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B. Krishna Murthy

As a comic genius of high order, R.K. Narayan has all along been concealing the values that are dear to him, allowing them to trickle to the reader in and through the experiences of his characters in his novels. They are so deftly touched upon that a reader often misses them. This has stood in the way of his receiving the recognition that is his due. As Warren French rightly observes, “He demands too much of readers and critics who cannot transcend their own apprehension of Doomsday.�

However, in one particular novel, A Tiger for Malgudi (1983), Narayan reveals a set of values that he cherishes. In the final section that describes the tiger’s sojourn with his spiritual preceptor the novel rises to Upanishadic stature. This implies a disciplic succession of imparting knowledge, down the ages. Here is no comedy or irony, but the moralistic pattern of the fable.

The spiritual preceptor, in his poorvasrama was employed in a foreign insurance company and led an affluent life. But one fine morning he suddenly absconded abandoning his wife and children. When his wife traced him out and tried to win him to his former life, he convinced her that he had not left them out of wrath, “but out of an inner transformation.�

His inner life had undergone such a change that neither the past, nor a future existed for him. As he put it, “I live for the moment, and that awareness is enough for me.� To attain this state, he had gone through much hardship. It is interesting to note that Narayan has expressed himself on similar lines in an article in the Deccan Herald. He writes:

What life has taught me? I am unable to answer, perhaps because I am unable to analyse Life or what it means; Living experience is impalpable; it is a flow, a flux, like a stream, it has no terminus or a halting point. At no stage, you cart say “That is it.� You go along with it, you watch it, extract its essence from moment to moment, both enjoying and suffering; the moment is vital. The quality of the Moment is what is always available, but it slips through your fingers when you try to grasp it for evaluation. And we waste the actual moment of experience if we stop to examine it. “We look before and after and pine for what is not.�

It is of equal interest that Warren French chose to praise Narayan with special reference to this quality, namely “his awareness of the moment.� He quotes one of the most memorable lines from Wilder’s play Our Town, “Do any human beings over realise life while they live it? -- ­every, every minute?� and contends:

R. K. Narayan is one of those are saints and poets who have realised life as they have lived it and have watched it lived by their mad neighbours.

This identical nature of self-­realisation in Narayan and the Master who figures in this novel is of special interest. In the light of this great realisation of “the awareness of the moment,� the Master clarifies on many an issue that affects human life and calls for explanation. Only a thin layer separates the man that suffers and the mind that creates. In other words, they are in reality the tenets of spiritual wisdom that Narayan himself has realized through his life and work.

The values of Narayan are a fine synthesis of what he has inherited from his own Indian tradition and what he has assimilated from his exposure to western life and literature. It is of significance to note that the tiger refers to his spiritual preceptor neither as �Guru� nor as ’Swamiji� but simply as ‘My Master�. Narayan thus takes care to give his mouthpiece a name without any kind of emotional connotation. The only exception is his faith in the particularly Hindu concept of literal reincarnation or rebirth. Some of the Master’s utterances are worth rehearsing.

(i) The basic Indian spiritual outlook is the quest for identity, “Who am I?� It is with this that the Master started, freeing himself from the ties of Samsara. He justified his renunciation, “An inner compulsion is enough to make one take fateful decisions.�

We have lost the faculty of appreciating the present living moment. We are always looking forward or ward and waiting for one or sighing for the other, and lost the pleasure of awareness of the moment in which we actually exist.

(ii) The result of the quest is the awareness of the moment. When Raja wished to learn that art of reckoning, the Master said:

You need not know what time of the day, or what time of the week, or numbers, reckoning of before and after, when and how far; in short you don’t have to know the business of counting, which habit has made us human beings miserable in many ways. We have lost the faculty of appreciating the present living moment. We are always looking forward or ward and waiting for one or sighing for the other, and lost the pleasure of awareness of the moment in which we actually exist.

