Gandhi, “The Gita” and Gayatri in “The Vendor of Sweets”

Gandhi “The Gita” and Gayatri
in “The Vendor of Sweets”

R. A. JAYANTHA
Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati

The impressive popularity achieved by some of the novels of R. K. Narayan, notably The Financial Expert, The English Teacher and The Guide, seems to have somewhat obscured his significant achievement in The Vendor of Sweets (hereafter abbreviated to The Vendor). A creation of his ripe age and maturity as novelist – Narayan was sixty at the time of writing this work – it has a subtle charm which becomes apparent to the reader only after a second or third reading. At least, it was so with me. In terms of outward events, dramatic and sensational happenings, and variety of people, The Vendor is a complete contrast to Narayan’s other novels. It is outwardly quiet and gentle. It does not have anything like the menacing presence of a raakshasa to contend with, as in The Man-eater of Malgudi. Nor is there a whole community of people which in its blind trust and faith helps in the transformation of a ragamuffin, a rascal into a saint and martyr, as in The Guide. There is no run on a private bank by hundreds of its panic-stricken depositors, as in The Financial Expert. Nor does a magnificent tiger stray into the streets of Malgudi, as in A Tiger for Malgudi, to throw its people into utter confusion to start with, and later to attain mystical illumination. Instead The Vendor tells us the domestic story of a father and son. An impulsive and drastic reduction of the price of sweets is the only sensational thing to happen in it. Unlike The Man-eater of Malgudi, its predecessor which presents a richly peopled world almost Chaucerian in its variety, this novel focuses attention on a limited number of people: Jagan the protagonist, his son Mali, Mali’s companion Grace, and Jagan’s ubiquitous cousin who is not given a name. In addition to these chief characters, there are Jagan’s wife Ambika, his parents, Chinna Dorai the hair-blackener and sculptor, and a few others. If the number of characters is limited in this novel, it presents greater psychological subtlety and depth of feeling than many other novels of Narayan.

It is possible to read The Vendor as a merely amusing story which depends for its comedy on the improbable and fantastic. But there is much more in it than is apparent on the surface. While it seems to tell the amusing story of an eccentric and obscurantist father and his upstart son, and the game of hide and seek they play with each other, in point of fact it is built on a few inter-related themes of which the most readily obvious is the father-son motif. The others are: youth versus age, the generation gap, tradition versus modernity, East versus West, and search or quest. The quest motif is the most meaningful in the novel and encompasses all the others. Jagan the protagonist of the novel, by virtue of the circumstances of his life, engaged himself in different kinds of search. But he is not a deliberate and self-conscious quester, nor is he capable of sophisticated intellectual inquiry. What is more, he is hardly aware of some of the searches he is involved in.

Ever since his wife Ambika died of a brain tumor and an invincible barrier began to grow between himself and his orphaned son Mali, Jagan anxiously tries to establish, though in vain, an affectionate and durable relationship and communication with him. His other searches stem from this, because all the major problems of Jagan’s life since his wife’s death are created by Mali. Troubled by Mali’s unpredictable ways, especially after his return from America, and deeply hurt by his contemptuous reference to him as “a vendor of sweets” (P. 96)* Jagan engages himself, though unconsciously, in finding out his “identity” (P. 128), and seeks to know who he is: father of Mali, a mere maker and vendor of sweets, gatherer of money, or something else. In other words, he is made by his circumstances to seek an answer to one of the oldest questions of mankind, “Who am I?”, although to be sure he does not phrase it in this fashion. He learns from experience, as the novel shows, that he is not just “bone or meat” (P. 120), but a living soul. Finally, there is Jagan’s quest for freedom – freedom from tiresome routine activities, from a life of repetition and drift, from self-deception and delusion of attachments – so that he may live the remaining years of his life in meaningful activity directed away from his egotistical self. In effect, Jagan’s search is for enduring values of life and complete spiritual enlightenment. In his own words, he seeks to enter “a new janma.”(P. 120) It is Narayan’s distinction as a novelist that he explores the time-honoured motif of quest through the comic mode. It is characteristic of his comic vision and method that he should choose such a prosaic figure as a vendor of sweets, who is ordinary and average as the protagonist of this quest novel. In Jagan’s quest his profession of faith in Gandhian ideals and the teachings of the Bhagavadgita, and his interest in the sculpting of the idol of Gayatri the Goddess of radiance and enlightenment, all play a part in varying degrees. This paper makes an attempt to study this aspect of the novel.

