A critical appraisal of the novel, The Guide

 

In 1947 after fifty years of agitation and political pressure on the part of social reformers, Madras Devdasi’s Act was passed and devdasis were forced to give up their profession and an unusual way of life. They were stranded, having no source of income. Narayan presents the predicament of devadasis in the novel The Guide by making his female character Rosie, a devadasi. Rosie is a product of the reformers’ campaign to eradicate temple dancing in South India.

The Guide was not only his most mature book but it also won world wide fame and recognition by being filmed. It won the prestigious Sahitya Akademy award for the year 1960. It is the Karma theory that is enunciated in the life of Raju the protagonist. In Hinduism it is a foregone conclusion that an individual lives and dies in accordance with his Karma and Vasanas (impression the personality has gathered from its own thoughts and actions of the past or previous lives). Desires and thoughts which spring forth from one’s Vasanas make it appear inevitable as observed in The New Yorker: 

As a Hindu, Narayan believes in reincarnation – a universe of infinite rebirths. …he surveys his teeming scene from the perspective of this most ancient of practiced religions…The career graph of Raju is rather complicated. He begins his adult life as a guide to tourists. A man who is a compulsive showman, Raju believes in appearances. He meets Marco, an archeologist, to whom as, “Dead and decaying things… fire …imagination rather then things that lived and moved and swung their limbs” (p. 72). 

Rosie, his wife is starved of dancing because her husband forbids it. A strained relationship is further breached because Raju helps Rosie by being a sympathetic audience when she performs in the privacy of the hotel room while Marco is away researching the caves in the Mempi forest. One thing leads to another and Rosie confides in Raju and it follows that they become lovers. Marco finds out the liaison between the guide and his wife (in the name only), deserts her in cold – heartedly without giving her a chance to explain. Castigated by family and friends for what appears to be immoral behaviour, Raju the guide now becomes a manager for Rosie’s commercial dance performances all over the country and comes into incredible affluence. Along with money come the attendant evils such as drink and gambling. 

Also Raju is madly possessive of Rosie. (“She was my property… I like to keep her in a citadel” p. 84.) He is constantly in the grip of fear that he may lose her. It is this flaw in his character that finally causes his downfall. He hides the Illustrated weekly in which Marco’s article on Mempi caves appears for fear that Rosie may reestablish her links with her husband. It is this fear, which prompts him, forges her signature on the document sent by Marco for the release of her Jewellry. Raju is finally caught by the net of his own sins and arrested by his former friend of prosperous times, the superintendent of police in the middle of a dance performance by Rosie. When she learns of his arrest, she comments, “I felt all along you were not doing right things. This is Karma” (p. 193).

The fact that ironies of life never cease is realized in Raju’s case when after serving time in prison, he inadvertently becomes a saint for the people of Mangala when he took refuge in an ancient temple on the outskirts. Velan becomes his protege and Raju out of necessity mixes motives and desires and once again the conman in him takes over. He speaks to the villagers on various issues of topical importance. He not only gives them discourses on the Ramayana and the characters therein, but also advises them on matters of cleanliness and godliness. He even prescribes medicines and settles disputes and quarrels involving property. He encourages the village school master to reopen the school in the premises of the temple. All the time Raju is aware of his put on air of grandeur. He plays the role of the Swami to the best possible extent. But once again is shockingly overtaken by the inexplicable eventualities. Things take a dramatic turn when Velan’s semi crack brother mistakenly reports that the Swami will not eat till rains come instead of till they stop fighting over a matter of selling and buying. Events that followed were beyond Raju’s thinking or control. He never once imagines that there arrives a time when the fake Sannyasi in him has to transform into a genuine one, people expect him, as the holy one with spiritual power, to bring rain to the draught stricken land of theirs by his penance as it used to happen in ancient India. For some time, Raju tries to evade this role. But fate is something inexorable and relentless. It is in times like this that one realizes it is divinity that shapes our ends. The first – four days of his enforced fast was sheer agony for Raju. The sight of food torments him. He polishes off the vessel containing the previous day’s leftover food. He curses his first meeting with Velan who is responsible for the whole thing now. “He felts sick of the whole thing” (p. 210). He knews that the fact of his being a Sannyasi is a myth just as the old crocodile in the pond is. But then the people of this land survive on myths. It enhances their belief and religious faith. The transformation in Raju is gradual, natural, if also wonderful. First it is Velan, asleep at his feet tired and perseverant, who stirred his conscience thus, “Why not give the poor devil a chance, Raju said to himself instead of hankering after food which one could not get anyway” (p. 213). 

