Page 66 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Unit 5: The Vendor of Sweets by R K Narayan

As one opposing British rule in his youth, and sticking to those ideals as a grown man, Jagan Notes
fails to see that his son does not share those same ideals. It is not apparent whose fault it is that
Mali does not want to follow his father, his own or Jagan’s.

5.5 Gandhi “The Gita” and Gayatri in “The Vendor of Sweets”

Ever since his wife Ambika died of a brain tumour and an invincible barrier began to grow
between himself and his orphaned son Mali, Jagan anxiously tries to establish, though in vain,
an affectionate and durable relationship and communication with him. His other searches stem
from this, because all the major problems of Jagan’s life since his wife’s death are created by
Mali. Troubled by Mali’s unpredictable ways, especially after his return from America, and
deeply hurt by his contemptuous reference to him as “a vendor of sweets” (P. 96). Jagan engages
himself, though unconsciously, in finding out his “identity” (P. 128). He seeks to know who he
is: father of Mali, a mere maker and vendor of sweets, gatherer of money, or something else.
In other words, he is made by his circumstances to seek an answer to one of the oldest questions
of mankind, “Who am I?”, although to be sure he does not phrase it in this fashion. He learns
from experience, as the novel shows, that he is not just “bone or meat” (P. 120), but a living soul.
Finally, there is Jagan’s quest for freedom – freedom from tiresome routine activities, from a life
of repetition and drift, from self-deception and delusion of attachments – so that he may live the
remaining years of his life in meaningful activity directed away from his egotistical self.
In effect, Jagan’s search is for enduring values of life and complete spiritual enlightenment. In
his own words, he seeks to enter “a new janma” (P. 120). It is Narayan’s distinction as a novelist
that he explores the time-honoured motif of quest through the comic mode. It is characteristic of
his comic vision and method that he should choose such a prosaic figure as a vendor of sweets,
who is ordinary and average as the protagonist of this quest novel. In Jagan’s quest his profession
of faith in Gandhian ideals and the teachings of the Bhagavadgita, and his interest in the sculpting
of the idol of Gayatri the Goddess of radiance and enlightenment, all play a part in varying
degrees.

It is better stated at the outset that The Vendor of Sweets is not a “Gandhi Novel” and that Narayan
has not written one such. Nor does it aim at expressing any particular attitude towards Gandhi
and his way of life. However, the novelist uses the Gandhian motif, to study a certain kind of
man who claims to be a follower of Gandhi (P. 15). He gives us a meticulously detailed account
of Jagan’s apparently Gandhian habits. He wears only simple and plain Khaddar clothes made
of yarn he himself has spun on the Charkha. He has been spinning on it since Gandhi visited
Malgudi “over twenty years ago” (P. 15). He produces enough yarn to meet his sartorial
requirements, which consist of just two sets of clothes. He has made it a point to wear only “non-
violent footwear,” “sandals made of the leather of an animal which had died of old age.” Jagan’s
experiments in dietetics, his quackish enthusiasm for nature cure, his austerity and determination
to be self-reliant regarding his personal needs, his needless conquest of taste, and his proud
claim regarding his “simple living and high thinking, as Gandhi taught us” (P. 45), all these
make him an eccentric and rather comic Gandhi man. However, he also accumulates wealth,
largely by evading tax, even though he claims that one who “came under the spell of Gandhi”
“could do no wrong” (P. 45). With his tongue in the cheek, the author says that if Gandhi had said
anywhere that one should pay his sales tax uncomplainingly, Jagan would have certainly done
so (P. 117).
He has a tendency to attribute to Gandhi, his “master”, some of his own fads. For example,
he asserts that the Mahatma “was opposed to buffalo products” (P. 97). His experiments with
salt-free and sugar-free diet have nothing to do with Gandhi.
While the contradictions in his Gandhism are very true and do not have to be laboured at all, to
be fair to him, we have to note that he keeps up well past his middle age certain Gandhian
practices acquired as a young man. He consistently wears khadi, spins regularly on the charkha,

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 61