It is better stated at the outset that The Vendor is not a “Gandhi Novel” and that Narayan has not written one such. Nor does it aim at expressing any particular attitude towards Gandhi and his way of life. However, the novelist uses the Gandhian motif, to study a certain kind of man who claims to be a follower of Gandhi. (P. 15) He gives us a meticulously detailed account of Jagan’s apparently Gandhian habits. He wears only simple and plain Khaddar clothes made of yarn he himself has spun on the Charkha. He has been spinning on it since Gandhi visited Malgudi “over twenty years ago.” (P. 15) He produces enough yarn to meet his sartorial requirements, which consist of just two sets of clothes. He has made it a point to wear only “non-violent footwear,” “sandals made of the leather of an animal which had died of old age.” (P. 15) In the past occasionally he would make “excursions to remote villages where a cow or a calf was reported to be dying” (P. 15) to secure the hide. Thereafter he would try his hand at tanning it, even at the risk of blasting his domestic life because his wife and little son were unable to tolerate the stench of the leather. Jagan abandoned this practice in deference to his dying wife’s wish, and thereafter was content to depend upon a trusted cobbler to supply his rather complicated non­violent footwear. Jagan’s experiments in dietetics, his quackish enthusiasm for nature cure, his austerity and determination to be self-reliant regarding his personal needs, his needless conquest of taste, and his proud claim regarding his “simple living and high thinking, as Gandhi taught us” (P. 45), all these make him an eccentric and rather comic Gandhi man. But he also accumulates wealth, largely by evading tax, even though he claims that one who “came under the spell of Gandhi” “could do not wrong.” (P. 45) With his tongue in the cheek, the author says that if Gandhi had said anywhere that one should pay his sales tax uncomplainingly, Jagan would have certainly done so. (P. 117)

Jagan’s evasion of tax and accumulation of unaccounted money is not the only contradiction in his profession and practice of Gandhian principles. He has a tendency to attribute to Gandhi, his “master”, some of his own fads. For example, he asserts that the Mahatma “was opposed to buffalo products.” (P. 97) His experiments with salt-free and sugar-free diet have nothing to do with Gandhi; so too his notions about the properties of margosa and the nylon toothbrush. As the author explains: “It was impossible to disentangle the sources of his theories and say what he owed to Mahatmaji and how much he has imbibed from his father, who had also spent a lifetime perfecting his theories of sound living ...” (P. 26) in a reminiscent mood Jagan can also allow his memory to slur over the fact that by the time he ever came to know about the Mahatma, he had already failed several times in the B. A., and had been taking his examination as a private candidate, and thus make the heroic claim: “I had to leave the college when Gandhi ordered us to non-co-operate. I spent the best of my student years in prison.” (P. 33)
Hence the question: “How sincere is Jagan’s profession of high-minded Gandhian principles?” Is it entirely hypocritical, “Pecksniffian”, a mere “smoke-screen” for his dishonesty, as some have chosen to describe it? While the contradictions in his Gandhism are very true and do not have to be laboured at all, to be fair to him, we have to note that he keeps up well past his middle age certain Gandhian practices acquired as a young man. He consistently wears khadi, spins regularly on the charkha, and lives a life of ascetic simplicity, even though these do not make his day-to-day living smooth or comfortable for him. And his loyalty to Gandhi has made him an outcast from his close relations, although he is quite happy to be one since he can escape a number of tiresome family festivals and funerals. (P. 148) He has not expected in return any personal gain for being “Gandbian”, albeit in his own comic way. It is something to be a Gandhian, however imperfect, in an environment which is anything but Gandhian. The Vendor is placed in the ’Sixties of post-Independence India, in which Gandhian values are given the go by. Jagan has to adhere to them for his own satisfaction. His profession of Gandhism has helped him to acquire some discipline and order in his personal life in contrast to the disorder and aimlessness of his son’s life. He must have learnt from Gandhi his sense of the dignity of all labour and he is sincerely happy to be a vendor of sweets. In his own way he is an upright businessman and would not brook, under any circumstances, adulteration of the quality of sweets he makes and sells. And he takes considerable trouble to guarantee their quality even when he slashes down their price. To make money, as he successfully does, in the world of Malgudi he does not require any “smoke-screen” at all, least of all Gandhism, Therefore “Pecksniffian” cannot be the word to describe Jagan’s “Gandhism”.

