R. K. Narayan's “Second Opinion”

R. K. NARAYAN’S “SECOND OPINION”

Prof. B. KRISHNAMURTHY

In a recent interview with a correspondent of India Today ¹ Narayan describes himself to be no more than a story-teller. He conceals his great art, under such unassuming exterior. He bestows great care at once on construction and values of life. This he works out with reference to the average Indian life. The present article studies Narayan’s Second Opinion, a story in four instalments, recently serialised in the Illustrated Weekly of India,²as characteristic of his intricate designing.

Though nothing seems to be concluded at the end, the story is conclusive in the light of its pattern. The title, chance allusions to Indian and Western myths and legends and a chain of events ranging from the comic to the serious bring to focus a pattern of detachment-attachment and inaction-action, revealing the essential flexibility that informs the Indian character, ready to revise a decision in the light of a second opinion, in spite of an earlier conviction to the contrary.

In the story the concept of second opinion is introduced casually. Ensuring the quality of his coffee by personal tasting from time to time, Verma, the proprietor of the boardless hotel, invariably uses Sambu, the hero-narrator as the second taster and testifier of his coffee. He obviously seeks confirmation with reference to a second opinion. The narrator first heard the expression from his family doctor. To quote the doctor’s words: “Such is my diagnosis, go for a second opinion, if you like.” This great vaunt of self-confidence by the doctor, ironically enough is taken in earnest by Sambu, during an imagined crisis in his life.

Right in his boyhood, Sambu took to the philosophical books pawned to his father by a poor scholar, as a fish takes to water. When his father died, Sambu shared the household with his mother. But on every question they were poles apart, in thoughts his mother was traditional. Sambu was sometimes rational, sometimes philosophical and at others both! For in­stance, once his mother regretted the vanishing of the good old days, when every house in Kabir Street had access to the river Sarayu through the door; that was before the wells were dug. The son countered his mother with the concept of underground water table. “It’s the same water of the river that we are getting in the well.” The idea of a big connected water sheet, even carried him away to the unity of existence, the essence of the Indian ethos. Alluding the small with the big, he said, “Just as you say Brahman is all-pervading in this form and that in the universe...”

To him Ramakrishna, Max Mueller and Plato “all seemed to hold forth the glory of the soul.” This made him feel that he was born for great destinies and so he overlooked his drab surroundings. He hated his mother’s attaching too much impor­tance to examinations and degrees. The real reason for his lack of interest in academic pursuits was that he did not go beyond matriculation, which he never passed, even after three attempts. His groundings in metaphysics thus helped him to ignore his own shortcomings. The first person narrative helps him with a number of introspections, and the irony on him remains slurred. But with a nagging mother, he found it difficult to practise his philosophy of detachment.

Sambu felt, “Siddhartha did wisely in slipping away at midnight when others were asleep, to seek illumination.” Himself, a seeker after truth, continued to remain in bondage;

The common roof, the married state (ultimately)
every kind of inheritance, and every bit of
possession acted as a deadly tentacle. (Italics mine)

He even began to practise spirituality and the doctrine of detachment by abandoning furniture, and the common roof of the main house–confining himself in his cubicle, detached from the main house.

The married state not ultimately but mainly comes to serious consideration in the remaining three parts. Section II brings a cousin of Sambu’s mother on the scene. The cousin has come proposing marriage of his daughter to Sambu on liberal terms. Sambu overhears his mother speaking, to her cousin, highly of her son’s reading, though he holds neither a degree nor a job.

His mother’s condescending attitude continues the next morning. He is surprised at her transformation and even comments that a grinning face becomes her better than this smiling one, reminding him of Shakespeare’s “white-bearded loon.” This introduces the grotesque in the elder matron’s character. Her persuasive enthusiasm reminds Sambu of yet another grotesque figure from his reading The Ancient Mariner holding the unwilling wedding guest, with the narrative of his strange adventure. This chance allusion forebodes that the unwilling listener would rise a sadder and wiser man.