 The resolution to chase away the thoughts of food gives him a peculiar strength. It further forges his thoughts towards genuine fast, “If by avoiding food I should help the trees bloom, and the grass grow, why not do it thoroughly? 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 something in which he was not personally interested. He felt suddenly so enthusiastic that it gave him a new strength to go through the ordeal” (p. 213). Thus for the sake of people and their religious belief, he is firm in making fast. On the twelfth day of the ‘Swami’s’ fast, he hears rain in the hills and sags down. In a masterful stroke Narayan leaves the readers in a state of wonder as to what happens to Raju. But what matters is that he stops thinking about himself that he is free from attachment of any kind. He does become the ‘Guide’, but, of a superior mould in the final analysis. 

Radhakrishnan says: …when the mirror of understanding is cleansed of the dust of desire, the life of pure consciousness is reflected on it. When all seems lost, light form heavens breaks, enriching our human life more than words can tell. One cannot fail to appreciate the rainbow magnificence of life in R.K. Narayan’s novels. It is the miracle of faith forged by the use of myth that is enacted in these novels. Despite the use of myth, it is the credible universe changed with moral imagination that comes to us in the above unforgettable novels of the Grand Old Man of Malgudi. Renunciation is one of the recurrent themes found in the novels of R.K. Narayan. The author’s preoccupation with the theme seems so strong that it seems to willy nilly find place even in some of his other novels than The Bachelor of Arts. The Guide is one example where we find the renunciation theme remarkably handled by Narayan.

 

Raju’s life as Sannyasi in The Guide does not seem to outlast that of Chandran in terms of time. But his transformation into a Sannyasi, though a counterfeit one, is so convincing that he fits the role of a Sannyasi like a glove. The portrayal of Raju’s Character from the beginning is such that the readers don’t find his Sannyasi’s role contrived or implausible. He has always shown the tendency to be different from the rest by falling in love with the wife of another man and by keeping her in his home defying both his mother and the society. While Chandran voluntarily embraces Sannyasiship, Raju, inevitably, is forced to play the role. Just prior to assuming the role of Sannyasi, Raju has served a two year sentence in prison and his stay there has made him tough enough to face any kind of life including that of a Sannyasi. 

So when we find Raju staying all alone in the secluded temple located by the river near a village, we do not wonder how Raju manages to survive in an atmosphere of that kind. But when Chandran becomes a Sannyasi on his own volition, we are intrigued as to how he copes with the utter contrast between the safe, snug atmosphere of home which seems to be the only one he has known in his life prior to becoming a Sannyasi and the unprotected harsh life of a Sannyasi which is a total- antithesis.

 

 The Guide and The Painter of Signs by Narayan, which set new waves by introducing many trends are in fact, very traditional and orthodox as far as the role division of the sexes is concerned. These novels are emphatic affirmation of the patriarchal set up, which reduces women to either stereotypically angelic or stereotypically demonic. Rosie from The Guide and Daisy from The Painter of Signs are portrayed as immoral or dangerous seductresses who lead to the downfall of the male protagonists because they refuse to be selfless; they act on their own initiatives and reject the submissive role patriarchy has reserved for them. They are the source of transgressive female power, which is clearly evident even at the time of their introduction.

 

The moment Rosie descends from the train she demands to see cobra-dance. She becomes ecstatic to see cobra-dance and begins dancing like cobra which signifies danger, threat and bad omen for Malgudians, “She watched it swaying with the rapist attention. She stretched out her arm slightly and swayed it in imitation of 61 the movement; she swayed her whole body to the rhythm-for just a second” (p. 68). Raju, her boy friend, also acknowledges her bad effect on him, “my troubles would not have started but for Rosie” (p. 9)

 

 

Narayan did not change at all. He never progressed significantly over the years. Right from the beginning he, in his own way, was guarded about his claims for the independence of women and men. For Narayan, it was a fact that women appeared to be victims of an oppressive system and men were victims of man’s image of man: hard cold, rational and analytical. His major concern was to warn men to mend their ways towards women because women can be a threat to their mastery as it is evident in the novels,  The Guide and The Painter of Signs and therefore, he at no point encourages women to challenge all social or cultural norms and practices as the solution to male hegemony. He was fearful about the change of subjectivity and always craved to work towards a level of communication in male-female relationship that is built upon mutual respect, trust and individual self-worth.