Jagan’s devotion to the Bhagavadgita, it may be assumed, is a consequence of his reverence for Gandhi, although it is not explicitly said so in the novel. Frequently both Gandhi and the Gita are associated in his mind. A “red bound” copy of the Gita is a companion to him and he spends most of his spare time in the sweet shop reading it. He sports before others his knowledge of its teachings to which he refers frequently. There is nothing surprising or unnatural in this since the Gita and its teachings are a part of the ethos of Malgudi, and have been so for centuries. But it is the use Jagan makes of the Gita that renders him eccentric and comic. In fact, his “Gitaism”is much more comic than his Gandhism. This is brought out quietly in the first ever reference to it in the novel. We are told that every morning Jagan sat “with a sense of fulfilment on a throne-like chair in his shop placed at a strategic point” so that “he could hear, see and smell whatever was happening in the kitchen” and notice what was going on at the front stall. As long as the frying and sizzling noise in the kitchen continued and the trays passed, Jagan noticed nothing, “his gaze unflinchingly fixed on the Sanskrit lines in a red bound copy of the Bhagavadgita, but if there were the slightest pause in the sizzling, he cried out to the cooks without lifting his eyes from the sacred text, “What is happening...?” By a similar shout he would alert the counter-attendant as well as the watchman at the door, and return to the Lord’s sayings with a quietened mind. (P. 18)

Until the time for counting the day’s collection arrived, Jagan would continue to read the Gita with fixed attention. His attachment to money, “free cash” (P. 20) as well as accounted money, conflicts with the Gita ideals of non-attachment as well as non-possession (both very dear to Gandhi). But he likes to believe that he does not accumulate it at all – “it just grows naturally”. It is one’s “duty to work” and he is doing just this. He cites a verse from the Gita, as he can always do, in support of it. (P. 46) Jagan’s attachment to money is not simply that of a miser, although he does accumulate money meticulously. He is not just another version of Margayya, the “financial expert”, with whom money becomes such an obsession as to make him at one stage even grow indifferent to his wife and son. Jagan on the other hand intends all his wealth for his son and to make him happy. He even feels a “sneaking admiration” (P 54) for his son when he comes to know to his shock that Mali has pilfered from the loft enough money to buy his passage to America. He likes to regard it as his self-reliance, and as could be expected, alludes without any relevance to a saying of the Gita.

Jagan’s frequent references to Gandhi and the Gita are little more than a harmless vanity he indulges in. They become ludicrous and comic not only because they are often irrelevant but because on these occasions Jagan believes that he understands both Gandhi and the Gita. One suspects that he invokes them when his thinking is rather muddled. His understanding of Gandhian principles and of the teachings of the Gita comes to be put to a most severe test when Mali creates unexpectedly a series of problems for him. To start with, he not only revolts against Jagan’s parental authority, refuses to go to school, and later goes to America ostensibly to learn to be a creative writer, but actually returns home along with Grace, a half-Korean and half-American girl to whom he is supposed to be married, and an absurd project to manufacture story-writing machines. Jagan is shaken rudely out of his complacency and sense of self-fulfilment. Till then he thought that he had solved every problem of his life, and e\en believed that he had conquered his self too. With Mali’s return, the real challenges of his life begin.

Contrary to what some critics have thought, accepting Grace as his daughter-in-law and into his household is not very difficult for Jagan. To be sure, he does have some qualms about it at the beginning, and avoids people lest they should ask him embarrassing questions about his “daughter-in-law,” and his son. When the “cousin” succeeds in cornering him once and asks him about their dietary arrangements, Jagan covers up his con­fusion and finds his escape in a reference to the Gita: “I can only provide what I am used to. If they don’t like it, they can go and eat where they please…One can only do one’s duty up to a point. Even in the Gita you find it mentioned. The limit of one’s duty is well-defined.” (P. 66) Before long Jagan gets used to the presence of Grace at home, and even appreciates the feminine orderliness that she brings his household which he had missed since the death of his wife years ago. (P. 69)

