by R. A. Jayantha

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).

Cover art, Penguin Classics edition; photograph by Abbas/Magnum.

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 his other novels. It is outwardly quiet and gentle. It does not have anything like the menacing presence of a raakshasa (man-eating monsters) 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 and rascal into a saint and martyr, as in The Guide. There is no run on a private bank by hundreds of 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 into attainment of 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 merely an 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 interrelated 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 novel’s quest motif is the most meaningful and encompasses all the others. Jagan is the novel’s protagonist. Because of circumstances, he engages in different kinds of search. But he is not a deliberate and self-conscious searcher, nor is he capable of sophisticated intellectual inquiry. Indeed, he is hardly aware of some of the searches he is involved in.

Ever since his wife Ambika died of a brain tumor, an invincible barrier has grown between himself and his son Mali. Jagan anxiously tries to establish, though in vain, an affectionate and durable relationship and communication with Mali, but all the major problems of Jagan’s life since his wife’s death are created by Mali and inspire his searching. 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 begins the unconscious search for his “identity”. (p. 128) Is he the father of Mali, a mere maker and vendor of sweets, gatherer of money, or something else? In other words, circumstances force him 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 daily routine, from a life of repetition and drift, from self-deception and the delusion of attachments – so that he may live the remaining years of his life meaningfully, liberated from his egotistical self. In effect, Jagan’s search is for enduring values and spiritual enlightenment. In his own words, he seeks “a new janma” (birth). (p. 120) It is Narayan’s distinction as a novelist that he explores the time-honoured motif of quest through the comedy. It is characteristic of his comic vision and method that he should choose such a prosaic figure as a vendor of sweets, someone ordinary and average, as the protagonist of a 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 these aspects of the novel.

It is better stated at the outset that The Vendor is not a “Gandhi Novel” and that Narayan has not written a Gandhi novel per se. Nor does it aim at expressing any particular attitude towards Gandhi and his way of life. Rather, the novelist uses Gandhi in order 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 home-spun clothes made of yarn he himself has spun on his charkha (spinning wheel). He has been spinning on it since Gandhi visited Malgudi “over twenty years ago.” (p. 15) He produces enough yarn to meet his personal needs, which consist of just two sets of clothes. He has made it a point to wear only “nonviolent footwear, sandals made of the leather of an animal which had died of old age.” (p. 15) He has made “excursions to remote villages where a cow or a calf was reported to be dying” to secure the hide. (p. 15) He has tried his hand at tanning, even at the risk of disrupting 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 dietary experiments, his enthusiasm for nature cures, 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 comical Gandhi man. But he also accumulates wealth, largely by evading taxes, even though he claims that one who “came under the spell of Gandhi” “could do not wrong.” (p. 45) With tongue in the cheek, Narayan 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 life 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 “Gandhian”, albeit in his own comic way. It is something to be a Gandhian, however imperfect, in an environment anything but Gandhian. The Vendor is placed in the Sixties, in post-Independence India; Gandhian values are being ignored. Jagan’s 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 has taken from Gandhi his sense of the dignity of labour and he is sincerely happy to be a vendor of sweets. In his own way he is an honest businessman and would not compromise, under any circumstances, the quality of sweets he makes and sells. And he goes to extraordinary lengths to guarantee their quality even when he slashes 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 reference to it in the novel. We are told that every morning Jagan sat “with a sense of fulfillment 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 then return to the Lord’s sayings with a quiet 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 his bank account, conflicts with the Gita’s ideals of non-attachment and non-possession (both very dear to Gandhi). But he likes to believe that he does not accumulate money, that it just grows naturally. It is one’s duty to work, and that is precisely what he is doing. 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 assiduously. Jagan intends all his wealth to go to his son in order to make him happy. He even feels a “sneaking admiration” for his son when he comes to know to his shock that Mali has pilfered from a hiding place in the loft enough money to buy his passage to America. He prefers to regard it as Mali’s self-reliance and alludes again to the Gita, to support this. (p. 54)