(iii) The Master’s definition of God is a further revelation of Narayan’s eclecticism. The God as explained by the Master is neither Rama, Krishna, Allah, Christ nor of any other religious denomination.

He described God in his own terms as the Creator, the Great Spirit pervading every creature, every rock and tree and the sky and the stars a source of power and strength. Later when his Master questioned Raja, the tiger about it, he said that God must be an enormous tiger, spanning the earth and the sky, with a tail capable of encircling the globe, claws that could hook on the clouds, and teeth that could grind the mountain, and possessing, of course, immeasurable strength to match. On hearing his notion of God, his Master burst into a laugh and said: “It’s often said that man makes God in his own image. Both may be right; and you are perfectly right in thinking of your God also a super tiger. Also it may be true. What we must not forget is that He may be everything we imagine and more. In Bhagauada Gita He reveals himself in a mighty terrifying form which pervades the whole universe in every form of life and action. Remember also He is within everyone of us and we derive our strength from Him.�

(iv) Advising Raja to follow him and not to look around, he explained the yogic way to steady one’s mind:

This is one of the rules of yoga to steady one’s mind, to look down one’s nose and at nothing beyond.

The eye is the starting point of all evil and mischief. The eye can travel far and pick out objects indiscriminately, mind follows the eye, and rest of the body is conditioned by the mind. Thus starts a chain of activity which may lead to trouble and complication, or waste of time, if nothing else; and so don’t look at anything except the path.

(v) When Raja was oppressed with a sense of guilt and remorse regarding his food habit, his Master explained to him the way totrue happiness:

Do not crave for the unattainable. It’s enough you have realization. All in good time. We cannot understand God’s intentions. All growth takes place in its own time. If you brood on your improvements rather than your shortcomings, you will be happier.

(vi) To the factious villagers who came under his influence, he enunciated his philosophy of non-violence:

Don’t ever fight. No cause is worth a clash...If you are ready to hate and want to destroy each other, you may find a hundred reasons–a  diversion of canal water in your field, two urchins of opposite camps slapping each other, rumours of molestation of some woman, even the right to worship in a temple, anything may spark off a fight if you are inclined to nurture hatred–only the foolish waste their lives in fighting.

(vii) To Raja’s benefit he explicated man-woman relationship:

Human ties cannot be defined in just black-white terms. There can be no such thing as unmitigated hatred or unmitigated love. Those who are deeply attached sometimes deliberately present a rough exterior to each other and that is also one way of enjoying the married state. Some wives in this world show their deepest love only in nagging, and the husbands also enjoy putting on an air of being victims. You must not forget that everyone is acting a part all the time, knowingly or unknowingly. But God who sees everything must be aware of their thoughts and the secret ecstasies of companionship...So don’t make the mistake of thinking that they were not properly matched, judging merely from conversation overheard.

(viii) Of knowledge he said:

Knowledge like food, must be taken within limits. You must know only as much as you need, and not more. All the thousands of human beings...suffer from minds overburdened with knowledge, facts, and information--fetters and shackles for the rising soul.

(ix) As Rabbi Ben Ezra said he owned the whole of life. He was not for rejection of the past life. The tiger recalls what his Master said once:

There is nothing wrong in it, it being also a part of your own life, indispensable and unshakable although you have come a long way from it.

Of old age the Master said:

Beautiful old age, when faculties are dimmed one by one, so that we may be restful, very much like extinguishing lights in a home, one by, before one goes to sleep.

(x) On separation he had this to observe:

No relationship, human or other, or association of any kind could last forever. Separation is the law of life right from the mother’s womb. One has to accept it if one has to live in God’s plans.

            A Tiger for Malgudi is an invaluable asset to Narayan scholars. Here in brief they find a catalogue of values that are dear to Narayan, his views on life, existence and death. The catalogue does not exhaust the value content of Narayan, but merely suggests the trend. Only when read with reference to these values that constitute his norm, his novels become fully alive.