R. K. Narayan has the most godlike of the novelist's powers: to know all his characters equally well - too well to love or hate them, except, perhaps, in a godlike way, as parts of the entirety of his larger creation. Malgudi, most real of imaginary towns, is that larger creation. Like the Gods, Narayan is a comedian: the smallest things, the most counter-dramatic lives, are within his compass. In The World of Nagaraj he shows how an ineffectual man lives with his ineffectuality. Only those who have never begun a project and dropped it, or thought the truth but failed to speak it, or acquiesced in a decision which went against their wishes in order to avoid embarrassment, can have no sympathy with Nagaraj.

LRB 19 April 1990 | PDF Download