Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction

2. The Fabulator of Malgudi: R.K. Narayan

To invoke the work of R.K. Narayan as an originary moment in the history of counterrealism in Indo-Anglian writing is, admittedly, unusual, for his reputation as an author rests squarely on his penchant for truthful representation rather than experiment. Ever since Graham Greene in his famous introduction to The Financial Expert, written half a century ago, endorsed Narayan’s contribution as a metonymist, as one who provides a window to India, the prevalent view has been of Narayan as a realist and that his Malgudi encapsulates the heterogeneity and religiosity of India in ways that are fundamentally authentic.1 Among the older critics, Srinivasa Iyengar, William Walsh, and several others have seen in Narayan different reasons for serious attention, but all have been consistent in their assumption of the referentiality that sustains his work.2 Edwin Gerow states that “Narayan’s is classical art” (1) and Cynthia Van Driesen sees in his work the expression of “the Hindu concept of life and experience” (55). She goes on to add that “the Narayan hero in fact, impresses as a type of ordinary, average humanity. He is never exceptionally gifted, intellectually or physically. The primary impression is of fallibility and vulnerability–truly an Indian Notes to chapter 2 are on pp. 190-91. 29 CHAPTER 2 The Fabulator of Malgudi: R.K. Narayan version of Everyman” (58). Philip Scott goes further and suggests that Narayan belongs to a long line of Indian nationalist writers: “He is the torch-bearer of that more complimentary image of India first seen by certain sympathetic Orientalist scholars and taken over by patriotic Indians in the nineteenth century. Ultimately, he is in a direct line of descent from men like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee” (96). As spiritualist, mythographer, or satirist, he remains, almost by consensus, a chronicler of the referential. Even in studies that stress the mythic element in Narayan, such as Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s recent work on the Indo-English novel, the emphasis falls on the manner in which “the demands of the mythic and the realist modes often coalesce” (29). Afzal-Khan’s reading of the mythic is primarily a religious one in which she perceives the seamless merging of the sacred and the secular. One of the few exceptions among critics , perhaps, is Hadyn Williams, who draws attention to the element of fantasy in Narayan’s work when he claims that “Narayan’s novels always combine realism with elements of fantasy” (1138). For the most part, the notion of fantasy has hardly ever been dealt with in any great detail, and even critics such as D.A. Shankar who fault Narayan’s evocation of the referent on sociological grounds are careful to add that “there is hardly anything that is unreal about the India that he presents in his fiction” (49). In short, the agreement among critics is about the transparency of his work, the immediate access it provides to the realities of India in general and South India in particular. An interesting departure from this line of thinking is the argument offered by Richard Cronin who sees a fundamental dichotomy between the fabulist and the novelist. Identifying the allegorical impulse as a form of fabulism, Cronin argues that the essentialism that underlies Narayan’s vision seeks recourse in fabulism, while the author’s honesty and objectivity lead to the novelistic mode to articulate unpalatable truths about the nation. Although the celebration of Narayan rests largely on fabulism, Cronin points out that “Narayan turns to the novel when he wants to evade the consequences of his fable and to the fable when the novel starts to drift 30 Counterrealism in Indo-Anglian Fiction into dangerous seas” (63). Cronin’s concern is with content rather than form, but he does acknowledge, implicitly, the presence of different modes in Narayan’s fiction. The fabulism he alludes to, however, is that of the message-driven traditional fable rather than its more contemporary reincarnation. Although Narayan’s world is primarily mythic and is underpinned by a religious vision, his awareness of the secular is a constitutive aspect of the Weltanschauung of India where divisions such as private and public, religious and secular do not exist in quite the same way as in the West. Narayan’s perception of the everyday, the minutiae of daily occurrences, is often precise and arises from a nuanced awareness of detail. Ved Mehta’s notable essay, among others, underlines...