R. K. Narayan
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Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayan (October 10, 1906 - May 13, 2001) was an Indian novelist writing in English, whose sensitive, well-drawn portrayals of twentieth-century Indian life were set mostly in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi.
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Early Years of Narayan
Most of Narayan's work, starting from his first novel Swami and friends (1935) is set in the fictional town of Malgudi which at the same time captures everything Indian while having a unique identity of its own.
Birth
R.K.Narayan was born at Number 1 Vellala Street in the year of 1906, in Madras, India. 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.
Career
Beginning
One of the few Indian-English writers spending nearly all his time in India, he went abroad to the United States in 1956 at the invitation of the Rockfeller Foundation. 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.
Literature Type
His novels are characterised by Chekhovian simplicity and gentle humour. Characters in his novels tend to be very down-to-earth. 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.
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.
R.K Laxman
Narayan's younger brother R.K. Laxman is one of the most popular cartoonists in India.
References
- The Life of R.K. Narayan California Literary Review
- Ram, Susan and N., R. K. Narayan: The Early Years: 1906–1945. (New Delhi): Viking, (1996).kn:ಆರ್ ಕೆ ನಾರಾಯಣ್