The man eater of malgudi, p.1
The Man-Eater of Malgudi, page 1
PENGUIN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CLASSICS
THE MAN-EATER OF MALGUDI
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, and educated there and at Maharaja’s College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts (1937), are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi. Other ‘Malgudi’ novels are The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945), Mr Sampath (1949), The Financial Expert (1952), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), The Painter of Signs (1976), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983) and Talkative Man (1986). The Guide (1958) won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country’s highest literary honour. As well as five collections of short stories, A Horse and Two Goats, An Astrologer’s Day, Lawley Road, Malgudi Days and Under the Banyan Tree, he has published two travel books, My Dateless Diary and The Emerald Route; four volumes of essays, Next Saturday, Reluctant Guru, A Story-teller’s World and A Writer’s Nightmare; the retold legends Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata; and a volume of memoirs, My Days. In 1980 he was awarded the A. C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Several of his books are published by Penguin.
R. K. Narayan
THE MAN-EATER OF MALGUDI
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182–190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the USA by The Viking Press 1961
First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann Ltd 1961
Published in Penguin Books 1983
Copyright © R. K. Narayan, 1961
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-101-66221-2
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
For
GRAHAM GREENE
to mark (more than) a quarter of a
century of friendship
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter One
I could have profitably rented out the little room in front of my press on Market Road, with a view of the fountain; it was coveted by every would-be shopkeeper in our town. I was considered a fool for not getting my money’s worth out of it, since all the space I need for my press and its personnel was at the back, beyond the blue curtain. But I could not explain myself to sordid and calculating people. I hung up a framed picture of Goddess Laxmi poised on her lotus, holding aloft the bounties of earth in her four hands, and through her grace I did not do too badly. My son, little Babu, went to Albert Mission School, and he felt quite adequately supplied with toys, books, sweets, and any other odds and ends he fancied. My wife, every Deepavali, gave herself a new silk sari, glittering with lace, not to mention the ones she bought for no particular reason at other times. She kept the pantry well-stocked and our kitchen fire aglow, continuing the traditions of our ancient home in Kabir Street.
I had furnished my parlour with a high-backed chair made of teak-wood in the style of Queen Anne, or so the auctioneer claimed who had sold it to my grandfather, a roll-top desk supported on bowlegs with ivy-vines carved on them, and four other seats of varying heights and shapes, resurrected from our family lumber-room.
Anyone who found his feet aching as he passed down Market Road was welcome to rest in my parlour on any seat that happened to be vacant. While they rested there, people got ideas for bill forms, visiting cards, or wedding invitations which they asked me to print, but many others came whose visits did not mean a paisa to me. Among my constant companions was a poet who was writing the life of God Krishna in monosyllabic verse. His ambition was to compose a grand epic, and he came almost every day to recite to me his latest lines. My admiration for him was unbounded. I was thrilled to hear such clear lines as ‘Girls with girls did dance in trance’, and I felt equally excited when I had to infer the meaning of certain lines; that happened when he totally failed to find a monosyllable and achieved his end by ruthlessly carving up a polysyllable. On such occasions even the most familiar term took on the mysterious quality of a private code. Invariably, in deference to his literary attainments, I let him occupy the Queen Anne chair, while I sat perched on the edge of my roll-top desk. In the next best seat, a deep basket-chair in cane, you would find Sen, the journalist, who came to read the newspapers on my table, and who held forth on the mistakes Nehru was making. These two men and a few others remained sitting there till six in the evening when the press was silenced. I had no need to be present or attend to them in any way. They were also good enough to vacate their chairs without being told and to disappear when anyone came to discuss business with me.
Between my parlour and the press hung a blue curtain. No one tried to peer through it. When I shouted for the foreman, compositor, office-boy, binder or accountant, people imagined a lot of men working on the other side; if I had been challenged I should have gone in and played the ventriloquist. But my neighbour, the Star Press, had all the staff one could dream of, and if any customer of mine insisted on seeing machinery, I led him not through my curtain, but next door to the Star, where I displayed its original Heidelberg with pride as my own acquisition (although in my view the owner had made a mistake in buying it, as the groans of its double cylinder could be heard beyond the railway yard when formes were being printed). The owner of the Star was a nice man and a good friend, but he hardly got any customers. How could he when all the time they were crowding my parlour, although all I could offer them was an assortment of chairs and a word of welcome? But as few had ever stepped beyond the blue curtain, everyone imagined me equipped for big tasks, which I certainly attempted with the help of my well-wisher (I dare not call him staff) Sastri, the old man who set up type, printed the formes four pages at a time on the treadle, sewed the sheets, and carried them for ruling or binding to Kandan four streets off. I lent him a hand in all departments whenever he demanded my help and my visitors left me alone. On the whole I was a busy man, and such business as I could not take up I passed on next door to be done on the original Heidelberg. I was so free with the next-door establishment that no one knew whether I owned it or whether the Star owned me.