His mother, the spokesman of convention, points out that his father and the rich cousin have decided the betrothal on the day the daughter was born. Sambu is disgusted with the idea of fixing a marriage at birth and holds such commitments idiotic, and runs away from his mother, even as she keeps droning that her cousin would take them to see the girl any day convenient to Sambu.

Rushing out of the house, Sambu encounters Dr. Krishen at the entrance of his dispensary. He adds a new dimension to Sambu’s problem. He talks in conundrums on the health of Sambu’s mother. This helps Narayan to reduce any possible tragic sentiments of the situation. She “is in a leave-taking mood”. “thinking of retiring” not to Benares but to Heaven. On the doctor’s lighting a cigarette the cabin becomes misty and choking. Sambu coughs and when the smoke stung his eyes, it brought tears. The doctor thinks him sentimental over his mother’s health and preaches:

Don’t cry, learn to take these situations calmly,
you must think of the next step to take, practically.
and calmly.

The doctor is himself a representative of such a detachment as he remains oblivious to the coughing, groaning and squealing emanating from the patients in the hall, and continues his drollery with Sambu. Indifference to human suffering is what probably he seems to take as detachment!

Yet another dig at the expense of the doctor is that, a man who prides over his diagnosis, is not able to identify what ails Sambu’s mother, though he has been attending on her for the last four months. The gap between his profession and practice is part of the irony of the story, and brings the philosophy of detachment to a reappraisal, where it sounds hollow, particularly when he keeps harping on the fees due to him.

Though Sambu has been keeping himself away from home from dawn to dusk with a philosophical assumption, “one has to live one’s own life”, the doctor’s observations trouble his conscience:

I had not paid any attention to my mother, to
her needs, of her wants or condition and taken
her to be made of some indestructible stuff.

In contrast, his mother seems to be busy arranging for his marriage, and performing her duties without the slightest slackening, in spite of cardiac degeneration. Sambu comes to feel guilty and loathes himself and his self-centred existence. Thus what seemed to him to be an ideal, detached and spiritual life, on a reconsideration seems to be meanly selfish.

His mother’s disinterested devotion for his well-being, provokes him to think of his own duty as a son to her. To please a dying mother, be is half-inclined to agree to the frightful marriage. One had to do unpleasant things for another person’s sake. He remembers the epic hero, Rama’s sufferings to please Dasaratha. Compared to Rama’s sufferings, his own–if getting married be one–sounds absolutely bearable. So he permits his mother to write to her cousin to arrange for their visit to the village. The legends of Buddha and Rama are set in juxtaposition in the comic framework of this story.

Sambu remains bothered about the marriage and his mother. He could welcome neither marriage nor his mother’s death. He betakes himself to the riverside walk to assuage his distressed heart. Just then, he overhears two old men conversing on never relying on any single opinion, before deciding an issue. They expatiate on the value of a “second opinion.” The expression is a “god-send” to Sambu, and he sees a way out of his trouble. He decides to consult Dr. Natwar, a specialist on his mother’s health, by way of seeking a second opinion.

On the specialist’s word depended Sambu’s future freedom. To his great relief his mother is declared normal. As she is not dying, Sambu feels no inner compulsion to marry. At home awaits a letter announcing the cousin’s arrival. He refuses to receive the cousin, even for courtesy’s sake and resorts to his usual course of flight from a trying situation. But his mother intervenes and requests him to treat the guest respectfully for the sake of their family reputation. She promises never again to counsel him on any issue in general and matrimony in particular. His mother’s opinion brings him to the realisation that he has been responsible for the invitation. He agrees to receive the guest at the bus stand. Thus on a second opinion, there is a change in his attitude to the tufted cousin. Running along the lines, again, from his frequent involvement in the resolution–revision motif in the early sections of the story, we can anticipate Sambu having an off-stage rethinking on his freedom from matrimony. Already we see him moving towards it, in so far as he is feeling moved not only by his mother’s desperation, but also by her secret dreams of grandchildren.

¹ India Today, February 15, 1982, pp. 59-61.
² Illustrated Weekly of India, January 24 , 31, February 7, 14, 1982.