There lies the triumph of Narayan’s art. For Narayan writes of the joys and sorrows of childhood, the desire to emulate the elders and prove oneself a hero. It is authentic childhood, which has its own mansions of make-believe and does not need the super imposition of Harry Potterish spooks and witches.
A “universal epic of all our boyhood yesterdays” (K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar), “Swamiyum Snekitharkalum” has the memorable three musketeers, Swami, Mani and Rajam. Narayan even gives a space for the universal dream of children “to run away” from their homes, transforming a fictional narrative into a personal memorandum.
The Indian psyche
Swami is brought back but Savitri in Iruttu Arai returns on her own, prepared to make peace with her philandering husband. Indeed, have not the Tamil wives from the Sangam period to this day accepted their Kovalans without a murmur? “Iruttu Arai” could also be an early frown at the lifestyle of corporate executives.
Narayan’s Ramani is an insurance executive, having come up the hard way like Ibsen’s Helmer who is a banker. Ramani and Savitri have Babu, Sumati and Kamala reminding one of Nora’s Bob, Ivar and Emmy.
Both Nora and Savitri have no idea of what to do with life except being a wife and a mother. But while Nora moves out of her house with a firm step, Savitri is a child of the Indian psyche who regards the family as a sacred unit. So she gulps down her pride and returns home but not before acquainting us with two of the most charming characters in Indian fiction, Murugan and Ponni. The part-time burglar’s fading voice is heard still: “locks, keys …umbrella repairs!”
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