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Elective English—IV

Notes Australia. He spent three weeks in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne giving lectures on Indian
literature. The trip was funded by a fellowship from the Australian Writers’ Group. By this time
Narayan had also achieved significant success, both literary and financial. He had a large house
in Mysore, and wrote in a study with no fewer than eight windows; he drove a new Mercedes-
Benz, a luxury in India at that time, to visit his daughter who had moved to Coimbatore after
her marriage. With his success, both within India and abroad, Narayan started writing columns
for magazines and newspapers including The Hindu and The Atlantic.
In 1964, Narayan published his first mythological work, Gods, Demons and Others, a collection of
rewritten and translated short stories from Hindu epics. Like many of his other works, this
book was illustrated by his younger brother R.K. Laxman. The stories included were a selective
list, chosen on the basis of powerful protagonists, so that the impact would be lasting, irrespective
of the reader’s contextual knowledge. Once again, after the book launch, Narayan took to
travelling abroad. In an earlier essay, he had written about the Americans wanting to understand
spirituality from him, and during this visit, Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo accosted

him on the topic, despite his denial of any knowledge. Narayan’s next published work was the
1967 novel, The Vendor of Sweets. It was inspired in part by his American visits and consists of
extreme characterizations of both the Indian and American stereotypes, drawing on the many
cultural differences. However, while it displays his characteristic comedy and narrative, the
book was reviewed as lacking in depth. This year, Narayan travelled to England, where he
received the first of his honorary doctorates from the University of Leeds. The next few years
were a quiet period for him. He published his next book, a collection of short stories, A Horse and

Two Goats, in 1970. Meanwhile, Narayan remembered a promise made to his dying uncle in 1938,
and started translating the Kamba Ramayanam to English. The Ramayana was published in 1973,
after five years of work. Almost immediately after publishing The Ramayana, Narayan started
working on a condensed translation of the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata. While he was
researching and writing the epic, he also published another book, The Painter of Signs (1977). The
Painter of Signs is a bit longer than a novella and makes a marked change from Narayan’s other
works, as he deals with hitherto unaddressed subjects such as sex, although the development of
the protagonist’s character is very similar to his earlier creations. The Mahabharata was published
in 1978.

7.2.1 Later Years

Narayan was commissioned by the government of Karnataka to write a book to promote tourism
in the state. The work was published as part of a larger government publication in the late
1970s. He thought it deserved better, and republished it as The Emerald Route (Indian Thought
Publications, 1980). The book contains his personal perspective on the local history and heritage,
but being bereft of his characters and creations, it misses his enjoyable narrative. The same year,
he was elected as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and won
the AC Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. Around the same time, Narayan’s
works were translated to Chinese for the first time.

In 1983, Narayan published his next novel, A Tiger for Malgudi, about a tiger and its relationship
with humans. His next novel, Talkative Man, published in 1986, was the tale of an aspiring journalist
from Malgudi. During this time, he also published two collections of short stories: Malgudi
Days (1982), a revised edition including the original book and some other stories, and Under the
Banyan Tree and Other Stories, a new collection. In 1987, he completed A Writer’s Nightmare, another
collection of essays about topics as diverse as the caste system, Nobel Prize winners, love,
and monkeys. The collection included essays he had written for magazines and newspapers
since 1958.

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