A tribute to R.K.Narayan
Yesterday (October 10th) was R.K.Narayan’s centenary birth anniversary. You must have already read Hindu’s article on the same. R.K.Narayan is very special to me as he introduced me to books. Not that I was transformed into a voracious reader (I still read very lightly), but whatever interest I have is thanks to him.
Unfortunately, N.Ram does not mention Bachelor of Arts, my first and also the most favourite of RKN’s novels/short stories, in his article. I just loved the way he describes the miserable life of club secretary at college and Chandran’s attempts at waking up early and studying for his exams. The moment I like the most in “BA” is when Chandran manages to get up early one morning and reprimands his younger brother for wasting his time 
. It was hard to believe that the novel was written 60 years before I had read it simply because the events in a college student’s life that he depicts in the book have not changed much even today.
Waiting for the Mahatma and his memoir, My Days, are my other favourites of his writing. I could associate almost all the characters of an R.K.Narayan with some person that I already knew. I like the way he captures the fluid state of his characters’ minds. His language was tight without being flowery. and the fact that he didn’t try to pad his short stories with unnecessary conversations helped in establishing the characters in the readers’ minds. The content in many of his novels were autobiographical which revealed to its readers RKN’s ability of record the events in his life to the last detail and identify the innate humour in them.
Long live his creations…
- General | Time: 11:34:47 PM (UTC+8)
Karthik, me too wanted to write a blog on this. One of my favourite author da. I cant forget “Swami and Friends” (first I watched it as a serial in TV).Somedays back, I read his “Grandmother’s tale”. It is also kind of memoir. Good storyteller. I love R.K.Laxman too for his caricatures.Great brothers!!
Comment by Subbaraman — October 12, 2006 @ 8:44:44 PM
In Last week’s Vikatan, Sujatha wrote about Narayan (his interview with him).Nice one..AV also came with publishing two of his novels in tamil(which already came in the magazine), “Swamiyum snehigatharkalum” , “Iruttarai”..
Comment by Subbaraman — October 31, 2006 @ 5:36:48 PM