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Unit 7: An Astrologer’s Day by R.K. Narayan

Living alone in Mysore, Narayan developed an interest in agriculture. He bought an acre of Notes
agricultural land and tried his hand at farming. He was also prone to walking to the market
every afternoon, not so much for buying things, but to interact with the people. In a typical
afternoon stroll, he would stop every few steps to greet and converse with shopkeepers and
others, most likely gathering material for his next book.
In 1980, Narayan was nominated to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament,

for his contributions to literature. During his entire six-year term, he was focused on one issue—
the plight of school children, specifically the heavy load of school books and the negative effect
of the system on a child’s creativity, which was something that he first highlighted in his debut
novel, Swami and Friends. His inaugural speech was focused on this particular problem, and
resulted in the formation of a committee chaired by Prof. Yash Pal, to recommend changes to the
school educational system.
In 1990, he published his next novel, The World of Nagaraj, also set in Malgudi. Narayan’s age
shows in this work as he appears to skip narrative details that he would have included if this
were written earlier in his career. Soon after he finished the novel, Narayan fell ill and moved
to Madras to be close to his daughter’s family. A few years after his move, in 1994, his daughter
died of cancer and his granddaughter Bhuvaneswari (Minnie) started taking care of him in
addition to managing Indian Thought Publications. Narayan then published his final

book, Grandmother’s Tale. The book is an autobiographical novella, about his great-grandmother
who travelled far and wide to find her husband, who ran away shortly after their marriage. The
story was narrated to him by his grandmother, when he was a child.
During his final years, Narayan, ever fond of conversation, would spend almost every evening
with N. Ram, the publisher of The Hindu, drinking coffee and talking about various topics until
well past midnight. Despite his fondness of meeting and talking to people, he stopped giving
interviews. The apathy towards interviews was the result of an interview with Time, after which
Narayan had to spend a few days in the hospital, as he was dragged around the city to take
photographs that were never used in the article.
In May 2001, Narayan was hospitalised. A few hours before he was to be put on a ventilator, he
was planning on writing his next novel, a story about a grandfather. As he was always very
selective about his choice of notebooks, he asked N. Ram to get him one. However, Narayan did
not get better and never started the novel. He died on 13 May 2001, in Chennai at the age of 94.

7.3 Writing Style

Narayan’s writing style was simple and unpretentious with a natural element of humour about
it. It focused on ordinary people, reminding the reader of next-door neighbours, cousins and the
like, thereby providing a greater ability to relate to the topic. Unlike his national contemporaries,

he was able to write about the intricacies of Indian society without having to modify his
characteristic simplicity to conform to trends and fashions in fiction writing. He also employed
the use of nuanced dialogic prose with gentle Tamil overtones based on the nature of his
characters. Critics have considered Narayan to be the Indian Chekhov, due to the similarities in
their writings, the simplicity and the gentle beauty and humour in tragic situations. Greene
considered Narayan to be more similar to Chekhov than any Indian writer. Anthony West of The
New Yorker considered Narayan’s writings to be of the realism variety of Nikolai Gogol.

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