THE GUIDE : R. K.

NARAYAN ---- A CRITICAL APPRICIATION / SUMMARY /

CHARACTER ANALYSIS / SPRITUALITY / METAMORPHOSIS / MYTH /
LITERARY ASPECTS
KAUSIK BANERJEE NOTES
THE GUIDE : R. K. NARAYAN ---- A CRITICAL APPRICIATION / SUMMARY /
CHARACTER ANALYSIS / SPRITUALITY / METAMORPHOSIS / MYTH /
LITERARY ASPECTS

R. K. Narayans the guide (1958) is a novel written in such a socio-economic

context when india was still a tradition based country with the majority of her population
living in the villages. People of these villages were mostly uneducated, simple, gullible
and superstitious. Children here grew up hearing legends and myths of many gods,
goddesses and sages, which entered into their intelligentsia and developed their aesthetic
senses and moral values. Narayan himself may have heard many such stories from her
grandmother and thus may have had a first hand experience of these believes of the
village people. Hence, he chooses such a village to unfold the story of the novel in
point. The guide is set in malgudi (a fictional town created by narayan), and it opens with
its protagonist, recently released from prison, sitting on a granite slab beside an ancient
shrine on a bank of the river sarayu, on the other bank of which is situated the village
Mangal , where people are so simple and gullible as to be made to accept for granted
even the most unbelievable things. It is a man called velan from this village, who first
mistakes raju for a saint and gradually makes other people of his village believe raju to be
a saint telling them of the miracle that he believes raju has performed to solve a crucial
problem of his family. Raju, perhaps already having a lesson of his misdeeds, feels
reluctant to play the role assigned by velan, but when velan tells raju his problem for a
solution, raju cannot help asserting his old habit of getting involved in other peoples
interests and activities (guide, 9). Irritated by the greatness thrust upon him, raju tells
velan to bring his sister the next day and thus reluctantly accepts a position superior to
velans.
Velan discovers raju having something of a saint in the posture in which he is sitting.
Velan meets him sitting cross-legged on a granite slab as if it were a throne, beside an
ancient shrine (5), a river flowing beneath it. Rajus sitting cross-legged reminds one of
the postures in which lord buddha kept sitting in meditation and in which hindu religious
gurus usually sit in meditation. The granite slab making a throne for raju seems to
provide velan with a symbol that implies a meaning related to the figure of a holy man.
The sanskrit term of throne is simhasns and it is derived from the two
words simha meaning a lion and asana meaning a seat because a high priests throne
ought to be covered with a lions skin (dubois 1968: 127). The ancient shrine beside
which raju is sitting and the river flowing beneath ittwo sacred symbols of indiaalso
seem to provide further archetypal symbols of holiness that possibly lead velan to take

