197. An Astrologer’s Day. R K Narayan Story Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

197

An Astrologer’s Day. R K Narayan Story Reintroduced

P. S. Remesh Chandran
 
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Article Title Image By Girasol Tarsio Monge. Graphics: Adobe SP.

An Astrologer’s Day is a story by the famous Indian writer R. K. Narayan. The story abounds in humour, wit and irony. The astrologer in the story is not a real one but a pseudo one, an impostor. He once lived in a village. He did not intend to leave his village but in a drunken condition he quarreled with Guru Nayak, wounded him with a knife, and left him in a well. Fearing the man might have died he secretly left his village, reached the town and got married, and settled there posing as an astrologer of which faculty he knew nothing. 

His practical wisdom, commonsense, keenness in observing people and clever guessing brought him success in astrology.

The astrologer was well aware of his own ignorance in astrology. ‘He was as much a stranger to the stars as were his innocent customers.’ But he had practical wisdom and commonsense and keenly observed people and their manners. He was good in guessing also. His practical wisdom, commonsense, keenness in observing people and clever guessing brought him success in the profession of astrology. He took care to speak only things pleasing and astonishing to everyone. He consoled his customers by pointing out that their troubles were due to the particular position of Saturn sitting in the sky. How could their lives be otherwise with Saturn sitting where it is? So he asked his customers, and thus the conditions in their life accounted for and justified, his customers were satisfied. 

Flares, oil lamps and shop lights lighted the place at night and broken lights and moving shadows created the suitable atmosphere and ambience for the astrologer’s business.

The astrologer made his daily appearance on a pavement where there many other traders also. He always sat under a tamarind tree and he made his appearance always wearing a saffron-coloured turban on his head and sacred ash on his forehead. This colour scheme never failed and his eyes sparkled though we do not know how he made them to be so. People were attracted to him as bees are attracted to dahlia flowers. That part of the road was always busy with people. Flares, oil lamps and shop lights lighted the place at night and broken lights and moving shadows created the suitable atmosphere and ambience for the astrologer’s business. 

Guru Nayak coming to town in search of his enemy.

One day the inevitable happened. The astrologer was closing business as usual and preparing to return home. A stranger appeared before him. It was none but Guru Nayak whom he had almost killed years ago. The astrologer recognized him but Guru Nayak did not recognize his enemy in the astrologer. We can say the stars in the sky were indeed in favour of the astronomer then. His Saturn of course was not sitting at the wrong position in the sky at that time. Nayak challenged the astrologer to answer a few questions regarding his enmity and his coming to the town in search of his enemy. He wanted to know if he could kill his enemy. The astrologer was cautious and cunning. His quick wit and practical wisdom came to his rescue. He replied that his enemy had already been crushed under a lorry and died painfully. He further warned that other dangers were coming his way and therefore he should leave the town immediately. (A precaution for whom?). Terrified and sad, Nayak paid the astronomer handsomely and left. 

‘I thought I had the blood of a man in my hands all these years!’

The astronomer was greatly relieved for finally saving himself from his enemy. The most dreaded moment in his life has passed and there will be no more threats from the past. He returned to his home that as happy as a lark. That night he told his wife the whole story- his life in the village, getting intoxicated, stabbing Nayak, leaving him in a well, and fleeing- everything. He exclaimed: ‘I thought I had the blood of a man in my hands all these years!’ He was happy that he was not guilty of another man’s death, and went to sleep peacefully. 

Written on: September 1990
First published on: 28 March 2020

Tags:


An Astrologer’s Day, Astrology Business, Cheating Professions, Free Student Notes, Indian Writers, R K Narayan, Short Stories Reintroduced, Stories From India, Surprise End Stories,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

00. Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan: The Intelligent Picture Book. Born and brought up in the beautiful village of Nanniyode in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Trivandrum, in Kerala. Father British Council trained English teacher and Mother University educated. Matriculation with distinction and Pre Degree Studies in Science with National Merit Scholarship. Discontinued Diploma studies in Electronics and entered politics. Unmarried and single.

Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/psremeshchandra.trivandrum
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PSRemeshChandra
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/bloombooks/videos
Blog: http://sahyadribooks-remesh.blogspot.com/
Site: https://sites.google.com/site/timeuponmywindowsill/
E-Mail: bloombookstvm@gmail.com

Post: P. S. Remesh Chandran, Editor, Sahyadri Books, Trivandrum, Padmalayam, Nanniyode, Pacha Post, Trivandrum- 695562, Kerala State, South India.
 

