topics: |  fiction | india

The prodigal son

This story touched me personally - perhaps because of the firang-returned
character of Mali - and I could also relate to the conflict within the
family, the daughter in law standing up against the family, and much else.

I feel Narayan deserves greater respect for his insightful
characterization, which is no less a mirror to the India of the times,
than, say, Jane Austen was to hers.  His writing is simple, it does not
strut about beating its chest with the drum of language like a Rushdie or
the whip of anguish like Naipaul, but it is effective.

Excerpts

[son writes from the US - after 3 years]
"I've taken to eating beef, and I don't think I'm any the worse for it.
Steak is something quite tasty and juicy.  Now I want to suggest why don't
you people start eating beef?  It'll solve the problem of useless cattle in
our country and we won't have to beg food from America. ... Jagan felt
outraged.  42
[cable from Mali:] "Arriving home: another person with me."

Jagan was puzzled.  What sort of a person?  He had terrible misgivings and
the added trouble of not being able to talk about it to the cousin, as he
might spread the news of 'another person' all over town.  43

His worst misgivings were confirmed on an afternoon when the train dumped
Mali, 'another person' and an enormous quantity of baggage onto the railway
platform and puffed away.  The very sight of the streamlined trunks,
suitcases, and corded cartons filled Jagan with uneasiness.  The porter had
to call in the boy at the cigarette shop for assistance.  Mali kept muttering
without moving his head or lips too much, 'Be careful, awful lot of things
that might break. Have spent a fortune in air-freight.' Jagan slipped into
the background, pushing his cousin to the fore to do all the talking and
receiving.  He was overwhelmed by the spectacle of his son, who seemed to
have grown taller, broader, and fairer, and carried himself in long strides.
He wore a dark suit, with an overcoat, an airbag, a camera, an umbrella...

Jagan felt that he was following a stranger.  When Mali approached him,
extending his hand, he tried to shrink away and shield himself behind the
cousin.  When he had to speak to his son, with great difficulty he restrained
himself from calling him 'sir' and empoying the honorific plural.

Matters became worse when Mali indicated the girl at his side and said, "This
is Grace.  We are married. Grace, my dad."  Complete confusion.  Married?
When were you married?  You didn't tell me.  Don't you have time to talk to
your father?  Who is she?  Anyway she looks like a Chinese.  Don't you know
that one can't marry a Chinese nowadays?  They have invaded our borders... Or
perhaps she is a Japanese.  How was one to find out?  Any indiscreet question
might upset the gentleman with the camera.  Jagan threw a panicky look at his
cousin and fled on the pretext of supervising the loading of the baggage into
Gaffur's taxi outside.

Mali took notice of Gaffur by saying, 'Jalopy going strong?' Gaffur did not
understand the word (which sounded to everyone like the _jilebi prepared in
Jagan's shop).

Mali occasionally peeped out to say, "Nothing has changed". Grace gazed with
fascination at the streets and bazaars and cooed, "Oh, charming! Charming!
Charming!"

"Honey, live in it and see what it is like," said Mali, on hearing which
Jagan wondered whether he should address her as Honey or Grace.  Time enough
to settle that question.

...

He began to avoid people.  His anxiety was lest the lawyer or printer or
anyone else should stop him on thestreet to inquire about his
daughter-in-law.  He walked hurriedly to his shop with downcast eyes.  Even
his cousin found great stretches of silence when they met.  Jagan had grown
unwilling to talk about his son.  Everything about him had become an
inconvenient question. 44

Mali was playing a gramophone or a tape-recorder or displaying to his friend
a polaroid camera or one or the other of the hundred things he'd brought with
him, which had included a wrapped package for Jagan.  Grace had pressed it
into his hands with: "Father, this is for you." It was a pale yellow casket
with compartments containing spoons, forks, and knives.  He had examined it,
turned it round in his hand and said, "Beautiful! But what is it?"
   Grace replied, "It's a picnic hamper.  Mali thought you would appreciate it."
   "Of course, it's welcome," Jagan had said, wondering how one used it, and
locked it up in the almirah. 46

[One morning, Grace parts the curtain and entering his part of the house,
starts cleaning it up, like a good Indian daughter-in-law.  Gradually she
arranges a meeting where Mali discusses "business" like a telephone for the
house, with his father. ]

Jagan noticed that his son wore socks under his sandals, and wante dto cry
out, "Socks should never be worn, because they are certain to heat the blood
through the interference with the natural radiation which occurs through
one's soles, and also because you insulate yourself against beneficial
magnetic charges of the earth's surface.  I have argued in my book that this
is one of the reasons, a possible reason, for heart attacks in European
countries... "  While he was busy with these thoughts, he was also dimly
aware that Mali had been talking.  51

Tamil proverb: Even if eighty million ideas float across your mind, you
cannot wear more than four cubits of cloth or eat more than a little measure
of rice at a time.  53

[discussing Mali's scooter with his cousin]
"Boys must have their own vehicles nowadays; they don't like to walk,"
generalized Jagan.  "I always like to move on my feet, but these are days of
speed; people must go from place to place quickly.  They have more to do than
we had, don't you think so?  Mali has never fancied walking.  He has always
cycled.  I bought him his first cycle when he was seven years old..."

