Narayan gives us in The Financial Expert a striking account of the conversion of a mean-spirited person to the single-minded worship of money. In Margayya’s case, the seeds of obsessive greed are encouraged to grow into full-scale money worship after a remarkable meeting with a priest who explains to him the workings of Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. The goddess can be invited to smile upon a supplicant, but, as the priest explains, this requires single-minded devotion to her – as well as a series of elaborate, self-denying rituals. All of this works for Margayya, who becomes immensely wealthy by enmeshing his clients in ruinous debt agreements and then proceeding to seize their assets. Thus he acquires property – land and houses – and of course the rupees that he regards with mystical awe. His business dealings are, of course, exploitative and rotten, no more so than when he converts to his own ends Bed Life, the manuscript of the sexual visionary, Dr Pal. Armed with the proceeds of this questionable product, he develops his money-lending business and becomes a respected and influential citizen. Greed, though, triumphs, and his spectacular bankruptcy is achieved when the same Dr Pal triggers a run on his bank. Margayya, of course, has learned no real lessons, and returns to his place under the tree to start afresh.
The Financial Expert is a satisfying novel at many different levels. It is, in the first place, a fine study of a selfish, shrivelled personality – a man who is prepared to do anything for money and who can lie with complete equanimity. These lies are sometimes comic, as in the scene where he is discussing the publication of Bed Life with the printer and pretends to know much more about books and printing than he actually does (which is nothing). And we are similarly both amused and appalled when Margayya brazens his way through a blatant refusal on his part to pay an optician for his glasses. It is the optician who is made to feel guilty for raising the issue of the unpaid bill: ‘Haven’t you the elementary courtesy to know the time and place for such reminders?’ Margayya says to his creditor. The transferring of blame to others supports the diagnosis that we might be tempted to make: Margayya is a classic psychopath (or sociopath). This view is confirmed in the scene in which he summons an astrologer to cast a horosope for Balu, who wishes to marry. The fact that the stars are inauspicious does not deter him. If the planets are initially unwilling to give their blessing to the proposed union, then they shall be made to do so. And so a new astrologer is summoned – one who can be bribed sufficiently to make the planets conduct themselves as Margayya wishes. Money itself is not the problem here: it is the complete self-centredness and coldness of the psychopathic personality that strikes and appals us.
Narayan is not a ‘preachy’ writer. We see a wide variety of human types in his novels, and we also witness a great deal of bad behaviour. His descriptions of human failings are very matter-of-fact and in some cases almost dry, and yet this does not mean that there is no authorial viewpoint. There is such a viewpoint, but it is a discreet one and it is delicately advanced. Unlike many modern writers who leave us in no doubt about their personal position and objectives, Narayan is a very unobtrusive writer. He does have a world view, but it is one which is as much anchored in a shared culture as in personal conviction; it is a world view that is linked with a profound understanding of Hindu myths and legends. These novels can all be seen as reflections of various themes explored in that body of belief, and this lends them a universal significance. In the context of such elemental and ancient legends, it is not surprising that the novelist himself should seem modest and somewhat in the background. And that, in a sense, is the real nature of this great novelist’s achievement: the portrayal of the world and its great themes through the depiction of the minutiae of life. Narayan does not start with a generalization, with a theory; he lets his characters demonstrate to us, through their very ordinary thoughts and actions, what it is to be human. And to do this he stands in the crowded streets, in the houses, in the workplaces, listening to the things that people say, the small things, the poignant things, the laughable things; listening and taking notes.
Alexander McCall Smith
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
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R. K. NARAYAN, My Days: A Memoir, Viking, New York, 1974, Chatto & Windus, London, 1975.
SUSAN RAM and N. RAM R. K. Narayan: The Early Tears, 1906-1945, Viking, New Delhi, 1996.
RANGA RAO, R. K. Narayan (‘Makers of Indian Literature’ series), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2004.
WILLIAM WALSH, R. K. Narayan: A Critical Appreciation, William Heinemann Ltd., London, 1982, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982.
CHRONOLOGY
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DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1906 Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayanaswami is born in Madras on 10 October at I Vellala Street in the Purasawalkam, district. He is one of several children in a middle-class family. His mother is frail and his father, a headmaster in the government educational service, moves frequently, so the boy is brought up by his grandmother. Kipling: Puck of Pook’s Hill. Galsworthy: The Man of Property (vol. 1 of The Forsyte Saga).
1907 Conrad: The Secret Agent.
Kipling first English Nobel laureate for literature.
1909 Wells: Ann Veronica; Tono-Bungay.
1910 Forster: Howards End.
Wells: The History of Mr Polly.
1911 Conrad: Under Western Eyes.
Bennett: Clayhanger.
Chesterton: The Innocence of Father Brown.
1912 Attends a severe Lutheran missionary school where, as the only Brahmin boy in the class, he is often mocked by the teachers. Begins to learn English (his native language is Tamil). Dissatisfied with his schooling, his grandmother coaches him every evening. Mann: Death in Venice.
