The language of childhood is Universal. Is there any writer who does not wish to go back to those happy, innocent days when life was an endless discovery spent in the company of friends. R.K.Narayan’s Swami or Chami as he is affectionately called by his Grandmother in the TV series ‘Malgudi Days’ beautifully recreated by Shankar Nag, lives in Malgudi. He is what we may call a typical boy with his baggage of likes, dislikes, fears and jealousies. The story revolves around the childhood of Swami and his friends, their plots and games, their exploits and Swami’s struggle to get through with his schooling. Swami’s life is connected to the events that happen around him; India’s struggle for independence, the arrival of the Mahatma, the awakening of the spirit of freedom, the introduction of modern amenities etc. The friends go through the pangs of childhood, friendship and separation.
In the story ‘Engine Trouble’ the much touted prize of a road roller won in a lottery begins a series of troubles for the narrator and he has to bear numerous expenses for ‘accommodating’ this gigantic prize. Narayan’s sense of humor and the irony that awaits the narrator in the form of good fortune is Tragi-comic. The irony that reigns in the novel ‘The Guide’ is also particular to many of his novels. A tourist guide Railway Raju is mistaken by the local population to be a holy man. The novel seems to highlight the noble streak in every human being. The transformation of Raju from a con-man to a saint, who can bring rain with his miraculous powers, leaves us wondering as to how fate can thrust greatness on ordinary people.
Indian writing in English reverts to a few novelists like R.K.Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand, Rajarao, Anita Desai, Khushwant Singh and others. In the initial days all of them gave the novel a flavor that varied significantly from the fiction published in Europe or USA at the same time. Mulk Raj Anand’s ‘Coolie and the Untouchable’ far from being romantic or nostalgic presented the exploitation and rift inside Indian society and predominated the question of the poor and the Untouchables.
In the novel ‘The Untouchable’ Anand narrates the story of Bakha who is a toilet cleaner. He is treated as an untouchable due to the nature of his work. The narrative is based on the events in the life of Bakha in a span of 24 hours. The oppression of Bakha by the upper caste people; the man whom he touches accidentally in the city, the temple priest who accuses him of defiling the temple by his entry remind him of the cruelty of the system and the injustice leaves an imprint of smouldering rage. But he is helpless “The burning flames that burned the excreta seemed to be akin to him”
Anand’s penetrating study of the psyche of the Untouchable delineates how deeply the system has morphed their identity into mere bodies. There is also an ingrained servility and Bakha is overjoyed when the Havildar lets him bring some coal for his hookah and offers him tea and a new hockey bat. The novel explores different paths as possible answers for the emancipation of the Untouchable; Christianity, Gandhi’s Dharma among other things and concludes that only modern technology in the form of flush toilets can rescue the Untouchable from this deep scar. A courageous and powerful novel by Mulk Raj Anand it has been hailed by E.M.Forster as ‘Bakha is sometimes grand, sometimes weak and thoroughly Indian.’ (To be continued with some thoughts about the novel ‘A Passage to India’)