raju for a saint. As krisna rao (1987: 170) observes: the influence of the temple on the
democratic consciousness is so profound and efficacious that it results in the ultimate
transformation of raju.
The recently released jailbird raju is a saint overnight because of two chances working
together. It is a mere chance that he is sitting cross-legged beside the ancient temple;
velan mistakes him for a swami for it. It is also chance that velans sister has agreed to
marry. She has agreed, not by being persuaded by raju, rather some good sense has
occurred in her. But velan interprets her good sense to have been awakened by raju and
forces upon him the greatness of a saint.
Rajus life appears in three phases in the novel: his position as a tourist guide, his
adventure with the dancer rosie and her husband marco, and finally his position as a
swami at the village, mangala. In all these phases raju is a cheat. He cheats the tourists by
giving exaggerated descriptions of things. As he says:
. . . If an innocent man happened to be at hand, i let myself go freely. I pointed out to him
something as the greatest, the highest, the only one in the world. I gave statistics out of
my head. I mentioned a relic as belonging to the thirteenth century before christ or the
thirteenth century after christ, according to the mood of the hour. If i felt fatigued or
bored with the person i was conducting, i sometimes knocked the whole glamour out by
saying, must be something built within the last twenty years and allowed to rack and
ruin. There are scores of such spots all over the place. (58)
He tells lies to rosie with explicit interest of getting her close to him. As the guide
employed by marco, it is his professional responsibility to guide them properly but,
contrary to what is expected of a guide, he misguides marco and seduces his wife. He
cheats rosie both emotionally and monetarily. When he is a sage at mangala, he is more
of a hypocrite exploiting the honesty and simplicity of the innocent villagers. When velan
comes with his sister and a basket filled with different items of fruits and food, the
hypocritical raju, pretending to be a perfect saint, picks up the basket and
ceremoniously places it at the feet of the image of a long abandoned god, saying, it is his
first. Let the offering go to him, first; and we will eat the remnant (18). He even grew a
beard and long hair to fall on his nape (53) to enhance his spiritual statusfor which
balaram gupta (1981: 31) calls raju a classical example of a counterfeit guru, a hypocrite
masquerading as a saint, a sinner in saffron in his article, a sinner is a sinner is a sinner
a study of raju. Thus in all phases of his life raju remains a bad man.
Yet signs of goodness rest in rajus heart. He tells lies as a tourist guide not to fulfill his
selfish end, but solely to make his tourists excursions meaningful. The tourists come
with preconceived knowledge that these or those are worth-seeing things at malgudi and
themselves give exaggerated descriptions of those things before raju opens his mouth
(57-58) and raju simply cannot but node only not to mar their interest. Tourists guided by
him considered themselves lucky: if you are lucky enough to be guided by raju, you will
know everything. He will not only show you all the worth-while places, but also help you
in every way (9). Though his telling lies to rosie seems intentional with explicit interest
of getting her close to him, by telling lies he gives her what marco as her husband has
denied. While marco has his interests in collecting and annotating ancient art and has
little appreciation for rosies talents as a classical dancer and always ignores and insults
her interests: anything that interested her seemed to irritate him (67), raju is eloquent in
praising her dance and wants to make her the best dancer in india. When rosie is ignored

and tortured and drags her existence miserably under the lordship of marco, raju
accommodates her and gives some meaning to her life. At the village mangal, raju is a
feigned sage, but he always speaks to them on godliness, cleanliness and speaks on
ramayana. Despite his pretence he has sincerest concerns for the welfare of those who
have made him a sage. So, raju is a pretender more for serving and accommodating
others interests than for his own. Mary beatina (n.d: 95) writes in this regard that from
the beginning of his career, raju is an accommodator and that his attempts to
accommodate, mundane as they are, nonetheless prepare him for the transcendent life he
eventually achieves, and narasimhaiah (1979: 186) almost canonizes raju as a saint:
with all his limitations rajus is a very complex lifeachieving integration at last.
The polarity in the character of raju is complex and misleading. While, on one
hand, he is reluctant to play the role unwittingly given by velan, on the other hand he
feels delighted at the success of his playing the role perfectly and no one was more
impressed with the grandeur of the whole thing than raju himself (47). When he is still
angry with velan for forcing on him the role of a saint, he acquires beard and prayer
beads to heighten his spiritual status. The uncritical faith of the simple villagers and their
fine compliments bewilder raju, yet his uneasiness is only within him. He never makes
any bold effort to clear his position. Thus raju oscillates between reluctance and
eagerness. His reluctance is partly due to his innocenceas he wants to tell velan: i am
not so great as you imagine. I am just ordinary (8)and partly due to a covert fear that
the high reverence of the humble folks and their unquestioning belief in his enormous
capacity may bring him some unavoidable trouble. Raju senses some danger implied in
this reverence and feels reluctant to be what velan wants him to be. But soon he agrees to
play the role due to an inevitable necessity of histhe necessity of food. Once he
discovers that his working, as desired by velan, will provide him with a sure means for
food, the cheat in him rises. Thus that his decision of pretending to be a saint is
determined by his selfish motives is clear in the following lines:
Where could he go? He had not trained himself to make a living out of hard work. Food
was coming to him unasked now. If he went away somewhere else certainly nobody was
going to take trouble to bring him food in return for just waiting for it. The only other
place where it could happen was the prison. Where could he go now? . . . He realised that
he had no alternative: he must play the role that velan had given him. (guide, 33)
Thus, completely motivated by a selfish end, raju decides not to leave the place where
food comes to him unasked only in return for just waiting for it although at the same time
fearing that someday the villagers [velan] might come to the stage of thinking that he
was too good for food and that he subsided on atoms from the aira foreseen comment
that comes true in a different way in his life (33). For this selfish attitude of raju, balarum
gupta (1981: 135) labels him as a selfish swindler, an adroit actor, and a perfidious
megalomaniac.
Nevertheless, rajua tout as he seems to be in all the phases of his lifehas some
uniquely good sides of his character. He is a self made man, a type of his own, having
enormous capacity of adopting himself to all circumstances. Very much like camus
meursault, raju has the unique capacity to love life wherever he is and to enjoy things
around him in all situations. Despite his unedifying past raju lives the present in its every
moment and accepts everything it offers. He even finds the prison not a bad place and
feels sorry when released. When he is to play the part of a saint, he so successfully adopts