Tagore: Gitanjali: Song Offerings.
1913 Tagore: The Crescent Moon.
Tagore awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
1914 Tagore: The King of the Dark
Chamber, The Post Office.
Joyce: Dubliners.
W. W. Jacobs: Night Watches.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Foundation of Muslim League, first Muslim political party in India. Simla deputation to British Viceroy, Lord Minto, asking for separate electorates for Muslim community.
Asiatic Registration Act becomes law in the province of Transvaal, South Africa.
Minto-Morley Reforms: Indians given more power in legislative affairs; creation of separate Muslim electorates. Blériot flies across the English Channel.
Dalai Lama flees from the Chinese and takes refuge in India.
George V recognized as King-Emperor in Delhi (during a hunting trip in Nepal the King bags 21 tigers, 8 rhinos, and a bear). Transfer of capital to Delhi announced.
Sinking of Titanic.
Gandhi arrested as he leads a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
Beginning of World War I (to 1918); large numbers of Indians, Hindu and Muslim, rally to the British cause. General Smuts begins negotiations with Gandhi to eradicate many of the racist laws imposed on South African Indians.
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1915 Buchan: The Thirty-nine Steps.
Lawrence: The Rainbow.
Maugham: Of Human Bondage.
1916 Tagore: Fruit Gathering.
Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man.
1917 Kipling: A Diversity of Creatures.
1918 Joins Besant Scouts of India, vowing to serve ‘God, Freedom, and India’.
1919 Woolf: Night and Day.
Wodehouse: My Man Jeeves.
Saki: The Toys of Peace.
1920 Begins attending CRC High School, ‘a school with no particular quality of good or evil about it’. Mansfield: Bliss.
Wharton: The Age of Innocence.
1921 Maugham: The Trembling of a Leaf.
1922 Admitted to Christian College High School. Eliot: The Waste Land.
Joyce: Ulysses.
Mansfield: The Garden Party.
1924 Sent to Mysore, where his f
ather has been appointed headmaster of Maharaja’s Collegiate High School; begins studies at this school. Ford: Parade’s End.
Forster: A Passage to India.
1925 Fails university entrance exams; is left free for a year to read what he pleases. Starts to write, ‘in the style of any writer who was uppermost in my mind at the time’, and begins sending off manuscripts. Tagore: Red Oleanders; Broken
Ties and Other Stories.
Hemingway: In Our Time.
Eliot: Poems 1909–25.
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby.
Kafka: The Trial.
1926 Enters Maharaja’s College, Mysore, studying for a BA. Ghose: Songs of Love and Death.
Kafka: The Castle.
1927 Gandhi: My Experiments with Truth.
Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu.
Woolf: To the Lighthouse.
1929 Tagore: Farewell, My Friend.
Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury.
Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms.
Graves: Goodbye to All That.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Mahatma Gandhi returns to India from South Africa.
Muslim League and Congress Party agree to work together to campaign for self-government.
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
End of World War I.
Versailles peace conference. Montague-Chelmsford Reforms (Government of India Act): reorganizes central legislature but falls short of Indian expectations. Demonstrations against British rule become widespread; massacre of peaceful protesters by armed British troops at Amritsar. Non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhi. League of Nations created.
Opening of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta.
Gandhi sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for civil disobedience – he is released after serving two years. Establishment of USSR. Stalin beomes General Secretary of Communist Party.
Gateway of India monument in Delhi is completed. Gandhi undertakes a fast to end Hindu – Muslim rioting. Death of Lenin.
Commuter rail service introduced in Bombay.
Germany admitted to League of Nations.
Lindbergh makes first solo flight over Atlantic.
Gandhi nominates Jawaharlal Nehru to succeed him as leader of the Congress movement. Wall Street Crash. Period of worldwide depression begins. First non-stop flight from England to India.
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1930 Graduates from Maharaja’s College. Begins work on Swami and Friends while staying with his grandmother in Bangalore. After abortive attempts to become a railway officer and bank official h takes up teaching at a governmen school in Chennapatna. Faulkner: As I Lay Dying.
Pritchett: The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories.
1931 Gives up teaching and resolves to become a full-time writer, which he is able to do with the support of his family. Stays in Madras where he pursues editors of newspapers and magazines; one book review and an article published. His friend Kittu Purna leaves for Oxford, promising to find a publisher for Swami and Friends. Premchand: ‘Deliverance’.
Woolf: The Waves.
Walpole: Judith Paris.
Hammett: The Glass Key.
1932 Receives 18 rupees for the publication of a short story in The Hindu. Tagore: Sheaves, Poems and Songs.
Premchand: Arena of Action.
Huxley: Brave New World.
Waugh: Black Mischief.
1933 Publication of a children’s story brings in 30 rupees. A short piece, ‘How to Write an Indian Novel’, lampooning Western writers, is accepted by Punch. In July, while staying with his sister in Coimbatore, sees a young girl drawing water from a street-tap and falls in love with her. Befriends her father, a headmaster, and asks for her hand in marriage. After some difficulties, the wedding takes place a few months later, and Rajam joins her husband’s household. Takes a job as Mysore correspondent for The Justice, a Madras newspaper. Maugham: Ah King.