194. Lawley Road. R K Narayan Story Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

194

Lawley Road. R K Narayan Story Reintroduced

P. S. Remesh Chandran
 
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Article Title Image 01 By Siberian Beard. Graphics: Adobe SP.

The Chairman of the Malgudi Municipal Council, a Journalist, and the Statue of Sir. Lawley are the only characters in the story, but what characters! Lawley Road is a humorous story by R. K. Narayan. Malgudi is an imaginary district situated on the banks of the imaginary Sarayu River in South India where most of R. K. Narayan’s stories and novels are based. There is no such district in India. Through his stories and novels he actually immortalized this district which most people think actually exists somewhere in the vast stretches of India. 

The people of the world got only confused with long-accepted names and famous geographical indicators.

There is a world-wide craze to change the names of cities, towns, villages, roads, streets, buildings, places, and even statues when a country gains independence from a hostile and foreign power or even the administration of the country changes. If we did not build them, renaming them is a pleasure which would satisfy our ego. Wherever we look in the world, we can see so many instances. Many countries we know today by name were not them a few years before. Burma became Myanmar, Ceylon became Sri Lanka, Siam became Thailand and so on and on. Who gained what with these name changes? The famous Russian city St. Petersburg became Leningrad when the communist revolution came and reverted back when communism collapsed. In India Madras became Chennai, Calcutta Kolkotha, Bombay Mumbai, Calicut Kozhikodu and Trivandrum Thiruvananthapuram, which satisfied a few. It satisfied the vanity of a few snobs here and there who live in the vain glory of regionalism, language and false patriotism. It lined the pockets of politicians with money. It also gave opportunities to pocket millions in association with the expenses of a name change. But the people of the world got only confused with long-accepted names and famous geographical indicators. Perhaps of the thousands of writers in the world, R. K. Narayan was the only writer who came up with an immortal story ridiculing this craze among rulers and administrators of countries and institutions. And Lawley Road is that story. 

Malgudi district celebrates the Independence Day of India.

With the birth of the Independence of India, Malgudi Municipal Council decided to rename all roads and public places. The Coronation Park was renamed Hamara Hindustan Park. (Coronation Park undoubtedly was named in honour of the coronation of Queen Victoria in England. Hamara Hindustan Park means Our Hindu Land Park). Several roads were renamed Mahatma Gandhi Road. There now were several Nehru Roads and Netaji Roads in Malgudi Town. This confused the postal department. Letters reached the wrong persons or no persons at all. But people suffered all these difficulties in the name of narrow nationalism. 

How the statue defies the efforts to pull it down and remove.

The chairman of the Malgudi Municipal Council decided to dismantle the statue of the Britisher, Sir. Frederick Lawley, and rename the place Gandhi Nagar. (Nagar means Place, Square). People, who hated all British who had been ruling their contry for many decades and suppressing them, regarded the statue to be that of a very cruel British administrator. The chairman asked his friend, the journalist, to take up the work of pulling the statue down and removing it to some place of his choice, in fact to anywhere where it won’t be seen again. The journalist agreed, hoping to make some money out of it. He spent a lot of money on the project, engaging fifty workers for ten days. The statue defied the best of their efforts. It was twenty feet high and made of lead. And it was well built by the British too. Pulling it down proved to be futile. They could not break the pedestal. So they dynamited the statue and it fell down to the ground. Now was there the task of removing it. Engaging enormous labour, they finally succeeded in dragging it to the journalist’s house. There the head and shoulders filled the house. The rest of it won’t go inside for there was no further space inside. So the bulk of the stature remained outside the house, with only the head and the shoulders inside. 

In their narrow-mindedness they pulled down the statue of a good man.

Which journalist in this world can remain without writing about his adventures, especially when it is one no one has even heard about earlier? So our journalist wrote an article about this adventure and it changed the course of events dramatically. There was uproar. Things changed by overnight and information began to come out. Historians protested the dismantling and removal of the statue and pointed out that there were two Lawleys in British India. This particular Lawley had been a very good administrator and it was he who had built the town of Malgudi! It was he who had established the first cooperative society in India!! And he had sympathy towards India’s Independence Movement too!!! Those who pulled down his statue and dragged it through the mud became the laughing stock of the town. 

