Comedy of Sadness In The Mysterious Life Of Raju In The Guide
Kamlesh Singh
Department of English
Govt.College for Women Hisar
Haryana
India
Abstract
R. K .Narayan, completely Indian in his opinion, focuses on the varieties of life and the
sensible irony. His interest in the Indian sensibility results in his revealing the characteristics
of life and his characters. He describes domestic issues and complications through his comic
vision with very serious problems and his characters are impressionable to comic treatment.
Raju, the central character, has been released from prison, but irony is that the role of swami
is bestows on him. Raju's confession exposes the history and personality of the man behind
the unlikely mask of holiness. Raju falls in love with Rosie. Raju selects to fast and changes
into an altruistic swami and achieves wisdom, maturity and spiritual rebirth. Raju stands for
the absurdity of human existence and describes that everything is accidental-fame, power and
money. Raju efforts, even at the cost of his life, his end and life are a mystery. Raju’s tragedy
thus, becomes a comedy of sadness, as his death is a potential tragedy. Narayan perfectly
combines the tragic and the sublime and increases humour, irony of character, situation and
motive, and through eccentric characters. The novel reveals the characteristics of Indian
characters and to emphasize the comedy of sadness in the mysterious life of a man
Key Words: Variety, Sensible, Irony, Comic, Mystery, Comedy, Sadness, Tragedy.
INTRODUCTION
R. K. Narayan had achieved fame and recognition after publication of his first novel
Swami and Friends. His works has been translated into major languages of the world. He was
rewarded the Sahitya Academi Award for his The Guide. Hence he is regarded as the greatest
of Indo-Anglian writer of fiction. Narayan is very popular because he has used Indian
sensibility in his the novels which is also essentially western art form. His Indian awareness
is excellently expressed through his straightforward mode of narration, Indian symbols like
www.ijellh.com
357
cobras, temples, swamis etc. and through Malgudi, an imaginary town and locale of his
novels.
Narayan as a writer focuses on the varieties of life and the sensible irony. His interest in
the Indian sensibility results in his revealing the characteristics of life and his characters. He
uses them to reveal them and to show the irony of life. Through exaggeration, force,
juxtaposition of appearance and reality, wit, satire, irony and humour, he depicts his
complete views of life in his tragicomedies.
His characters have no broad range. He describes domestic issues and complications
through his comic vision. Most of his comedies depict very serious problems. His characters
are impressionable to comic treatment. He notices the follies and frivolities and oddities of
human life. He notices them and scorns them. He observes art or comic events and thus,
portrays his amusements to his readers. He describes superbly the external surface of life of
the character and manners. He skillfully describes comic situations totally and earnestly. In
fact, his treatment is completely superb and enthusiastic.
Comedy of Sadness
While describing reality and the mysterious situation of man Narayan describes
traditional Indian scenes and situations. The Pyol School with its village school master stands
for village schools and education. The attraction of foreign tourists for the dance of a king
cobra, Raju’s maternal uncle the fake swami, the devoted villagers the drought, the fasting
swami, the large number of pilgrims and the wide spread red tapism, are all genuinely Indian.
He skillfully focuses on family marriage and food.
The description of the swami is completely Indian. The blind faith in Sadhus and swamis
and Raju’s identity as a fake swami is convincing in the Indian setting. The villagers are
typical religious – minded. They declare an unknown man into the role of a swami. In the
novel, irony is that the role of swami is bestows on Raju, and his devoted disciple, Velan is
not a fake, but a sincere devotee. The response of the villagers to the drought, their faith that
the holy man’s fasting will save them.
R. K Narayan introduces Raju, the central character of The Guide, has been released
from prison. Raju discovers freedom lacking in definition and, with nothing better to do, rests
in a deserted shrine. An ignorant villager named Velan mistakes him for a holy man and
mentions his problem to him. His problem concerns to his half-sister who has run away from
home on the day fixed for her marriage. Raju orders the man to call her. The girl is attracted
by Raju’s personality that she feels sad and apologies to her elders for her behavior and gets
ready for marriage arranged by them. This sets Raju’s fame as a holyman and Velan becomes
www.ijellh.com
358
his devoted disciple. This mismanaged decision opens the next stage of his life's journey for,
in the landscape of Indian symbolism, the image of a single, poorly dressed man, resident in
such a setting, can have but one meaning. When the immature disciple, villager Velan, arrives
on the scene, he claims his holy man and Raju's and his devotees' destinies are set in motion.