Wodehouse: Mulliner Nights;
Heavy Weather.
Hemingway: Winner Take
Nothing.
1934 His father becomes bed-ridden after a severe stroke. Purna approaches Graham Greene, who is living in Oxford, and gives him the manuscript of Swami and Friends. Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night.
Waugh: A Handful of Dust;
Ninety-two Days.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Mahatma Gandhi sets off on famous salt march, sparking off a wave of anti-British demonstrations and boycotts. Chandrasekhara Raman wins Nobel Prize for Physics.
Inauguration of New Delhi as India’s capital. Series of Round Table Conferences in London to discuss the future of India (to 1933).
Clampdown on demonstrators in India; 60,000 Congress activists are imprisoned. Gandhi’s hunger strike against the treatment of untouchables. Election of Roosevelt in US.
Gandhi’s hunger strike to protest against British oppression in India. Hitler becomes German Chancellor. Roosevelt announces ‘New Deal’.
Gandhi resigns from Congress Party.
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1935 Shortens his name to R. K. Narayan on Graham Greene’s suggestion. With the help of Greene, his first novel Swami and Friends, set in the fictional town of Malgudi, is published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton. The book receives enthusiastic reviews though sales are disappointing. Gives up his job on The Justice. Anand: Untouchable.
Isherwood: Mr Norris Changes Trains.
1936 Birth of his daughter, Hemavati. Anand: Coolie.
Premchand: The Gift of a Cow.
Orwell: Keep the Aspidistra Flying
1937 The Bachelor of Arts is published b Nelson, thanks again to Graham Greene’s recommendation. Death of his father. Money is short and Narayan works as a hack journalist to make ends meet. Anand: Two Leaves and a Bud.
Kumar: Tyagapatra (The Resignation).
Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men.
1938 The Dark Room is published by Macmillan and receives enthusiastic reviews. Rao: Kanthapura.
Greene: Brighton Rock.
Bowen: The Death of the Heart.
1939 Narayan’s wife, Rajam, dies of typhoid. He elects to bring up his daughter himself. Endures a period of depression, during which time he attempts to contact his wife through spiritual mediums. Publishes Mysore, a travel book. Begins a regular Sunday column for The Hindu. Anand: The Village.
Joyce: Finnegans Wake.
Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath.
1940 Anand: Across the Black Waters.
Greene: The Power and the Glory.
Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls.
1941 Begins publishing his own quarterly journal, Indian Thought. Abandons it after three issues due to disappointing sales.
1942 Anand: The Sword and the Sickle.
Camus: The Stranger.
Eliot: Four Quartets.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Government of India Act creates a central legislature; provincial government handed over to elected Indian representatives. Burma separated from India. In Germany Nuremberg laws deprive Jews of citizenship and rights.
Outbreak of Spanish Civil War (to 1939) – Hitler and Mussolini form Rome – Berlin Axis. Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’ of the Communist Party (to 1938).
Japanese invasion of China.
Germany annexes Austria; Munich crisis.
Hitler invades Poland; outbreak of World War II. Gandhi calls on the world to disarm. The Indian subcontinent contributes the largest volunteer army in history (some 2.5 million servicemen and women) to the Allied cause.
Italy enters war as German ally. Fall of France. Battle of Britain. Muslim League adopt the Pakistan Resolution, which demands an independent state for Muslims.
Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; US enters war. Japanese invasion of Burma begins. Hitler invades USSR. India’s population is 389 million.
Sir Stafford Cripps visits India with British government’s offer of complete self-government after the war: described by Gandhi as ‘a po
st-dated cheque on a failing bank’, it is rejected by Hindus and Muslims alike. Gandhi calls on British to ‘Quit India’ but the movement to eject the British is quickly suppressed. Japanese troops capture Rangoon and consolidate their position in Burma.
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1943 Malgudi Days published by Indian Thought Publications, which also publishes Dodu and Other Stories the same year.
1944
1945 The English Teacher published by Eyre & Spottiswoode, where Greene is a director. Cyclone and Other Stories published by Indian Thought Publications, Mysore, and Rock House & Sons, Madras. Borges: Fictions.
Orwell: Animal Farm.
Waugh: Brideshead Revisited.
1946
1947 An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories. Rao: The Cow of the Barricades.
Maugham: Creatures of Circumstance.
C. P. Snow: The Light and the Dark.
1948 Begins building his own house on a plot of land outside Mysore. Desani: All About H. Hatterr.
Greene: The Heart of the Matter.
1949 Mr Sampath. Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Bowen: The Heat of the Day.
1950 Powell: A Question of Upbringing
(vol. 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time).
1951 Ruskin Bond: The Room on the Roof.
Chaudhuri: Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.
Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye.
Mr Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, the Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma Page 2