himself to the circumstance that not only velan and the simple villagers but also the
village school master come under his guidance. However, while meursault is introvert
and selfish, always working for his own pleasure and never getting involved in other
peoples interests and emotions and is guided by an exalted philosophy of life, raju is
extrovert and always works for others interests at the cost of his own freedom of choice.
When he was a tourist guide, he had to act in accordance with the expectations of the
tourists. His own likings and disliking were not important there. And when he is a
spiritual guide, he has to come up to what the role thrust upon him demands. Therefore, if
raju as tourist guide tells lies, he lies not for his personal benefit; rather the tourists want
him to do so. And as sage, though a fake sage he is, he works for the wellbeing of the
villagers and guides them to the right path as a true sage would have done. Thus raju is
not basically corrupt at heart but appears so only because of his failure to say no to what
he does not like. As he says: if i had had the inclination to say, i dont know what you
are talking about, my life would have taken a different turn (55). This latent goodness
of rajus heart for sacrificing his own interests for others gradually leads him to what can
be called his martyrdom. Mary beatina (1993:105) comments that in the character of
raju, narayan portrays the enormous proportion of the mundane in every man, which is
constantly in conflict with transcendent urges, and which ever attempts to postpone or
delay the integration to the very end.
Even in the extreme danger of the villagers, rajuss thoughts are guided by selfish
motives. He feels alarmed over the growing unrest in the village and advises the
villagers: no one should fight (99). He wants to establish order and unity among the
villagers because the unrest might affect the isolation of the place and bring the police
on the scene. He did not want anyone to come to the village (99). Raju is so scared of
being exposed as a fake swami if the police or anybody comes to the village that he
stupidly says to velans younger brother, one of the lesser intelligences of the village,
who come with news about a further probable attack between the villagers:
tell your brother, immediately, wherever he may be, that unless they are good ill never
eat
Eat what? Rsked the boy, rather puzzled.
Say that ill not eat. Dont ask what. Ill not eat unless they are good. (100)
this was frankly beyond the comprehension of the boy and he could not connect the
fight with this mans food (87). Consequently, the message is distorted. Velan and his
company hear the message as the swami, swami does not want food any more
because . . . It does not rain (101 102). Thus rajus fate is sealed by a village idiot. His
threat of not eating is mistaken for a ritual fast. Soon the unrest is gone and the villagers
start prostrating before him, saying: you are not a human being. You are a mahatma. We
should consider ourselves blessed indeed to be able to touch the dust of your feat (106).
Thus the foolish villagers again impose a huge responsibility on raju by conferring on
him a new title mahatma. Narayan uses the title mahatma for raju to prepare him for
his transcendental journey. Mahatma was used to address gandhiji who initiated the
doctrine of ahimsha (non-violence) to fight against the british and undertook fast and
sacrifices shortly before his death in 1948 to end communal disturbance in independent
india. The greatness of mahatma gandhi and his fast to bring peace and unity are well
known to the people of mangala as well, as we find in waiting for the mahatma gandhi

