Analyzing the Story of The Guide (author: Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayanaswami)
RK Narayan's most celebrated novel, The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, India’s highest literary honor the first book written *in English to win that award*
Preamble: RK Narayan wrote a novel called “The Guide” which was made into an English language and a Hindi language movies. I will write more about the movie versions later. This muse is strictly about the novel version of the story.
Why this muse about a 80 year old book now?
While the story is not new, the relevance of the story is strong in India even today.
Other than the three year old girl, none of the above died of fasting. The three year old’s parent forced her to continue until she died. Viyana Jain was terminally ill from brain tumor. She did not last even one day.
(My) Plot summary:
Fresh out of prison, infamous ex-tourist guide, Raju, finds unexpected sanctuary in an abandoned temple. Implicated in forgery by his girlfriend (Rosie), the wife of a tourist named Marco, Raju tries to lay low. But when villagers mistake him for a holy man, he embraces the charade, only to find himself inadvertently committed to a life-threatening fast until the rains come. The outcome is tragic.
Wikipedia summary:
The protagonist is a popular and wily tour guide "Railway Raju". He falls in lust with a beautiful woman named Rosie - already married to an archaeologist named Marco. Marco disapproves of Rosie's passion for dancing but Raju encourages Rosie to pursue her dreams and become a dancer. With this interaction, they begin to spend time with each other and become very close.
Upon learning about their relationship, Marco leaves Rosie in Malgudi and returns to Madras alone. Rosie seeks refuge at Raju's home, and they start living together. However, Raju's mother does not approve of their relationship and leaves them.
Raju becomes Rosie's stage manager, and with his marketing tactics, Rosie gains recognition as a dancer. With his success, Raju becomes overly confident and begins to assert more control over Rosie's life for financial gain. He becomes involved in a forgery case related to Rosie's signature. Raju is sentenced to two years in prison, despite Rosie's defence.
After completing his sentence, Raju passes through a village called Mangal, where he is mistaken for a sadhu - a spiritual guide. To avoid returning to Malgudi in disgrace, he decides to stay in an abandoned temple near Mangal. There, he takes on the role of a sadhu, delivering sermons and solving the villagers' daily problems and disputes.
During a famine in the village, some of the villagers request help from Raju, believing that rain will come and end the famine if he fasts. Raju decides to confess his entire past to Velan, who had initially discovered him in the temple and had unwavering faith in him like the rest of the villagers. However, Velan remains unchanged by the confession, and Raju resolves to continue with the fast.
As news of Raju's fast spreads through the media, a large crowd gathers to witness the spectacle, much to Raju's annoyance. On the morning of the eleventh day of his fast, he goes to the riverside as part of his daily ritual. He senses rain falling in the distant hills and collapses into the water. Whether it actually rained or if Raju died remains unknown and open to the reader's interpretation.
The entire story is written in 80,000 words. The narrative is extremely nonlinear in time. The story starts in the middle. It is halfway between the two extremes of Raju’s life. It occurs in two modes: Raju’s first person account and a third person narration.
Judging the book by its cover
The book was published in the US and the UK before it came out in India. The covers reflect the difference in how it was marketed in different countries.
The Guide - UK Edition
Notable: The emphasis of the cover is on Rosie, not on Raju.
The same with the cover of the US edition except it says “a novel of reluctant holy man.”
The cover of the Indian edition is markedly different. Here, Raju the guide staring piercingly at the reader towers over the dancing girl Rosie.
Some observations on the novel: The Guide
Raju was born a Hindu man. A traditional Hindu man is supposed to go through four stages of life.
Railway Raju - the departure from traditional Indian man
Railway Raju does go through four life stages of a Hindu man - but in a twisted way.
Brahmacharya - the student life is mostly absent as he drops out of school and the station becomes the school as he runs the station shop before becoming “the guide” of the tourists by getting anointed as Railway Raju. He leads a Thug Life.