A new park comes into being with the journalist’s house and the statue in it.

In no time the situation caused by the Lawley statue became serious. The journalist suggested a strange solution which the chairman was only glad to accept. The house and compound of the journalist along with the statue parked there half in and half out of the house was to be purchased by the chairman of the Malgudi Municipal Council who caused all this scuffle out of his own money and turned into a public park. Then, the park was to be presented by him to the nation as his humble gift. What else could that ignorant fool of a chairman do except acquiescing to this proposal? So he personally purchased the house, built the park, and presented those as his personal gift to the nation. Thus the problem of the Lawley Road Statue was finally solved. Sure, the journalist must have got handsome money for his old house!

Article Title Image 02 By Andrew Martin. Graphics: Adobe SP.

Written in: August 1990
First published on: 27 March 2020  

Tags:

Changing Place Names, Free Student Notes, Indian Writers, Lawley Road, Post Independent India, Malgudi Statue Story, R K Narayan, Short Stories Reintroduced, Surprise End Stories,

About the Author P. S. Remesh Chandran:

03. Author Profile Of P S Remesh Chandran By Sahyadri Archives.

Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan: The Intelligent Picture Book. Born and brought up in the beautiful village of Nanniyode in the Sahya Mountain Valley in Trivandrum, in Kerala. Father British Council trained English teacher and Mother University educated. Matriculation with distinction and Pre Degree Studies in Science with National Merit Scholarship. Discontinued Diploma studies in Electronics and entered politics. Unmarried and single.

Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/psremeshchandra.trivandrum
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PSRemeshChandra
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/bloombooks/videos
Blog: http://sahyadribooks-remesh.blogspot.com/
Site: https://sites.google.com/site/timeuponmywindowsill/
E-Mail: bloombookstvm@gmail.com

Post: P. S. Remesh Chandran, Editor, Sahyadri Books, Trivandrum, Padmalayam, Nanniyode, Pacha Post, Trivandrum- 695562, Kerala State, South India.

030. Father’s Help. R K Narayan Story. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

030.

Father’s Help. R K Narayan Story. Reintroduced By P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

  
First published: 11th Jul 2011
 

Children are very reluctant to go school due to various reasons, especially on Monday mornings. They will find many excellent reasons for not going to school, which are not new to us as we all had taken out the same excuses in our childhood days to evade going to school. But it is good to be very sympathetic and considerate to them in their little problems which to them are big. Who knows whether they would be having big genuine problems in school or not? 

A tale from the banks of the imaginary Sarayoo River.

R. K. Narayan is a famous novelist and short-story writer from India. Many of his stories are pictured to be happening in the Malgudi District in South India which never existed. These stories became famous as the Malgudi Stories. Malgudi is an imaginary district situated on the banks of the imaginary Sarayoo River. It is widely believed that this Sarayoo River made its appearance on this earth from the heaven and in the middle of forgotten ages decided to disappear below ground. The scientists and explorers did try to prove the once-existence of this mythical river. R.K.Narayan’s Malgudi District stories are in this respect identical to Thomas Hardy's Wessex County novels. Narayan's style is simple, lucid and humorous. Narayan's father's name was Krishnaswami Iyer of Rasipuram in Tamil Nadu, who was a provincial school headmaster. His brother R.K.Laxman also is a renowned cartoonist.

Would anyone enter the mind of children going to school unwillingly after protestation? 

Dream of a nation, future of a generation.

The South Indian boy Swami is reluctant to go to school on Mondays as boys everywhere are which a universal phenomenon is. He told his mother that he cannot go to school that day because he had a headache, which also is universal. Going in a Jutka (cart) will only make things worse. Moreover, he had no important lessons for that day. He convinced his mother who was very easy to be convinced as mothers everywhere are, but his father was a very stubborn person. He lied to his father that Samuel teacher would beat him mercilessly if he went to class late and that it was very late to go to school already. The teacher was a very violent man who would cut him to pieces with a cane and twist his ears. He also told his father a few false stories about Samuel teacher's cruelty to children. His father became such furious that he wrote a very lengthy letter to the Headmaster which would bring Samuel teacher's sure punishment and eventual dismissal from service. Thus Swami was forced to attend school that day with this letter. 