* * *
I lived in Kabir Street, which ran behind Market Road. My day started before four in the morning. The streets would be quite dark when I set out to the river for my ablutions, except for the municipal lamps which flickered (if they had not run out of oil) here and there in our street. I went down Kabir Street, cut through a flagged alley at the end of it, trespassed into the compound of the Taluk office through a gap in its bramble fencing, and there I was on the edge of the river. All along the way I had my well-defined encounters. The milkman, starting on his rounds, driving ahead of him a puny white cow, greeted me respectfully and asked, ‘What is the time, master?’ – a question I allowed to die without a reply as I carried no watch. I simpered and let him pass suppressing the question, ‘Tell me the secret of your magic: how you manage to extract a milk-like product out of that miserable cow-like creature to supply thirty families as you do every morning. What exactly are you, conjuror or milk-vendor?’ The old asthmatic at the end of our street sat up on the pyol of his house and gurgled through his choking throat, ‘Didn’t get a wink of sleep all night, and already it’s morning and you are out! That’s life, I suppose!’ The watchman at the Taluk office called from beneath his rug, ‘Is that you?’ – the only question which deserved a reply. ‘Yes, it’s me,’ I always said and passed on.
I had my own spot at the riverside, immediately behind the Taluk office. I shunned the long flight of steps farther down; they were always crowded, and if I went there I was racked with the feeling that I was dipping into other people’s baths, but this point upstream seemed to me exclusive. A palmyra-tree loomed over the bank of the river, festooned with mud pots into which toddy dripped through a gash in the bark of the tree. When it fermented, it stank to the skies, and was gathered in barrels and sold to the patrons who congregated at the eighteen taverns scattered in the four corners of the city, where any evening one could see revellers fighting or rolling in the gutters. So much for the potency of the fluid dripping into the pot. I never looked up at the palmyra without a shudder. ‘With his monopoly of taverns,’ I thought, ‘Sankunni builds his mansions in the New Extension and rides about in his four American cars driven by uniformed chauffeurs.’
All the same I was unable to get away from the palmyr a. At the foot of the tree was a slab of stone on which I washed my dhoti and towel, and the dark hour resounded with the tremendous beating of wet cloth on granite. I stood waist-deep in water, and at the touch of cold water around my body I felt elated. The trees on the bank stood like shadows in the dusk. When the east glowed I sat for a moment on the sand reciting a prayer to the Sun to illumine my mind. The signal for me to break off from contemplation was the jingle of ox-bells as country carts forded Nallappa’s grove, bringing loads of vegetables, corn and fuel from the near-by villages to the market. I rose and retraced my steps, rolling up my washing into a tight pack.
I had more encounters on my way back. My cousin from the fourth street gave me a cold look and passed. She hated me for staying in our ancestral home, my father having received it as his share after the division of property among his brothers. She never forgave us, although it had all happened in my father’s time. Most of the citizens of this area were now moving sleepily towards the river, and everyone had a word for me. The lawyer, known as the adjournment lawyer for his ability to prolong a case beyond the wildest dream of a litigant, came by, a sparse hungry-looking man who shaved his chin once a fortnight. When I saw him in the distance I cried to myself, ‘I am undone. Mr Adjournment will get me now.’ The moment he saw me he cried, ‘Where is your bed? Unless you have slept by the river how can you be returning from the river at this unearthly hour?’
There was one whom I did not really mind meeting, the septuagenarian living in a dilapidated outhouse in Adam’s Lane, who owned a dozen houses in our locality, lived on rent, and sent off money-orders to distant corners of the Indian sub-continent, where his progeny was spread out. He always stopped to give me news of his relations. He looked like a new-born infant when he bared his gums in a smile. ‘You are late today,’ I always said, and waited for his explanation, ‘I sat up late writing letters. You know how it is with one’s children scattered far and wide.’ I did not mind tarrying to listen to the old man, although my fingers felt cramped with encircling the wad of wet clothes I was carrying home to dry. The old man referred to four sons and their doings and five daughters, and countless grandchildren. He was always busy, on one side attending to the repairs of his dozen houses, about which one or the other of his tenants was always pursuing him; on the other, writing innumerable letters on postcards, guiding, blessing, admonishing, or spoiling with a remittance of cash one or the other of his wards.
