According to Narayan’s biographers, “A Night of Cyclone”, written in 1929, is his earliest datable short story. It was written in Vishakhapatnam, where Narayan and his younger brother were vacationing after his university exams. This was, however, by no means Narayan’s first attempts at writing something serious. He had started writing in his pre-college days, as confirmed by himself in My Days, “mostly under the influence of events occurring around me in the style of any writer uppermost in my mind at the time.”
Around this time – this must be the mid-1920s – Krishnaswami had lost a dear friend that seemed to affect him much. Moved by his father’s grief, Narayan wrote a 10-page prose piece called “Friendship”. The language flowed like poetry and the lamentations, Narayan himself suggests, echoed Shelley’s “Adonais”. Narayan read it out to Srinivasan, but hid it from his elder brother whose sharp critical eye he feared. Nonetheless, he was proud of the piece; he carried it in his pocket and read it aloud to a few friends sitting by the Kukanahalli lake. Narayan described the episodes with wonderful humour in My Days. “Whenever I could afford it, I gave them a cup of coffee at a restaurant on Hundred Feet Road. The cup of coffee blunted the listeners’ critical faculties and made them declare my work a masterpiece.” Some friends reacted by saying that it moved them to tears.
The next piece Narayan wrote was titled “Divine Music”. It was composed on a bench by the Kukanahalli lake, almost in a state of trance. It was a meditative piece that didn’t make much sense to its author even then, but he was sure it would be a treasured addition to world literature. Srinivasan and the inner circle of friends, high on caffeine, endorsed the author’s views. Buoyed by the encouragement, he wrote a third piece which was even more abstract and obscure. Narayan soon got the pieces typed out from Venus Typewriting Institute at Lansdowne Bazaar for two annas a page after he somehow managed to convince the typist that those were waiting to be published from London. He was not lying. He could convince the typist only because in his heart of hearts, he himself believed becoming a writer: that his essays would soon be published in The London Mercury or The Times Literary Supplement. He borrowed money from his mother and posted them. Then began the unnerving task of waiting for the postman on days when the foreign mails came.
Day after day after day, the postman, Antony, waved at him from a distance and said, “No letters for you”, until one day there was a letter for him. “I trembled as I took the packet…The sun beat down and blinded me…but I had no patience to wait till I reached my room…I stood in the shade…and ripped open the envelope, still hoping for a warm letter or a cheque to fall out; but a neatly printed rejection slip was pinned to the manuscript, which otherwise showed no sign of having ever been looked at.”
The young aspiring author, who was supremely confident of the merit of his piece (when one of his brothers asked what it meant, Narayan had said its meaning could only be felt and not explained) took the rejection as a personal affront and went into a temporary depression. As soon as he recovered from it, he sent not one, but three manuscripts, to a different editor, Ellis Roberts of Life and Letters. There were classics like The Vicar of Wakefield that had been rejected by as many as ten publishers, he told himself. Roberts, however, never got back to him.
Narayan received his graduation degree in 1930. It was delayed by a year by the fact that in his first attempt, he had failed in history. When the news of the failure reached him in Vishakhapatnam, neither the student nor his parents were much bothered by it. He simply had to take the history examination all over again. He finally did clear the paper and according to RK Srinivasan’s diary, it was on March 28 that both of them learnt from their father that they had graduated. The convocation was held on October 16, 1930. As soon as he graduated, a new burning question presented itself, which was, what he should do with his life next?
There were different suggestions from different relatives and friends. Somebody suggested that he became a lawyer, somebody suggested a civil servant. Narayan himself thought about pursuing an MA degree in literature and becoming a lecturer. He had, in fact, made up his mind. The day he went to college with an application for admission to the MA class, his friend Parthasarathy met him halfway up the stairs and somehow convinced him that pursuing a postgraduate degree in literature was the most certain way of losing interest in it. The advice struck a chord with Narayan and he decided not to go ahead. But at the same time, it was unthinkable that one should stay home without doing anything after graduation.
Inevitably he had to start sending out job applications and meeting influential persons known to his father. The first one of this lot was the Chief Auditor of railways who had been an old friend of his father. Krishnaswami was confident that he would help his son find a job in the railways. One morning, neatly dressed, Narayan went to meet him, already imagining himself as a railway officer, commanding stationmasters and travelling in luxury cars all over India free of cost. When Narayan explained his mission, the man wanted to know what subjects he had studied for his BA. When Narayan said history, economics and politics, the man looked at him disdainfully and said it would be impossible for him to find a job in the railways. The conversation lasted a few seconds, after which he waved Narayan off.
The next man Narayan met was another old friend of Krishnaswami who had retired from bank service. Though Narayan never took an interest in numbers and figures, he still went to see him, as desired by his father; once again, neatly dressed and thinking of himself as a bank officer. The bare-bodied man was fanning himself with a hand fan sitting on a swing when Narayan went and met him. The passage where Narayan describes this meeting in his autobiography is nothing short of hilarious: “It was difficult to carry on a conversation with him as he approached and receded on his swing. I had to adjust my voice in two pitches to explain my mission and also step back each time the swing came for me.” Like the previous fellow, this man too seemed to hate the subjects the job aspirant studied in college. He must pass bookkeeping and accountancy if he wanted a bank job, he told Narayan. The conversation ended right there.
Excerpted with permission from RK Narayan: The Compassionate Chronicler of Indian Life, Indradeep Bhattacharyya, Niyogi Books.