Jagan’s troubles start when both Mali and Grace together put pressure, the former rather crudely and the latter subtly, and virtually try to coerce him to be the major shareholder in their project of manufacturing story-writing machines. Jagan who had not minded Mali’s talking without his knowledge huge sums of money to go abroad, now feels deeply hurt that he should try to involve him in his foolish venture. It hurts him even more when he is forced to suspect that “Grace’s interest, friendliness and attentiveness” might be “a calculated effort to win his dollars.” (P. 89) He tries to resist their moves by “ignoring the whole business.” This is his version of “non-violent non-co-operation.” (P. 92) But this comic version of the Gandhian technique of passive resistance for a personal end does not work for long. Mali and Grace corner him and demand an immediate and categorical answer from him. Instead of providing the share capital for Mall’s project which he wholly distrusts, Jagan offers to make over to him his sweet-shop. But this gesture elicits from Mali the contemptuous reply: “I have better plans than to be a vendor of sweetmeats” (P. 96) Naturally Jagan is deeply hurt when his own son sneers at “his business of a life­time ... that had provided the money for Mali to fly to America and do all sorts of things there”. (P. 98) In this state of mind money appears to be “an evil” to him.

The turmoil and confusion of Jagan’s mind is revealed not only when he impulsively reduces drastically the price of all sweets in his shop, but also imposes on his kitchen staff the Gita, to our amusement and their discomfiture. Thanks to his new policy they are compelled to have plenty of leisure and he intends to read to them for an hour every day from the Gita and explain the meaning of the verses. In fact it is he who is in need of the teachings of the Gita rather than they who flourish in kitchen smoke and prefer frying to enlightenment. It is interesting to observe how he interprets the words of the Lord who exhorts the reluctant Arjuna to fight, “Then God himself … explained to him to fight for a cause even if you had to face your brothers, cousins or even sons. No good has been achieved without a fight at the proper time..” (P. 103) The italicised words reveal how Jagan puts his own construction upon the scriptural passage. He sees himself as another Arjuna engaged in a fight, though it is against his own son, and this accounts for the addition with emphasis of “even sons” to the long list of kinsmen one has to fight with. The parallel between himself and Arjuna would have been ridiculous, had not his agony been very real and keen.

The conflict with his son over the question of providing funds for the venture is only the beginning of the crisis in Jagan’s life. From now on both Gandhi and the Gila not only occupy his mind increasingly, but in each case he tries to apply to his particular situation what he understands from their teachings. Formerly, when all seemed smooth-sailing for Jagan, his profession and practice of the Gandhian ideals and his public display of devotion to the Gita were touched with vanity and pride, though harmless, and stressed his difference from the less fortunate mortals. The crisis he faces now is unprecedented in his life, and he has to struggle hard to find a solution for it. When he actually finds one, it will be found though he may not be aware of it, that it is truly in keeping with the spirit of the teachings of Gandhi and the Gita in so far as it is possible for a man of his powers of ordinary understanding. In this process of transformation Chinaa Dorai the hair-blackener and sculptor plays the role of a catalyst.

Though the meeting of Chinna Dorai with Jagan appears to be accidental, actually he comes to seek the sweet-vendor’s patronage so that he could finish the image of goddess Gayatri begun by his late roaster, and instal it on a pedestal. The bearded sculptor meets Jagan just at the psychological moment when he has begun the process of “reckoning”. (P. 99) and introspection. He opens up a new horizon to Jagan whose “fixed orbit” for years “had been between the statue and the shop” and whose “mental operations were confined to Mali, the cousin, and frying”. (P. 112) Jagan’s visit to the grove where the sculptor had lived and worked proves crucial because the stock-taking he has begun to make takes a decisive turn, although at the moment he is not fully aware of it. It is here in the grove that he, who has been groping in the dark for a solution to his pressing personal problems, finds a ray of light. Appropriately the novelist devotes the whole of Chapter 8 to Jagan’s visit to the grove.

As Jagan watches Chinna Dorai and mutely follows him in the environs of the grove “sweetmeat vending, money and his son’s problems (seem) remote and unrelated to him. The edge of reality itself (begins) to blur”. (P. 118) As he listens agape to the other’s account of his master’s activities, he feels “as if a new world had flashed into view.” He suddenly realises how narrow his whole existence (has) been. (P. 119) He begins to wonder: “Am I on the verge of a new janma?” Nothing seems really to matter. He catches himself saying aloud obviously with implied reference to his problems which had seemed to defy a solution. “Such things are common in ordinary existence and always passing”. (P. 120) The irony is that he does not know that far more disturbing shocks than Mali’s antics are in store for him and his trials are not yet over.

