With a writing career that spanned two thirds of the 20th century, R K Narayan used to be one of the best-known Indian writers internationally (there were several shelves of his books in our public library when I was growing up), but he’s rather faded off the map recently. As someone who grew up heavily influenced by writers like Thomas Hardy, Arnold Bennett and P G Wodehouse, was promoted by Graham Greene, and who produced dozens of well-made middle-class novels, most of them set in the imaginary South Indian small town of Malgudi, he doesn’t really fit the profile we look for in postcolonial writers, but he was extraordinarily good at what he did, and there seems to be a lot of value in his Balzacian project of chronicling the way Indian small town society fits together.

ThIs recent reprint, with an introduction from that great modern comic storyteller Alexander McCall Smith, brings together three short novels from Narayan’s middle period, all written shortly after Independence.
In Mr Sampath: the printer of Malgudi a young man comes to Malgudi to set up a new, socially-critical weekly magazine. The only printer he can find willing to take on the legal risks is the eccentric Sampath, whose ancient printing plant clearly isn’t quite up to the job, but who somehow gets the magazine going anyway. All goes well until Sampath is distracted by an opportunity to get into the movie business, and chaos ensues as the young editor finds himself scripting a Hindu epic instead of writing columns attacking slum landlords and town officials.
The financial expert, Margayya, is a middleman who when we first meet him is making a good living sitting under a banyan tree outside the Co-operative Land Bank helping farmers to fill in their loan applications. A humiliation makes him determined to rise in the world and make a career for his son, and a few years later he has made it to a city office and is running a wildly successful pyramid scheme, but of course the son isn’t interested in following in his father’s footsteps, and the pyramid collapses…
Waiting for the Mahatma is more directly historical — a young man with no real political convictions is drawn into the Independence campaign after being asked for donations by a pretty girl who turns out to be in Mahatma Gandhi’s entourage. The only way to get close to the girl is to join the movement himself. Narayan cleverly manages to convey both the enormous excitement of the Mahatma’s personal charisma and the difficulty normal humans face in trying to put his radical ideas into practice in their lives. ( )

Three Novels by R. K. Narayan is comprised of three short novels, Mr. Sampath-
The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert and Waiting for the Mahatma. All of the novels are set in the fictional Indian city of Malgudi.

Having recently read A House for Mr. Biswas, I was somewhat familiar with many of the cultural and lifestyle practices of the Indian people and this collection is very similar in style and content to that earlier noted work by V. S. Naipaul. Narayan is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed Indian writer and this is, by all accounts a sampling from one of his most productive periods.

In Mr. Sampath- The Printer of Malgudi, we are presented with an industrious, young newspaper publisher who falls in with Mr. Sampath, the printer of his periodical. Through a series of circumstances and machinations, our young publisher is swept along in a whirlwind of characters and events that ultimately leads him to the pinnacle of success as a movie screenwriter before the obvious house of cards predictably comes crashing down.

In The Financial Expert, we are introduced to a sly, manipulative money lender who has eked out a modest living on the backs of his clients. Desirous of greater wealth and riches, the loan shark experiences a completely unexpected and inexplicable financial windfall which changes his life completely. In the background of this major career move is the relationship between he and his family, including an incorrigible and ne’er-do-well son.

The final novel in the collection, Waiting for the Mahatma, follows the story of a young man in Malgudi, living with his grandmother, who has come into his modest inheritance. He soon falls under the spell of a young woman who is a member of Gandhi’s entourage. In an attempt to ingratiate himself with the young woman, the man becomes a follower of Gandhi and works toward Indian independence, though one wonders whether his heart is really in the effort or he is merely going through the motions in order to stay on the good graces of the woman he is pursuing.

Each of these novels, set in the mid-20th century, displays a rich tapestry of Indian culture and mores, many of which are almost beyond the understanding of modern, Western minds. Written by a native Indian, in the midst of both the struggle for Indian independence and the rigid caste system, the stories indicate the near inevitability and predictability of an individual’s effort to better one’s self and improve his/her station in life. ( )

This one was a recommendation from my friend Sangit Chatterjee, an Indian-born stats professor who works in the office next to me. Considered one of the great contemporary Indian novelists, Narayan gradually won me over with his subtlety and patience in developing surprising twists with seemingly mundane characters.

Srinivas, the protagonist of the story, has moved to a new region of India in an effort to launch a newspaper. Mr. Sampath quickly comes to his rescue with answers to seemingly every dilemma faced by an aspiring publisher. Sampath appears to be a very dedicated but otherwise typical Indian businessman… but we slowly see signs that his aspirations are quite beyond anything we might imagine. It’s enjoyable to watch the protagonist puzzle over his stalwart printer’s evolution as an individual, and it turns out to be an unexpected pleasure as a novel. This one is hard to find in bookstores but available online. Others by Narayan are more readily available, and they’re worth a try if you want to experience a taste of another culture ( )