Further, Raju's confession, mixed into the fictional present, exposes the history and
personality of the man behind the unlikely mask of holiness.
Raju is enjoying in the company of the villagers, he continuously recollecting his past
life. He reminds that his father ran a small shop in a village where he also uses to help him
every day. A track has been laid for railway station in his village. Raju’s father has been
offered a shop on the platform and Raju has been ordered to run shop. After his father’s
sudden death, the responsibility of running both shops falls on Raju. Raju comes in the
contact with the passengers, chair with them learn things from them give them information
and help them. Slowly, he becomes a famous tourist guide. The shop is then given to a boy as
Raju cannot enough time for the shop. Raju becomes famous as a guide and soon comes to be
known as ‘Railway Raju’
The turning point in Raju’s life as a tourist-guide comes with the arrival of Rosie and her
husband whom Raju nicknamed Macro because the man dressed in a thick jacket and helmet
like Marco Polo. He always busy in academic pursuits thereby ignores Rosie. Raju gets the
chance to spend time in the company of Rosie. Raju falls in love with her. When he takes her
to see the dance of a king Cobra and notices that her body sways along with the movement of
Cobra. Later, he praises her beauty and her skill as a dancer. Marco has a very low opinion of
dancing and did not allow Rosie to dance. Raju feels sympathy for her.
The young boy's traditional life-style fluctuates when the railway comes in Malgudi for
Raju takes benefit of the new travelling public and transforms the family food-stuff business
into a tourist enterprise. The conversion suits Raju's nature like a glove, until he accepts a
commission from an oddly gloomily archaeologist (whom Raju labels Marco) and his
appealing wife Rosie. Frustrated by her husband's refusal to let her to dance, Rosie easily
warms to Raju's flattery and the unhappy wife enter into an illicit liaison, leaving Marco to
study dancing gods and goddesses in the Peak House cave paintings. Unavoidably, the
infidelity is disclosed and both commission and liaison come to an abrupt end. Rosie, unable
to placate her angry husband, returns and, through Raju's persuasive plans and Rosie's
commitment to the dance, the couple enters into a phase of material fortune buoyed by
Rosie's transformation into the highly respectable dance artist, Nalini. Raju creates a taste for
power and influence and, later, commits petty indiscretions, the most fateful of which is his
www.ijellh.com
359
forgery of Rosie's signature. Thus, while Marco succeeds in publishing his book and Rosie
achieves the peak of her artistic career, Raju is harshly thrown into prison. Here, by virtue of
his obliging personality, Raju adjusts to prisoners' needs and officials' demands with alacrity.
At the same time as this confessional narrative unfolds, the security of Raju in the
disguise of villagers' swamiji is disrupted by drought and subsequent inter-family bickers.
The fighting endangers to check Raju's regular food supply, so he warns to the villagers that
he will not eat unless they stop quarrelling. This curtails the fighting, but the dull-witted
messenger changes the original massage into the swamji's promise to fast until the rains
come. Now the villagers’ holy man converts into a miraculous stature and control of the
situation passes out of Raju's hands. Later, Raju's misleading fasting becomes fact and the
holy man is seen to disown his life for the sake of his followers.
The central protagonists Raju in Narayan's The Guide is a holy man even though he fail to
measure up to themore idealized dictionary definitions of holiness. He is not righteousness in
his act and divine in love, but he is infinitely good, and spiritually whole or morally perfect.
In fact, Raju is devoted to his God or to a supra-human consciousness. It can be noticed that
the greater part of the novel holiness is a performance of disguise. As a result, Raju's
mysterious movement from the burden of fasting to a changed level of experience could be
attributed to the degeneration of his faculties. Narayan describes that Raju's transformation is
angenuine embrace of holinessthrough the traditional Hindu act of renunciation. Raju
recreates himself in an experiential aspect in which role-playing becomes obsolete andhe
thereby wins a place in the community's, and in the reader's insight ofhim, as a holy guide.