After the block of stone on which the master sculptor had knocked the first dents for the image of Goddess Gayatri, is brought out of the moss-covered pond, Chinna Dorai excitedly describes the various lines marked on it by his master, and then bursts into a Sanskrit song which holds forth a magnificent vision of the five-faced “deity of Radiance.” Here is the full text of the Sanskrit verse, though only a part of the first line is cited in the text of the novel:

Muktavidruma hemanila dhavala Chhiaah mukhaih teekshanaih
Yukta bindunibaddha ratnamakutam tatvartha varnaimikam
Gayatrim varadabhayam kusakasah subhram kapalam gadam
Samkham thakra madaravindayugalam hastai rvahantim bhaje

This verse is recited everyday by a section of Brahmins during the performance of Sandhya vandanam, just before one sits down to meditative recitation of the sacred Gayatri. As Chinna Dorai explains the meaning of this verse and elucidates the symbolic significance of the things the goddess carries in her hands, Jagan is filled with “awe and reverence at the picture.” (P. 125) The sculptor earnestly pleads with him to buy the grove and thus help him to create and install the image of this goddess and thereby fulfil his master’s ambition. The cautious and worldly wise businessman in Jagan tries to laugh it off, but yields to his suggestion that it would do good to him to have a “retreat” like the grove. This suggestion made in utter earnestness helps to bring out what must have been an unconsciously growing need of Jagan’s to withdraw himself from his son if only because there does not seem to be any possibility of understanding and communication between himself and Mali. So he eagerly replies: “Yes, yes, God knows I need a retreat. You know, my friend, at some stage in one’s life one must uproot oneself from the accustomed surroundings and disappear so that others may continue in peace.” (P. 126) And Chinna Dorai enthusiastically endorses it. Thus Jagan unexpectedly happens upon the traditional ideal of Vanaprasthasrama.

The rest of the novel shows how under the pressure of experience, Jagan’s earlier interest in Gandhi and the Gita and his newly-acquired interest in the sculpting of the Goddess Gayatri coalesce. His contact with the bearded sculptor touches him profoundly. For the first time in his life, he is invited to entertain an idea utterly free from any self-regarding thought from thoughts of profit and loss, and cultivate a disinterested interest – a sort of intransitive interest – which is pursued for its own sake without any thought of the consequences Not that Jagan understands fully at this moment the implications and significance of the sculptor’s advice or the thrilling vision of the goddess although he is deeply impressed by both. He has to go through some more of agonising experiences – in fact the worst is yet to be – before his need for a retreat reaches its full consciousness and urgency, and before he can begin to act in the direction of Chinna Dorai’s advice and take the plunge to become a Vanaprastha. But the process of transformation and the travails of entering a new janmahave begun.

When Jagan returns home from Nallappa’a grove, his mind is in an excitement and a “turmoil” To still his nerves and thoughts he spins on the charkha for a while. He recalls significantly that “Gandhi had prescribed spinning not only for the economic ills of the country, but also for any deep agitation of the mind.” He has a feeling that his “identity is undergoing a change,” and that he has become “a different man at the moment,” although he still cares for his family, shop and house. (P. 127) As he spins at the wheel his mind analyses “everything with the utmost clarity.” (P. 128) He reflects: “One enters a new life at the appointed time and it’s foolish to resist. He was no longer the father of Mali, the maker of sweets and gatherer ofmoney each day; he was gradually becoming something else, perhaps a supporter of the bearded sculptor – or was he really his ward?” (P. 129)
However, this sense of elation is short-lived, as Jagan’s reverie ­is broken by Mali who comes in to demand from his father a definite answer regarding the “status” of their, enterprise. It is then that he learns to his shock and dismay that there is something radically wrong with the relationship between Mali and Grace who had begun to fill “a serious lacuna” in his domestic life. (P. 133) He is so much agitated that he is not able to concentrate on the Gita. (P. 135) He feels a compelling need to speak to Grace and find out from her what is what. Before he goes to meet her, he remembers significantly what he had learnt “more or less” from Gandhi that having decided on a course of action, he should be “swift and positive”. To boost up his morale further, he recalls how he himself had acted years ago as a volunteer to bring down the Union Jack in the British ­Collector’s bungalow, and hoist the Indian flag in its place, regardless of the consequence to him. What is even more interesting is that Jagan tells himself that he should act now in the spirit of a Satyagrahi “Once a Satyagrahi, always a Satyagrahi. If one was not acting for truth against the British, one was acting for truth in some other matter, in personal affairs, in all sorts of things...” (P. 138) On an earlier occasion he had tried without much success the Gandhian non-violence “non-co-operation” for a selfish reason to resist Mali’s designs on his money. Now, he tries to reinforce his ego with the spirit of a Satyagrahi sothat be may know the truth about Mali and Grace. Ironically the truth he finds out – that they are not really married at all – gives him perhaps the rudest jolt in his life. All his moral sensibilities are shocked. He feels that the permissive life they have been leading under his very roof has polluted his ancestral home. He engages himself in comic-pathetic attempts to seal off the door connecting his part of the house with theirs.