visits narayans fictional town of malgudi during indias liberation war. Raju is far away
from the essential gandhian ideology and a man of his type would not have believed in it
perhaps, but he is entrapped by the villagers high estimation of his person:
This mangala is a blessed country to have a man like the swami in our midst. No bad
thing will come to us as long as he is with us. He is like mahatma. When mahatma gandhi
went without food, how many things happened in india! This is a man like that. If he fasts
there will be rain. Out of his love for us he is undertaking it. This will surely bring rain
and help us . . . (102)
Your penance is similar to mahatma gandhis. He has left us a disciple in you to save us.
(107)
Rajus real transformation sets in when he realizes that, while cheating the innocent
villagers, he has made himself a giant with his puny self and has worked himself
into a position from which he cannot get out now (109). The onward journey of the
hypocritical raju ends here and the covert goodness of his soul finds a way. Thus while
under the threat of life he should have cursed the fools, he feels moved by the
recollection of the big crowd of women and children touching his feet and by the thought
of their gratitude. To bring about rajus real transformation and to make it plausible,
narayan uses the indian hindu context and culture. He arranges raju to perform a ritual
fast, standing in knee-deep water for fifteen days. Water and ritual fast are two holy
sources of purification in hinduism. The fast of each day seems to dry up rajus sins and
the water purifying his soul by washing away its dirtiness. Within five days of his ritual
fast, raju is a changed man. He feels enraged at the persistence of food-thoughts (237),
perhaps realising that it was the dire necessity of food for which he had to be a fake
swami: with a sort of vindictive resolution he told himself, ill chase away all thought
of food. For the next ten days i shall eradicate all thoughts of tongue and stomach from
my mind (237) if by avoiding food i should help the trees bloom, and the grass
grow . . . (237 -38). Thus a new raju is set to be born:
For the first time in his life he was making an earnest effort; for the first time he was
learning the thrill of full application, outside money and love; for the first time he was
doing a thing in which he was not personally interested. (238)
As long as rajus thoughts are guided by mundane affairs: love, money, food and shelter,
he has to remain a hypocrite, but the moment he sheds all his hypocrisy and forgets all
mundane interests, his penance is that of a real saint. From the sixth day rajus prayer to
bring down rain from the heavens and save humanity is no longer a pretenders but the
true supplication of a saint who, absolutely free from the mundane, is absorbed in
meditation, being in league with the divine.
Balarama gupta accuses narayan of being less scathing and more covert in his attacks
on raju, because he [narayan] can laugh at human follies and absurdities without any
great involvement or a well defined commitment to human values (1981: 135).
Balarama gupta perhaps reads the guide as a delightful exposure of the ignorance ridden
indian rural society as well as of typically indian pseudo saints, but the reverence of the
simple folks for raju the sanyasi and their unquestioning faith in the sanyasi can be
attributed to their cultural heritage. As radhakrishnan (1959: 35) writes:
From the beginning of her history india has adorned and idealized not soldiers and
statesmen, not men of science and leaders of industry, not even poets and