One day is enough for a boy to provoke a teacher into doing some horrible crimes against him. 

The Cuba School Bus.

On his way to school Swami had many thoughts. Samuel teacher was not a very bad teacher. Of course he beat boys, but he was not totally unkind as the other teachers. Swami could not find any fault with that man that would make his dismissal from service deserving. By the time he reached the school gates, he had resolved to hand over the letter to the Headmaster not in the morning, but only in the evening. Within that time, he was sure he could do something most mischievous to provoke the teacher to do some horrible crime against him that would make his punishment justifiable.

The astonished student found that the teacher has developed tolerance and gentleness overnight. 

Educational authorities fly in imported cars. From India.

Samuel teacher taught Arithmetic in Swami's class in the morning and History in the evening. In the Arithmetic class he was not punished for coming late or for not doing his homework. He was not minded but just ignored. His headache was readily accepted as an excuse. To his astonishment, the teacher seemed to have developed tolerance and gentleness overnight. He waited for the History class in the evening to come. In the History class he tried in many crazy ways to provoke the teacher to beat him. He asked many wayward questions, shouted several times in the class and answered questions that were asked to others. Finally he succeeded in obtaining eight hot cane cuts on his palm. Thus, when the evening bell rang, with satisfaction and without feeling any guilt, he went to the Headmaster's room to deliver the letter from his father. Alas, the Headmaster was on leave for a week and the Assistant Headmaster Samuel teacher was in-charge of the Headmaster. He did not dare deliver the letter to the man. When he returned home his father called him a coward, and tore the letter to pieces. 

Had there been no problems in school, would the child be unwilling to go to school? 

Going to school by Tuk Tuk.

This story was written by R.K.Narayan in the beginning of the Twentieth century, based on the experiences of a child in Indian circumstances. The times have changed and the perspective has now become universal. Academic syllabuses and the modes of students' travel to schools have changed much. But what did not change was our attitude to children's problems. Had there been no problems in school, and had the school atmosphere been very interesting and stimulating to children with their friends and play opportunities, would a child be unwilling to go to school? There of course are genuine reasons for a child to be refusing to go to school.

Sadism and masochism now prevalent and dominant in the teaching world. 

Protective shield of her elder sister.

Pestering and persecuting teachers are the prime reason for the child trying to keep away from school. Sadists and masochists are now in plenty among the teachers. Professional quality of teachers has also dwindled. Ethics in profession and pedagogical values are never kept. Trade unionism consumed and ate into excellence. Corruption is the face mark of educational administration. Governments shamelessly accept money from bargaining private managements and license opening and running of schools as they like including medical schools. Politicians and legislators are no more ashamed at the guilt of getting in the middle of auctioning of school permits. In India, if we give bribe to educational authorities and the private school managements, any low class graduate can become a teacher. Even talented teachers have to secure their jobs through bribery. This dissatisfaction and hatred they feel in securing their jobs are extended towards children in the form of intolerance, leading ultimately to unrest in schools. The child has nothing at all to do in this except bear the brunt of things.

Educators around the world have become one of the obstacles to education. 

Laughter often fades when they reach school.

Another factor that make children loath going to school is their backpacks. It weighs often up to 20-25 kilos. When we ask children why it is so, they answer that everything has to be taken to school each day, if not the teacher will beat them, put them out of class or send them away from school. We will wonder whether drug companies manufacturing medicines for back pains and back bone deformities are bribing the world educational authorities to continue this practice and keep back from bringing about humanitarian legislation. Why can't the world legislate and limit their daily burden to below 5 kilos, including water bottles and food? When one of the world renowned teachers, writers, philosophers and former Presidents of India Dr.S.Radhakrishnan said "we are faced with the paradoxical fact that educators have become one of the obstacles to education," it was very true. The morning face of a child going to school is the most beautiful thing in this world to see. That radiance there is the guarantee that human beings are taken care of in the Universe. Will it continue to be so in the coming years?

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Pictures Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
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Tags

Behaviour Of Children In Schools, Boys In School, Novelists, P S Remesh Chandran, Reintroductions, Reluctance Of Children To Go To School, Sahyadri Books Bloom Books Trivandrum, Short Stories, Short Story Writers, Stories, Writers, Writers From India
 

Meet the author
PSRemeshChandra
 
Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan : The Intelligent Picture Book.