Moreover, Holinessis a value accorded bythe culture and transmitted through its
stories, and practices. Narayan uses the imagery of dance and journeys, and tropes of
guidance from Hinduism's vast reservoir of myths and epics to increase Raju's unexpected
path to the spirit.
Narayan’s vision of life is presented through double narration. The story unfolds on
two times – frames. Raju’s past in Malgudi is remembered by him and his present is
described by the author.
The novel is thus divided into two parts. The first part portrays Raju’s childhood, love
with Rosie and consequent imprisonment. The second part describes Raju’s freedom from
prison, his growth into a swami and his eventual death. Both the sections sift simultaneously.
This cinematographic technique of double narration and flashback offers charm to the novel
and gives to its complexity. It portrays the irony of life and increases compactness to the
story. The multiple states of consciousness and snap–shotsdevelop an impression of
www.ijellh.com
360
continuity and describe the predicament of Raju, as an ordinary man, who has to play the role
of an extraordinary creature, while he is fully aware that he is an ‘ordinary’ man.
Raju’s career as a tourist guide outcomes in his fall and imprisonment. After his
release, the role of a swami is thrust on him and he receives this new identity with
confidence. However, he is entrapped in his own net and is forced to agree to undertake a fast
to appease the rain – gods and please the devoted villagers. Unable to tolerate the torture, he
opts to confess, but his confession makes velan, his disciple and he trusts him even more. He
pardons him and selects the way to his martyrdom. Unable to escape, Raju approve the faith
of the people and selects to fast thoroughly. Thus, from a selfish swami, he changes into an
altruistic swami. He achieves wisdom, maturity and spiritual rebirth. Through Raju, the
novelist portrays the absurdity of human existence and describes that everything is
accidental-fame, power and money. Though Raju efforts, even at the cost of his life, his end
and life are a mystery.
Thus, Raju’s end is mysterious, like life. We are left confused whether Raju dies or
continues to live; whether he enjoys the life as a genuine swami or a fake swami. This
confusion at the end combines realism and fantasy, increases humour, diverts us from Raju’s
tragedy and makes the novel a comedy of sadness.
Raju’s tragedy thus, becomes a comedy of sadness, as his death is a potential tragedy.
Narayan perfectly combines the tragic and the sublime and increases humour. The humour in
the novel also increases from the use of language, wit,mild satire, irony of character, situation
and motive, and through eccentric characters.
CONCLUSION
To conclude it is clear that the novel reveals the characteristics of Indian characters
and to emphasize the comedy of sadness in the mysterious life of a man. Narayan is an
excellent story teller whose chief aim is to notice Indian life artistically and ironically.
Though, he has not tripped India, he has been admired as a true artist in India as well as
abroad. His well-organized plot, gallery of life-like characters and comic vision of life sets
him as a brilliant artist and born story teller.
Thus, The Guide is Indian in theme, character and atmosphere. Indian way of life,
Indian values and religious beliefs of rural Indians are excellently described in his novel. His
aim is not to depict a pictorial India for foreign or define Indian customs, or to justify Indian
inefficiency etc., but his aim to reveal the characteristics of Indian characters and to
emphasize the irony of fate in the mysterious life of a man. His microscopic India stands for
www.ijellh.com
361
the unwise and its mysteries.Narayan's celebrated comic irony, with its eager insight into
inappropriate situations, conflicting behaviours and paradoxical philosophies.
www.ijellh.com
362
Bibliography:
[1] Amur, G.S. 1985 “A Saint for Malgudi: A New Look at R.K. Narayan’s The Guide.”
Perspective on Indian Fiction in English. M.K. Naik, ed. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications.
[2] Gilra, Shiv, K. 1984. “Narayan’s Comic Vision” R.K. Narayan. His World and His art.
Meerut: Saru Publishing House.
[3] Narayan, R.K. 1958. The Guide. Mysore: Indian Though Publications.
[4] Sidhu, N.S. 1992. A Critical Study of the Novels of R.K. Narayan. New Delhi: Bahri
Publications.
www.ijellh.com
363