Grihastha - he starts his home life as a man but with another man's wife.
Vanaprastha - instead of a forest life, he starts a life alone for two years in a jail. He repeatedly sings praises of his life in jail.
Sanyasa - he becomes a pretend monk out of necessity.
So, the allegorical Hindu life, by RK Narayan’s telling is turned upside down.
How economics spins the story
In the first chapter, we learn from Raju’s first person account: “Ours was a small house opposite the Malgudi station. The house had been built by my father with his own hands long before trains were thought of. He chose this spot because it was outside the town and he could have it cheap.”
Raju did not choose the railways, it chose him. “You may want to ask why I became a guide or when. I was a guide for the same reason as someone else is a signaller, porter, or guard. It is fated thus. Don’t laugh at my railway associations.”
So, we learned that surveyors showed up to decide the direction of the railroad track (no double line). They decided to set the station (named “Malgudi”) up next to his father’s house. Since his father already had a shop to sell household goods, he became the natural choice for running the shop located in the train platform. He had to change his fare of goods - from cooking items to direct consumables like biscuits and tea.
Bottom line: Had there been no Malgudi station, there would have been no Railway Raju Guide. His fame/notoriety was directly a product of the train station that came like manna from heaven. In economics, we call it the positive externality of infrastructure investment.
Raju - the Data Scientist
Railway Raju ruminates: "These were routine questions from a routine type. I had all the satisfactory answers ready. I generally took time to answer the latter question as to where I was going to take him first. It depended. I awaited the receipt of certain data
before venturing to answer. The data were how much time and money he was going to spend. Malgudi and its surroundings were my special show."
How the Snake Woman Rosie charms Railway Raju
“There was a girl who had come all the way from Madras and who asked the moment she set foot in Malgudi, ‘Can you show me a cobra—a king cobra it must be—which can dance to the music of a flute?’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘I’d like to see one. That’s all,’ she said.
Her husband said, ‘We have other things to think of, Rosie. This can wait.’
‘I’m not asking this gentleman to produce it at once. I am not demanding it. I’m just mentioning it, that’s all.’
‘If it interests you, you can make your own arrangements. Don’t expect me to go with you. I can’t stand the sight of a snake; your interests are morbid.’
I disliked this man. He was taunting such a divine creature. My sympathies were all for the girl; she was so lovely and elegant. After she arrived I discarded my khaki bush-coat and dhoti and took the trouble to make myself presentable. I wore a silk jibba and lace dhoti and groomed myself so well that my mother remarked when she saw me leave the house, ‘Ah, like a bridegroom!’ and Gaffur winked and said many an insinuating thing when I went to meet them at the hotel.
The girl suggested, ‘You must play on the flute, make it rear its head and dance.’ The man pulled out his gourd flute and played on it shrilly, and the cobra raised itself and darted hither and thither and swayed. The whole thing repelled me, but it seemed to fascinate the girl. She watched it swaying with the raptest attention. She stretched out her arm slightly and swayed it in imitation of the movement; she swayed her whole body to the rhythm—for just a second, but that was sufficient to tell me what she was, the greatest dancer of the century.”
How Raju’s mother reacted to Rosie
But unfortunately my mother, for all her show of tenderness, was beginning to stiffen inside. She had been listening to gossip, and she could not accommodate the idea of living with a tainted woman. I was afraid to be cornered by her, and took care not to face her alone. But whenever she could get at me, she hissed a whisper into my ear. ‘She is a real snake-woman, I tell you. I never liked her from the first day you mentioned her.’
Bottom line: Instead of making the snake woman dance to his tune, he started dancing to her tune.
Rosie - the unusual heroine of the story
Three departures of Rosie’s character from your standard Hindu tales of Sita/Savitri - the chaste Indian woman who sacrifices everything for their husbands. Here, Rosie’s husband leaves her. She shacks up with another man instead of crawling back to her husband (At times, she has doubts: ‘After all, he is my husband.” She says at one point to Raju’s chagrin.) Then, she starts a dancing career from scratch. In her profession, she goes from strength to strength with and then without Raju.