philosophers . . . But men who have stamped infinity on the thought and life of the
country, men who have added to the invisible forces of goodness in the world.
In making raju a saint, it is not raju who himself plays any significant role; rather it is
velan and his villagers whose reverence forces him to be a saint. The absolute reverence
of the innocent villagers come to him as a sharp weapon at the end although raju should
not certainly be allowed to go scot-free without owning partial responsibility for his fate.
It is partially true that raju could have avoided his end had he not simply agreed but rajus
failure to establish control over the situation initiated by velan is fateful. However, if raju
is at last a saint, his transformation should not appear a miracle because such miracles are
not impossible in india which has been a land of gods and goddesses and where
traditional beliefs are more than knowledge despite the invasion of the west. Although
western colonial machinery already brought about considerable changes in indias many
social and political levels, the knowledge of indian classical myths remains almost
unchanged in the psychological state of the people. In this regard narayan himself
comments: with the impact of modern literature we began to look at our gods, demons,
and sages, not as some remote concoctions but as types and symbols possessing
psychological validity, even when seen against the contemporary background (english
in india, commonwealth literature, 122). It is this hoary tradition of india that along with
the unshakeable misplaced belief of the people of mangala goes hand in hand in making
raju a saint.
It also seems that the traditional hindu belief about a saint plays some role in the
transformation of raju into a saint. In hinduism such blind acceptance and consequent
reverence for a saint are common knowledge. According to hinduism, disciples should
possess two qualities: susrusa and sraddha. Zimmer wtites susrusa is the fervent desire
to hear, to obey, and to retain what is being heard; it implies dutifulness, reverence, and
service. Sraddha is trust and composure of mind; it demands the total absence of every
kind of independent thought and criticism on the part of the pupil; and here again there is
reverence, as well as strong and vehement desire (zimmer 1952: 48). The presence of
these qualities in velan and others of his village is functional. Raju is a saint not because
he is a saint, but because velan and others of his village are perfect disciples embodying
all these qualities: they are never tired of hearing and taking for granted everything raju
narrates; not only velan, even the teacher of the village school obeys what raju says, and
they hear and retain everything minutely in their minds; and they are so reverent towards
raju that they do never question what he tells them because they believe, as nirad c.
Choudhuri (1997: 303) says, that it is hindu conviction that no right path in religion can
be found without instruction . . . By a qualified guide. Mercanti stefano (2002: 82) says
that these cultural factors display the wisdom of an uninterrupted ancient tradition that
moulds the minds of the characters and influences, often unconsciously, their thoughts
and behaviour. Hence, taking a rogue for a saint was not impossible for such people.
Narayan also seems to make a corrupt man a spiritual guide with the help of the mythic
elements taken from indian mythology. Rajus transformation corresponds to the lives of
many indian mythical sages like nezam aoulia peer, or valmiki. Nezam aoulia, a thief by
profession, one day comes across a pious man whom he wants to rob but the man asks
nezam aoulia if his family members will share his sins. Nezam aoulia leaving the man
tied with a tree in the jungle goes home and asks everybody if they will share his sins of
robbing people but none agrees. Nezam aoulia feels repentant and atones by watering a

dead tree until the tree blooms flowers and he is accepted as a saint by people. Similarly
valmiki, a forest plunderer, also becomes a saint by choosing a life of asceticism under a
tree where he passes years until ants build a shelter above him.
Finally it can be said that it is not that raju worked to be a saint; rather he had to be a saint
under a compelling pressure over which he could not establish any control. He just
reluctantly accepts the greatness thrust upon him by the innocence, ignorance,
superstition and deep beliefs in religion of the simple, rustic people of the village of
mangala. Chance and incidence also play a dominant role in making him a saint. And
theoretically narayan makes a use of the religious, philosophical and cultural beliefs
based on the great indian epics, legends and folk tales to transform raju into a saint

[abstract: this seeks to understand how a corrupt tourist guide raju playing the central role
in r. K. Narayans the guide is metamorphosed into a saint. Conceptually-- ethically,
morally, lawfully-- a tourist guide is not desired to misguide the tourists but in the
guide raju instead of showing the right path to the tourists follows the wrong means to
guide his visitors. However, things related to unethical means do not continue and
consequently he gets exposed as a criminal in the context of forging rosies signature. His
imprisonment ending to his career as a tourist guide makes a turning point in his life and
the turning phase of rajus life is the point of study in this paper. The jailbird raju, after
his release from the prison cell, is mistaken for a spiritual guide and later made to
sacrifice his life to save the lives of the whole nation. Rajus lifehis transformation into
a sage from a rogueseems to correspond to the lives of many indian mythical sages.
This study attempts to show whether narayan portrays rajus transformation in terms of
the myth of spiritual saints in relation to the prevalent myths of india.]