Thus Jagan, who has allowed things to drift, is now driven to intense introspection leading to a final decision. Brooding rather nostalgically over the different phases of his life, parti­cularly the circumstances surrounding the birth of Mall after years of frustration, he comes to the realisation that he had “outlived” his purpose in the house and that he should retire without grumbling and fretting from the familiar surrounding. to enter “a new janma” and live the remaining years of his life “on a different plane” (P. 182), so that his son may live his life as it pleases him. Now he becomes fully conscious of the particular relevance of the sculptor’s advice to him to cultivate an interest in the making of the goddess’s image. Having made up his mind, Jagan collects In a “little bundle” his requirements. It is to be particularly noted that the bundle includes his charkha: “It is a duty I owe Mahatma Gandhi. I made a vow before him that I could spin everyday of my life. I’ve to do it, whether I’m at home or in a forest.” (P. 183) It is characteristic of Narayan’s comic vision and art that he draws attention to the fact that Jagan’s “ardour of renunciation” is somewhat mitigated as he emerges into the morning sunlight after a refreshing cold bath and gruel. The novelist constantly reminds us that his protagonist is of the ordinary and average humanity, in his strength as well as weaknesses.

One more shock, a sort of parting shot, awaits Jagan as if to test the strength of his resolve The “cousin”, who meets him on his way, brings him the news of Mali’s latest escapade –­ his being taken into police custody for violating Prohibition laws. Jagan is just non-Plussed. However, with some effort he is able to recover his composure. His resolve to withdraw into the grove remains unchanged. His mind attains an “extraordinary clarity.” His attachment for Mali and his genuine distress at his present plight do not blind him to what his son must have done. Therefore  he is able to tell the cousin: “If what you say is true, well, truth will win. If it is not true, there is nothing I can do ... Who are we to get him out or put him in? .... Truth ought to get him out, if what you say is true ... leave me out of it completely; forget me and I’ll go away without asking too many questions ... I will seek a new interest - different from the set of repetitions performed for sixty years ... I am going to watch a goddess come out ofstone. If I don’t like the place, I will go away somewhere else. Everything can go with or without me ...” (Pp. 190-91) These words are truly Gandhian in content and spirit. Equally are they in the spirit of the Gita, so is the course of action he adopts. Thus in apparently, un­expected ways Jagan’s interests in Gandhi, Gita and Gayatri unite in the solution he finds for his personal problems.

Jagan, who cardes with him into retirement his Gandhian charkha, also takes with him the “bank book”, which as the cousin shrewdly remarks, is “a compact way of carrying things.” (P. 191) Does this not cancel out all his talk of renunciation? Does he not devalue the very ideal of Vaanaprasthasrama which he is embarking on? Is not he trying to have the cake and eat it too? A closer look at what happens at the close of the novel would present Jagan’s action in the right perspective. He asks the “Cousin” to run his shop and look after the cooks well until Mali takes it over from him eventually. Even the money in the bank is intended for his son to whom he does not make it over perhaps because he knows only too well about his ways at present. His readiness to buy Grace a ticket to enable her to return to her country is an indication of his attitude to people and money. It is amply made clear in the novel that though Jagan, at the time of his departure to the grove, has neither conquered his attachments nor achieved the necessary equanimity of mind for a recluse, he has made a beginning in that direction. He has begun his journey, his Prasasthaana, if one might call it so, on the road to self-knowledge and self-definition. Therefore there is no devaluing of the Vaanaprastha ideal. There is no indication either of Jagan’s return to his former way of life. It is a part of Narayan’s artistic strategy that he does not surround his protagonist’s withdrawal with an aura of solemnity and otherworldliness. It is his distinction as a novelist that through the comic mode he is able to affirm the continued relevance of certain traditional Indian values of life.

* Quotations from the text are from The Vendor of Sweets, Indian Thought Publications, Mysore. 1981. All parenthetical page references are to this edition.