How did she do that?
Rosie - the economist (in her own words)
‘A different life was planned for me by my mother. She put me to school early in life; I studied well. I took my master’s degree in economics. But after college, the question was whether I should become a dancer or do something else. One day I saw in our paper an advertisement—the usual kind you may have seen: “Wanted: an educated, good-looking girl to marry a rich bachelor of academic interests. No caste restrictions; good looks and university degree essential.”
Marco - the archeologist
“He showed me the pictures he had copied, the notes he had made, and spoke far into the night about their significance. He was going to be responsible for rewriting of history, he said. He was talking about his plans for publishing his work. He said later he would go to Mexico, and to some of the Far Eastern countries to study similar subjects and add them on to his work.”
Raju and Rosie - Living in Sin
“We were a married couple to all appearances. Rosie cooked the food, and kept the house. I seldom went out except to do a little shopping. All day long she danced and sang. I made love to her constantly and was steeped in an all absorbing romanticism, until I woke up to the fact that she was really getting tired of it all. Some months passed before she asked me, ‘What are your plans?’”
Finale
In the last part of the story, Raju (now universally known as Swami) was getting interviewed by a reporter from the US:
‘I’m sorry, Swami, if the light is too strong.’ When he had finished with the pictures, he brought in a microphone, put it near the Swami’s face, and said, ‘Let us chat. Okay? Tell me, how do you like it here?’
‘I am only doing what I have to do; that’s all. My likes and dislikes do not count.’
‘How long have you been without food now?’
‘Ten days.’
‘Do you feel weak?’
‘Yes.’
‘When will you break your fast?’
‘Twelfth day.’
‘Do you expect to have the rains by then?’
‘Why not?’
‘Can fasting abolish all wars and bring world peace?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you champion fasting for everyone?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the caste system? Is it going?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you tell us something about your early life?’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘Er—for instance, have you always been a yogi?’
‘Yes; more or less.’
This exchange is quite remarkable - Raju claimed to be a yogi all his life!
There was absolutely no sign of Raju being remotely anything like a yogi before he took refuge in the abandoned temple. Even after that, Raju vehemently denied being anything other than an ordinary human.
How does the story end?
It was difficult to hold Raju on his feet, as he had a tendency to flop down. They held him as if he were a baby. Raju opened his eyes, looked about, and said, ‘Velan, it’s raining in the hills. I can feel it corning up under my feet, up my legs—’ He sagged down.
The story ends.
There are two unfinished things left hanging at the end of the novel: The reader has to decide whether it rains or not. The reader also has to decide whether Raju dies or not.
How did RK Narayan feel about this ending? RK Narayan wrote about the ending while he was still writing the novel: “Graham Greene liked the story when I narrated it to him in London. While I was hesitating whether to leave my hero alive or dead at the end of the story Graham was definite that he should die. So I have on my hands the life of a man condemned to death before he is born and I have to plan my narrative to lead to it.”
From the local rail tourist guide to the universal one
After the train station appeared practically in his back yard, Raju became destined to be The Guide.
The Guide of What?
It turned out that after his jail sentence, Raju became The Guide - as a Guru or Godman or an intermediary between mortal men and women and eternal god. However, from the internal monologue of Raju, we know that he assumed that role very reluctantly. His fast unto death unless it rains vow was the result of a misunderstanding.
In India, the business of “fast unto death” was weaponized by Mr MK Gandhi. He did not die of any of the causes he fasted for. He did that a dozen times unlike Irish IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died in his only attempt at age 27.
Postscript: I will have more muses on the movie Guide (in Hindi) and The Guide (in English) and the purported tussle between the author and the movie makers. That itself could make a melodramatic movie about the process of converting a novel into a movie.
Even if I didn't know you I'd always say that this is an essay of an accomplished researcher.