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

7.4 The Works and Achievements of R.K. Narayan Notes

Felicitated with Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide in 1958; Padma Bhushan in 1964, R.K.
Narayan is one of the most famous and widely read Indian novelists. His stories were grounded
in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the humour and energy of ordinary life. R.K.
Narayan was born in Madras, South India, in 1906, and completed his education from Maharaja’s
College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts,
are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi and are only two out of the twelve
novels he based there. In 1958 Narayan’s work ‘The Guide’ won him the National Prize of the
Indian Literary Academy, his country’s highest literary honour.
In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including
A Horse and Two Goats, Malguidi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree, two travel books, two
volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the re-told legends Gods, Demons and Others, The
Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal
Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy
and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Most of Narayan’s work, starting with his first novel Swami and Friends (1935), captures many
Indian traits while retaining a unique identity of its own. He was sometimes compared to the
American writer William Faulkner, whose novels were also grounded in a compassionate
humanism and celebrated the humour and energy of ordinary life.
Narayan who lived till age of ninety-four, died in 2001. He wrote for more than fifty years, and
published until he was eighty seven. He wrote fourteen novels, five volumes of short stories, a
number of travelogues and collections of non-fiction, condensed versions of Indian epics in
English, and the memoir My Days.

Task Write an essay about the awards won by R.K. Narayan during his career.

7.5 Summary – An Astrologer’s Day

“An Astrologer’s Day” was first published in the newspaper The Hindu and then was made the
title story of a collection of short stories which appeared in 1947—the year that India gained its
independence. R.K. Narayan’s first collection of short stories, entitled Malgudi Days, appeared in
1941. Two other collections followed quickly: Dodu and Other Stories in 1943 and Cyclone and
Other Stories in 1944. By the time this collection was published, he was already a well-known
novelist, both in India and the West. The endorsement given by the eminent British novelist
Graham Greene, who wrote an introduction to Narayan’s novel The Financial Expert (1952), made
a great deal of difference to his popularity in the West. By the 1950s he was known as one of the
three major writers of India, the other two being Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. “An Astrologer’s
Day” remains a major work in his corpus and displays all the characteristics associated with his
writing. Narayan’s sense of irony, his deep religious sensibility, his humour, his consciousness
of the significance of everyday occurrences, and his belief in a Hindu vision of life are all
revealed in this story.
The short story “An Astrologer’s Day” begins with a general description of an astrologer, who
is one of many street vendors, except for the fact that he has a distinct aura of holiness and power.
He is working in a busy, unnamed city, and the author establishes that, in reality, he is a
charlatan with no special powers other than the keen ability to judge character. The Astrologer
pursued his trade under a tamarind tree standing beside a pathway running through the Town
Hall Park.

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