The Man-eater of Malgudi

Every demon appears in the world with a special boon of indestructibility. Yet the universe has survived all the rakshasas that were ever born. Every demon carries within him, unknown to himself, a tiny seed of self-destruction, and goes up in thin air at the most unexpected moment. Otherwise what is to happen to humanity?
-- R. K. Narayan, The Man-eater of Malgudi

Good does not necessarily overcome evil, but it seems that way because evil always self-destructs in the end. Narayan’s novel echoes the story of the demon Bhasmasura, whose fingers scorched everything they touched. Bhasmasura made humanity suffer, but was tricked by God Vishnu (incarnated as the beautiful dancer Mohini) to touch his own temple and was at that moment reduced to ashes. The philosophical Sastri tells the protagonist Nataraj, “Every man can think that he is great and well live for ever, but no one can guess from which quarter his doom will come.”

Although Narayan’s work is not solely allegorical, Malgudi’s version of Bhasmasura is the tyrant Vasu. Vasu, a strongman-turned-taxidermist, arrives in Malgudi and takes possession of Nataraj’s attic. Poor Nataraj, a printer who can never “say ‘no’ to anyone”, succumbs to Vasu’s bullying and rents him the attic (for which he never pays a single paisa). Vasu makes Nataraj’s life hell: he sues Nataraj for attempting to evict him “illegally”, he stinks up Nataraj’s printing shop with carcasses of tigers, hyenas, and raccoons, and brings an assortment of women of disrepute, such as Rangi the lower-caste dancer, to the dignified Market Road shop. Vasu is bully physically – he can pulverise metal with his bare hands – and mentally – when he acts as a money-gatherer for Nataraj people say, “One will have to sell the vessels in the kitchen to find the money, just to be rid of him! What a specimen!” – and this earns him the metaphor of “man-eater”. Although my mind thinks that Vasu is not that detestable a character – for example I admire his strong mind and firm attitude as an antidote to India’s meekness – Narayan’s gift is in persuading my heart otherwise.

Man-eater contains a whole host of instantly likeable characters – Sastri, nominally Nataraj’s employee but in reality his master; the poet who speaks only in monosyllables (“Girls with girls did dance in trance”); the journalist Sen who rails against Congress and Nehru at every opportunity (“The journalist was frankly dumbfounded when he realised that there was no aspect of this particular problem which he could blame directly at the government”); Kumar, the lovable elephant; and Nataraj himself – who are themselves flawed, but the reader is forced to take their side against the asura Vasu. Sen comically rants against Nehru’s third Five-Year Plan, but when Vasu insults him with heavy sarcasm, the reader instantly sympathises with the former. When we hear of Vasu’s plan to shoot the elephant, Narayan creates knots in our stomachs; his characterisation makes us empathise with even an animal.

The climax of the novel is masterfully done. Neither is it a violent clash à la a Bollywood film, nor is it merely a subtle change in Vasu’s character. Rather, it is somewhere in the middle of these two: Nataraj creeps in Vasu’s bedroom, where the latter is sleeping, to take his gun to stop him shooting Kumar. Nataraj hears the alarm bell ring and in fright drops the gun and scrambles out of the door, fearing for his own life. There ends the chapter, with the tension at its zenith. The first words of the next chapter are wonderfully anticlimactic: “Life resumed its normal pace on the Market Road next morning”. We find that Vasu is dead: attempting to kill two mosquitoes on his head he strikes them with all his might and thus ends his own life too.

Narayan’s writing style is no less impressive than his content and plot. Although the novel is written in the English language, the vocabulary, syntax, and tone are very Indian. This gives an authenticity to the setting that is not found in other novels about India (I am thinking here of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India). Furthermore, the human comedy in Man-eater is delightfully understated and sly; the sentences, “My wife, every Deepavali, gave herself a new silk sari, glittering with lace, not to mention the ones she bought for no particular reason at other times”, and “There was some vague movement of response [… and] I knew Sastri would not pay any attention to my call unless I called him again”, are prime examples. Reading this novel has given me a new meaning for the word wit.