* * *
I was content to live in our house as it had been left by my father. I was a youth, studying in Albert Mission, when the legal division of ancestral property occurred between my father and his brothers. I well remember the day when his four brothers marched out with their wives and children, trundling away their share of heirlooms, knick-knacks and household articles. Everything that could be divided into five was cut up into equal parts and given one to each. Such things as could not be split up were given to those who clamoured the loudest. A rattan easy chair on which my grandfather used to lie in the courtyard, watching the sky, was claimed by my second uncle whose wife had started all the furore over the property. She also claimed a pair of rosewood benches which shone with a natural polish, and a timber wooden chair that used to be known as the bug-proof chair. My father’s third brother, as compensation for letting these items go, claimed a wooden almirah as his own and a ‘leg’ harmonium operated by a pedal. The harmonium was also claimed by another uncle whose daughter was supposed to possess musical talent. It had gathered dust in a corner for decades without anyone’s noticing it. No one had even asked how it had come to find a place in our home, although a little family research would have yielded the information. Our grandfather had lent a hundred rupees to a local dramatic troupe and attached their harmonium as their only movable property after a court decree, lugged it home, and kept it in a corner of our hall. He died before he could sell and realize its value, and his successors took the presence of the harmonium in the corner of the hall for granted until this moment of partition.
All the four brothers of my father with their wives and children, numbering fifteen, had lived under the same roof for many years. It was my father’s old mother who had kept them together, acting as a cohesive element among members of the family. Between my grandmother, who laid down the policy, and a person called Grand-Auntie, who actually executed it, the family administration ran smoothly. When my grandmother died the unity of the family was also gone. The trouble started with my father’s second brother’s wife, who complained loudly one day, standing in the passage of the house, that her children had been ill-treated and that she was hated by everyone; her cause was upheld by her husband. Soon various other differences appeared among the brothers and their wives, although all the children continued to play in the open courtyard, unmindful of the attitude of the elders to each other.
Before the year was out, on a festival day, they had their biggest open quarrel, provoked by a minor incident in which an eight-year-old boy knocked down another and snatched a biscuit from his mouth. A severe family crisis developed, as the mother of the injured child slapped the offender on his bare seat. My father and his brothers were sitting around, eating their midday meal. My father muttered mildly, ‘If Mother were alive she would have handled everyone and prevented such scenes.’
Two of his brothers, incensed at the incident, got up without touching their food. My father commented, without looking at anyone in particular, ‘You need not abandon your food. This is a sacred day. Such things should not be allowed to happen.’ My mother, who was bending over him, serving ghee, whispered, ‘Why don’t you mind your business? They are not babies to be taught how to conduct themselves on a festive day.’
My father accepted her advice without a word and resolved at that moment to break up the joint family in the interests of peace. The next few days saw our family lawyers, assisted by the adjournment expert, walking in and out with papers to be signed, and within a few weeks the house had become empty. It had been a crowded house since the day it was built by my father’s grandfather, numerous children, womenfolk, cousins, relations and guests milling in and out all the year round, and now it became suddenly bare and empty. The household now consisted of my parents, Grand-Auntie, me and my two sisters. My brother was away in Madras in a college hostel. As he grew older my father began to spend all his time sitting on the pyol, on a mat, reading Ramayana or just watching the street. Even at night he never went beyond the pyol. He placed a small pillow under his head and stretched himself there. He hardly ever visited the other parts of this immense house. Occasionally he wandered off to the back yard to pluck the withered leaves off a citrus tree, which had been his favourite plant. It had been growing there for years, and no one knew whether it was an orange- or lime-tree; it kept people guessing, never displaying on its branches anything more than a few white flowers now and then. This plant was my father’s only concern. He hardly ever looked up at the six tall coconut-trees that waved in the sky. They were my mother’s responsibility and Grand-Auntie’s, who regularly had their tops cleared of beetles and withered shoots, sent up a climber once a month, and filled the granary with large, ripe coconuts. There were also pumpkins growing in the back yard, and large creepers covered the entire thatched roof of a cow-shed, which used to house four of Malgudi’s best-bred cows, years before.
After my father’s death my mother lived with me until Babu was a year old, and then she decided to go and live with my brother at Madras, taking away with her her life-companion Grand-Auntie. Thus I, with my wife and little Babu, became the sole occupant of the house in Kabir Street.
Chapter Two
Sastri had to go a little earlier than usual since he had to perform a puja at home. I hesitated to let him go. The three colour labels (I prided myself on the excellence of my colour-printing) for K.J.’s aerated drinks had to be got ready. It was a very serious piece of work for me. My personal view was that the coloured ink I used on the label was far safer to drink than the dye that K.J. put into his water-filled bottles. We had already printed the basic colour on the labels and the second was to be imposed today. This was a crucial stage of the work and I wanted Sastri to stay and finish the job.
