R.K. Narayan

[raagadevan]

Letting the light in

S. JAGADISAN AND M.S. NAGARAJAN

V.P. Ranga Rao, novelist and scholar, talks about the nature of R.K. Narayan's artistic vision.


R.K. Narayan: Humane vision.

One of the earliest scholars to do research on R.K. Narayan's writings, V. Panduranga Rao took his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Andhra University, Waltair. Even as a student, he was obliged by family circumstances to take up a job. He worked as a telegraphist without prejudice to his studies from the old Intermediate to the Post-Graduate course. On completion of his research, he taught at Sri Venkateswara College, New Delhi for seventeen years. Dr. Rao is now Reader in English at Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Prasanthinilayam, A.P.

V. P. Ranga Rao is the author of three novels, Fowl Filcher, Drunk Tantra and The River is Three-quarters Full (all published by Penguin India) and a collection of short stories, An Indian Idyll and Other Stories (Ravi Dayal). His English translation of Telugu short stories has been published under the title Classic Telugu Short Stories (Penguin). Excerpts from an interview.

You are one of the first few scholars to have worked on R.K. Narayan's novels. What prompted you to choose Narayan as a topic for your doctoral thesis?

I received my Honours degree in English in 1961, from the Andhra University. Prof. K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar had just returned from Leeds University. He accepted me as his research scholar and suggested Narayan as the topic for my research.

You have discussed Narayan's characters in the light of what you call "Gunas Comedy". In what sense is Gunas Comedy different from Ben Jonson's Comedy of Humour?

First, it is a label of convenience. Second, I find a striking difference between the novels Narayan wrote before Independence and those he wrote later. The heroes of the novels set the tone in both the groups. The focus shifts from one type of characters to another, from the sensitive, introspective heroes to the more outgoing, passionate ones.

Narayan's "Gunas Comedy", if it can be so called, is not an Indian form of the Humour Comedy. The Jonsonian theory, no doubt, has its parallel in our indigenous system of medicine, though there is a superficial similarity between the two. The theory of humour has not given rise to an Indian variant of Humour Comedy. Jonsonian Humour is physio-psychological, whereas the gunas are psychic-moral. Jonsonian Comedy is the comedy of excess, of abnormality. Narayan's comedy, based on the gunas, is charged with humour within the bounds of normality. Viewed in isolation, a few characters governed by the gunas may be interpreted as humour types; for example the miser in Mr. Sampath. The gunas — particularly rajas and tamas — are not aberrations but stages or states in the inevitable progression of the human spirit. Narayan's novels, viewed from a different perspective, are humane comedy, striking a note of serene optimism.

In Narayan's early novels, the gunas provide the human material for a form of comedy focussing on the protagonists — sensitive, creative, questing, questioning, resilient, committed, "conscionable" aspiring, truth-seeking — who ought to be at the centre of tragedy.

Vis comica (comic vision) in Narayan is a kind of Vis sanitas (vision of sanity). Its characteristic dignity arises from the satvic nature of the hero. No mortal is exclusively satvic or rajasic or tamasic. It is a blend. The Gunas Comedy radiates a serene charm.

What are the stages of development of Gunas Comedy?

Unlike the Humours Comedy again, the Gunas Comedy projects the dynamic of the human spirit, unfolding the possibilities of spiritual evolution. The premature death of his wife — whom he had married in defiance of custom and astrological prediction — almost shattered Narayan. "A profound, unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life," he says. In the years following it, he underwent a psychic and spiritual training and that shows in his art. The two early novels, written after Rajam's death, The English Teacher and Mr. Sampath, make Narayan's characteristic preoccupation clear and unmistakable. The ethical ballast of the Gunas Comedy is evident in the philosophical tilt of his early comedy. At its very centre is the theme of self-development. The joyous, celebratory, life-affirming, "happy" ending of conventional comedy becomes in Narayan's Gunas Comedy a certain fulfilment of the self, a self-realisation, however marginal or ambiguous.

The quest for self-discipline, more than any other feature, lends homogeneity to Narayan's early Gunas Comedy. Of relevance to our appreciation, especially of the early novels is what he says in My Days.

A 16th century Tamil mystic had sung: "One may learn to walk on water, mesmerise a mad elephant, muzzle a tiger or a lion, walk on fire, and perform other feats, but yet the real feat would be to still the restless mind and understand one's real self."

Harmony is the ideal that dominates the vision of Narayan's protagonists.

How is your approach to Narayan different from that of others?

I haven't thought of it in terms of difference. Perhaps it is the concept of the gunas that makes it different. Besides, I am not comfortable with critical jargon.

There is a trend now to choose recent writers for research purposes. Earlier writers are sidelined. Narayan is said to be an overworked writer. Does this imply that he is exhausted as a subject for further research? Your comment on this.

I haven't read much of recent criticism on Narayan. As you know most doctoral theses are so many attempts at cutting one's critical teeth. The preference for recent writers, especially in countries like Australia and the United States only reveals a new popular interest, reflected in academic focus on new literatures. True, these are fashions; they will run their course. They will leave behind some good work.

Narayan is accused of lacking historical sense. What is your reaction to this view?

A charge levelled by V.S. Naipaul. After accusing him of lack of historical sense and political sense, Vidya himself sort of changed his mind.

However Narayan's novels show that, like any creative writer, he was sensitive to the world around him. His post-Independence novels reflect, as I have shown, changes in Indian society. Aren't we Indians said to lack a historical sense?

Have you been influenced by any theory of translation in your translation of Telugu short stories into English?

No. I have no head for theories. But, yes, I do believe that a translator of fiction has to play the role of a windowpane: let the light in, be faithful to the original. Translation is an exercise in humility. Doesn't that make it a spiritual experience?

Could you say something about your monograph on Narayan published by Sahitya Akademi, Delhi?

I had earlier focussed on the first five novels for a book on Narayan. But when the Akademi asked me to do a monograph, meant for the general reader, I went back and looked again at all the books, fiction, and non-fiction by Narayan. The length prescribed for the monograph is thirty thousand words. The style should be non-academic. The book is dear to me: it is my first on Narayan, it is a debt redeemed to my Professor Iyengar and to Narayan as well. It is dedicated to the memory of Srinivasa Iyengar.

(From The Hindu - October 1, 2006)