Jagan is shocked to learn from Grace that they had never married.  He
has been living in the same house with the defilement of a son living
in with a woman he's not married to.  Meanwhile, Grace is being dumped
by Mali, who has used up the $2K that she had in savings; he wants to
send her back to the US, but she goes off to visit a "friend".   Jagan
cleans up his side of the house and insulates it completely from his sons' half.

PRIVACY: [he invites Mali to talk to him in the garden]
But all the passers-by will watch us, said Mali.
Jagan  asked, 'Why should not people look at us?  What's wrong with us?'
'People must respect other people's privacy, that's all.  We don't
find it in this country.  In America, no one stares at another.'

p.112-132: well-off orthodox Tamil brahmin wedding, c.1920s or 30s maybe - Jagan goes to see
the bride, well-instructed on decorum, (food :leave most of
it untouched, don't stare at the girl, don't talk too much) and then
the fixing of the marriage - the bride's father has them count the
money (half in advance).

When they were gone, Jagan's mother and her relations went in and lost
no time in assesing the value of the clothes and silver left by them
as presents. 121

and the wedding itself (an elder, Jagan's
father's elder cousin, who "held the highest precedence", is given a
torn plantain-leaf - threatens to develop into a first-class crisis,
but girl's father openly apologizes... p.123).  The women in the bridegroom's party
are up in arms because a gold waist-belt is not all gold but gold
pieces joined with silk cords, almost breaking off the marriage.
Jagan remonstrates, "This is the latest fashion, nowadays, girls don't
want to be weighed down with all that massive gold."  At shich they
became very critical of him, saying that he had already become
hen-pecked...

When they were alone, Jagan spent all his time in love-making.  He
lost count of time.  He found his education a big nuisance... failed
in every exam...

In an orthodox household with all the pujas and the gods, a
menstruating woman had to isolate herself, as the emanations from her
person were supposed to create a sort of magnetic defilement, and for
three days she was fed in a far-off corner of the house, and was
unable to move about freely.

bus trip - intimate conversations between families - 128-9

p.130: amazingly real harangue by his mother at d-in-l for doubly
adding salt to the pot; drawing in the gold waist-band (also
p.125), and
going on and on until she goes off in a huff.

No one who prays at that temple is ever disappointed with a daughter
131 [see also Achebe, Arrow of God]

[after the son, Ambika] held herself up proudly, having now attained
the proper status in the family. 132

tears blurred his sight, until the cousin looked distorted,
CORRUGATED, and dwarfish.  137

---

Both Narayan's A vendor of sweets, as well as Achebe's Arrow of God,
relate to the meeting of cultures.  In both, the westerner is viewed
completely from the viewpoint, and indeed, in the idiom, of the native.

In Narayan, the west is a more distant presence, as the culture in
which the narrative is set is by and large unperturbed by its
incursion.  The story is told in unadorned English, completely
unpretentious, with an amazing ear for narrative, describing the most
intricate convolutions of thought.  Page after page, one seems to meet
people one is familiar to, re-living their lives in a culture that is
close enough to being my own.  Jagan emerges as an ineffectual
idealist, who has raised his son without really bonding much with
him.

Achebe's  Arrow of God, though written fifteen years later, is set
much earlier, when the tribal traditions of Nigeria are first
encountering white supremacy, and here the encounter with the west is
far more intrusive.  The language itself is transformed, as the colourful
Igbo language is cast into English.  The energetized telling of the story
of the encounter with empire is razor sharp in its brilliance.

But Narayan's tale, withe the Traditional but ineffective Jagan; his
difficulties with his son who returns from the US with a completely
unexpected "wife", and dreams of setting up a busines with his father's
savings... The whole tale makes for an amazing plot.  Jagan's character, the
dialogues, the details of the social and other rituals, the NRI subtext,
are all impeccably told.

It would be interesting to have the timid, ineffectual Jagan meet the fiery,
powerful Ezeulu of Umuaro...  They would have much to talk about, the lack
of filial piety in the young generations, to begin with.