Page 67 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Elective English—III

Notes and lives a life of ascetic simplicity, even though these do not make his day-to-day living
smooth or comfortable for him. Moreover, his loyalty to Gandhi has made him an outcast from
his close relations, although he is quite happy to be one since he can escape a number of tiresome
family festivals and funerals (P. 148). He has not expected in return any personal gain for being
“Gandbian”, albeit in his own comic way. It is something to be a Gandhian, however imperfect,
in an environment, which is anything but Gandhian. The Vendor is placed in the ’Sixties of
post-Independence India, in which Gandhian values are given the go by. Jagan has to adhere to
them for his own satisfaction.
Jagan’s devotion to the Bhagavadgita, it may be assumed, is a consequence of his reverence for
Gandhi, although it is not explicitly said so in the novel. Frequently both Gandhi and the Gita
are associated in his mind. A “red bound” copy of the Gita is a companion to him and he spends
most of his spare time in the sweet shop reading it. He sports before others his knowledge of its
teachings to which he refers frequently. There is nothing surprising or unnatural in this since the
Gita and its teachings are a part of the ethos of Malgudi, and have been so for centuries. However,
Jagan makes of the Gita that renders him eccentric and comic the use. In fact, his “Gitaism” is
much more comic than his Gandhism. This is brought out quietly in the first ever reference to it
in the novel. We are told that every morning Jagan sat “with a sense of fulfilment on a throne-like
chair in his shop placed at a strategic point” so that “he could hear, see and smell whatever was
happening in the kitchen” and notice what was going on at the front stall. As long as the frying
and sizzling noise in the kitchen continued and the trays passed, Jagan noticed nothing,
“his gaze unflinchingly fixed on the Sanskrit lines in a red bound copy of the Bhagavadgita.
However, if there were the slightest pause in the sizzling, he cried out to the cooks without
lifting his eyes from the sacred text, “What is happening...?” By a similar shout, he would alert
the counter-attendant as well as the guard at the door, and return to the Lord’s sayings with a
quietened mind”.

Until the time for counting the day’s collection arrived, Jagan would continue to read the Gita
with fixed attention. His attachment to money, “free cash” (P. 20) as well as accounted money,
conflicts with the Gita ideals of non-attachment as well as non-possession (both very dear to
Gandhi). However, he likes to believe that he does not accumulate it at all – “it just grows
naturally”. It is one’s “duty to work” and he is doing just this. He cites a verse from the Gita, as
he can always do, in support of it (P. 46). Jagan’s attachment to money is not simply that of a
miser, although he does accumulate money meticulously. He is not just another version of
Margayya, the “financial expert”, with whom money becomes such an obsession as to make him
at one stage even grow indifferent to his wife and son. Jagan, on the other hand, intends all his
wealth for his son and wishes for his happiness. He even feels a “sneaking admiration” (P. 54)
for his son when he comes to know to his shocks that Mali has pilfered from the loft enough
money to buy his passage to America. He likes to regard it as his self-reliance, and as could be
expected, alludes without any relevance to a saying of the Gita.
Jagan’s frequent references to Gandhi and the Gita are little more than a harmless vanity he
indulges in. They become ludicrous and comic because not only they are often irrelevant but
also because on these occasions Jagan believes that he understands both Gandhi and the Gita.
One suspects that he invokes them when his thinking is rather muddled. His understanding of
Gandhian principles and of the teachings of the Gita comes to be put to a most severe test when
Mali creates unexpectedly a series of problems for him. To start with, he not only revolts against
Jagan’s parental authority, refuses to go to school, and later goes to America ostensibly to learn
to be a creative writer, but actually returns home along with Grace, a half-Korean and
half-American girl to whom he is supposed to be married, and an absurd project to manufacture
story-writing machines. Jagan is shaken rudely out of his complacency and sense of self-fulfilment.
Until then he thought that he had solved every problem of his life, and even believed that he had
conquered his self too. With Mali’s return, the challenges of his life begin.

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