"The English Teacher" by R K Narayan

Krishna teaches English at the College he was taught at. He has w ife and a daughter and a life of domestic harmony. Until it all goes wrong. Once again, Narayan explores the life of a very ordinary person and finds the transcendent in the everyday.

The first half of the book is firmly rooted in mundane reality, although sometimes Krishna finds lyrical beauty in his surroundings. But in the second half (and the turning point, almost exactly half way through, is a key moment) the sacred and the spiritual are foregrounded. But this is India and you can never be quite certain that a holy man isn't a con artist. 

It has a well-paced plot, structured after the four Ashramas (life stages) of Hindu tradition. The first stage is the 'chaste student'; although Krishna is already married and a father  teaching when we first encounter him, he is still living as a bachelor in the college accommodation where he was a student. The second stage, that of householder, describes his married life, and the everyday adventure of domesticity. This ends exactly half way through the book; the second half chronicles the third stage and ends on the brink of Krishna embarking on the fourth. The plot contained several developments which I hadn't expected at all but nevertheless could be seen to develop naturally, a classic Aristotelian reversal. I found the ending deeply satisfying.

It is narrated in the first person and the past tense by the protagonist, Krishna. He's a very ordinary man, fumbling and bickering his way through life, who only really discovers how deeply he loves when it's too late. He feels terribly real. His character is developed by his history and his circumstances. The other characters are drawn from the ranks of the ordinary and perfectly observed; even the visionary Headteacher, saintly in some respects, is fleshed out through the way he treats and is treated by his wife and children. This a drama of people you might meet down the street.

The language is careful, measured and grammatical; I felt that every word was carefully chosen. Despite it being a first person narrative, there was a lot more show than tell. There are moments of glorious description:

• "I was going to write of the cold water's touch on the skin, the cold air blowing on chest and face, the rumble of the river, cries of birds, magic of the morning light, all of which created an alchemy of inexplicable joy." (Ch 1) 
• "As the dusk gathered around us, utter silence reigned. I too sat, not knowing what we waited for, The casuarina murmured and hushed, the ripples splashed on the shore. A bright star appeared in the sky." (Ch 5)
• "As I sat in the sands of Sarayu, a late moon rose in the east, and the flowing water shimmered with it." (Ch 7)

If you, as reader, finds that the story is so ordinary that it seems a little dull, if you feel that it drags a little at the start, keep going. Your perseverance will be rewarded. It's never a page-turner but the events of the middle and the second half are well worth the wait. 

It also acts as a commentary on colonialism. Krishna is employed to teach the delights of the literature of a colonising people; the headmaster, Brown, has never bothered to learn any Indian language despite living in the sub-continent for thirty years. Krishna's wife, Susila, has spent years trying to read Ivanhoe and Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare but can't get past page fifty. Explicitly: "I could no longer stuff Shakespeare and Elizabethan metre and Romantic poetry for the hundredth time into young minds and feed them on the dead mutton of literary analysis and theories and histories ... This education had reduced us to a nation of morons; we were strangers to our own culture and camp followers of another culture, feeding on leavings and garbage." (Ch 8)

Selected quotes:

• "House-keeping was a grand affair for her. The essence of her existence consisted of the thrills and pangs and the satisfaction that she derived in running a well-ordered household." (Ch 2)
• "I have the feeling of a crow flying in a storm." (Ch 5)
• "It was a street within a street, and a lane tucked away into a lane. There was every sign that the municipality had forgotten the existence of this part of town. Yet it seemed to maintain a certain degree of sanitation, mainly with the help of the sun, wind and rain. The sun burned so severely most months that bacteria and infection turned to ashes. The place had a general clean up when the high winds rose before the monsoon set in, and whirled into a column the paper scraps, garbage, egg-shells, and leaves. ... And it was all followed by a good wash-down when the rains descended in November and December and flushed the streets." (Ch 6) Man proposes but God disposes. The municipality, if it is good for anything, should look after sanitation in the city but in the neglected areas such as the liminal district where the Headmaster lives, nature takes over the job and performs it efficiently enough. This is a key step on Krishnan's road to enlightenment. 
• "The street was littered with all kinds of things - wood shavings, egg shells, tin pieces and drying leaves. Dust was ankle deep." (Ch 6)
• "The memory of my own young days. Most of us forget that grand period. But with me it has always been there. A time at which the colour of things are different, their depths greater, their magnitude greater, a most balanced and joyous time of life... And then our own schooling which put blinkers on us; which persistently ruined this vision of things and made us into adults." (Ch 6)
• "It was as if a person lost in an abyss found a ladder, and the ladder crumbled." (Ch 7)
• "The kitchen is the deadliest arsenal a woman possesses." (Ch 7)
• "Success must be measured by its profitlessness, said a French philosopher." (Ch 8)

A slow burner but, once it gets going, it grips. June 2024; 184 pages

By the author of The Guide and The Painter of Signs and a host of other novels set in the fictional Indian city of Malgudi.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God