Jagan’s frequent references to Gandhi and the Gita are little more than harmless vanity. They become ludicrous and comic not only because they are often irrelevant but because Jagan believes that he understands Gandhi and the Gita. One suspects that he invokes them when his thinking is rather muddled. His understanding of Gandhian principles and the teachings of the Gita are put to a severe test when Mali unexpectedly creates a series of problems for him. He not only revolts against Jagan’s parental authority, refuses to go to school, and goes to America ostensibly to learn to be a creative writer, but then he returns home with Grace, a half-Korean and half-American girl to whom he is supposedly married, and presents Jagan with an absurd scheme to manufacture a story-writing machine. Jagan is shaken out of his complacency. He had thought that he had solved every problem, and even conquered the self. With Mali’s return, his real challenges 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 into his household and which he has missed since the death of his wife years ago. (p. 69)

Jagan’s troubles start when both Mali and Grace put pressure on him, the former crudely and the latter subtly. They virtually try to coerce him into being the major shareholder in their project of manufacturing story-writing machines. Jagan who had not minded Mali’s taking, without his knowledge, huge sums of money to go abroad, now feels deeply hurt that he should try to involve him in such a 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 “nonviolent non-cooperation.” (p. 92) But this comic version of the Gandhian technique of passive resistance used 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 capital for Mali’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 and . . . 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 the 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 emphasis of “even son” 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 Gita 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, and he has to struggle hard to find a solution. When he actually finds one, though he may not be aware of it, it will truly be in keeping with the spirit of the teachings of Gandhi and the Gita in so far as that is possible for a man of Jagan’s powers of understanding. In this process of transformation Chinaa Dorai, a hair-blackener and sculptor, plays the role of a catalyst.

Though the meeting between Chinna Dorai and 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, and install it on a pedestal. The bearded sculptor meets Jagan just at the psychological moment when he has begun the process of “reckoning” and introspection. (p. 99) 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?” (birth) 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 a 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.”

The verse is recited daily by a section of Brahmins during the recitation of excerpts from the vedas (Sandhya vandana), just before one sits down to meditative recitation of the sacred mantra called the Gayatri Mantra. As Chinna Dorai explains the meaning of this verse and elucidates the symbolic significance of the things the goddess carries in her hands, and which he means to depict in his statue, 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 fulfill 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 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 from his son if only because there does not seem to be any possibility of understanding and communication between them. 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 renunciation of family life for a new life stage of detachment (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 thoughts of profit and loss, and cultivate disinterestedness, 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 agonising experiences – in fact the worst is yet to come – before the 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 janma have begun.

When Jagan returns home from Nallapa’s Grove, his mind is in “turmoil”. To still his nerves and thoughts he spins on the charkha for a while. He recalls 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,” although he still cares for his family, shop and house. (p. 127) As he spins 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 of money 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 tax collector’s bungalow, and hoist the Indian flag in its place, regardless of the consequences. 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 nonviolent non-cooperation for the selfish reason of resisting Mali’s designs on his money. Now, he tries to reinforce his ego with the spirit of a Satyagrahi so that he may know the truth about Mali and Grace. Ironically the truth he finds out – that they are not married after all – gives him perhaps the rudest jolt of 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 nostalgically over the different phases of his life, particularly the circumstances surrounding the birth of Mali 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, and live the remaining years of his life “on a different plane” (p. 182), so that his son may live his life as he pleases. 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” the necessities, particularly including 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 an ordinary and average person, in his  strengths 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. He has been taken into police custody for violating Prohibition laws. Jagan is shocked, but with some effort 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, and he can 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 of stone. 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 carts with him into retirement his Gandhian charkha, also takes with him his “bank book”, which, as his 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 renunciation, which he is embarking on? Is he trying to have his cake and eat it too? A closer look at what happens at the close of the novel, however, places Jagan’s actions in the right perspective. He asks his “cousin” to run his shop and look after the cooks until Mali eventually takes it over. 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 his son’s ways. 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 at least, the beginning of his journey towards self-knowledge and self-realization. There is no devaluing of renunciation, or devaluing his decision, his quest, to enter into life’s next stage. There is no indication that Jagan would 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 high comedy he is able to affirm the continued relevance of certain traditional Indian values.

EDITOR’S NOTE: R. A. Jayantha teaches in the English faculty of Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India, and is the author of Comparative Perspectives on Indian Religion, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1992; article courtesy of Triveni: Indian Literary Quarterly. The quotations in the text are taken from The Vendor of Sweets, Mysore: Indian Thought Publications, 1981.