Back to: RK Narayan Novels
Introduction
‘The Guide’ is a 1958 novel written, in English, by the legendary R.K Narayan, and brought him the Sahitya Akademi award in 1960. Adapted into a movie as well in 1965, ‘The Guide’ has been one of the all-time favourites of Narayan’s fans.
Raju’s Life Story
The novel focusses on the life and growth of Raju. Born in Malgudi, Raju was the son of a sweet-shop owner. Raju learns how to run his father’s shop and continues their family business after his father passes away.
Raju is a very adaptable person and becomes whatever people and life want him to become. With little to no professional training, but owing to his knowledge of local landmarks and buildings, he soon becomes a tour guide at the railway station in Malgudi.
Raju’s pleasing personality and his interpersonal skills allow him to win the trust and admiration of those who meet him at the station, hence earning the nickname “Railway Raju’’
‘The Guide’ is a 1958 novel written, in English, by the legendary R.K Narayan, and brought him the Sahitya Akademi award in 1960. Adapted into a movie as well in 1965, ‘The Guide’ has been one of the all-time favourites of Narayan’s fans. In re-inventing himself as a tourist guide, Raju often resorts to exaggerations and fabricated tales to impress his customers. His reputation as a guide grows to such an extent that he comes to be known as “Railway Raju,” sought out by tourists from far and wide. Get the entire The Guide.
Obsession for Rosie
Tempted by the material pleasures like money and comfort, Raju soon finds himself drawn to another source of pleasure – Rosie. Rosie is the wife of Marco, an archaeologist obsessed with ancient art forms. Marco and Rosie visit Malgudi and meet Raju as a guide.
Rosie’s and Marco’s marriage is an unhappy marriage. Marco seems to be unfriendly towards Rosie and dismisses her passion for dance, calling it a shallow profession for harlots.
Raju realizes that Rosie must’ve married Marco only for his money. Taking advantage of this weak marriage, Raju uses his tempting words on Rosie and starts a love affair with her.
Rosie Becomes Famous
Rk Narayan The Guide
He appreciates her dance. Rosie becomes a famous dancer in cosmopolitan circles because of her talent and Raju’s impressive marketing skills as her manager. They both start living together. Raju’s mother does not approve of this and she ultimately leaves the house to go live with her brother.
However, greed takes over Raju, which leads to his fall. Marco sends jewellery for Rosie, tempted by which Raju forges her signature – thinking that no one would be able to catch him. But Marco recognizes this forgery and Raju is jailed for 2 years.
Raju is Free
After he’s freed from prison, Raju is reluctant to go back to Malgudi because he’ll be disgraced there as a former prisoner. He spends his time, confused about where to go, in a village called Mangal, where a simpleton named Velan mistakes him as a spiritual guru.
Velan is fully convinced of Raju being a guru, even when Raju reveals his entire life story Velan’s sister, who has refused to marry as per the family’s wishes, is brought to Raju. Raju successfully convinces her to marry as per the elders’ wishes and hence furthers the idea of him being an enlightened personality.
Mangal villagers soon ask Raju to perform a fast to end the famine that has been severely affecting their village. Since they believe he is a guru, the villagers think that if Raju fasts as a ritual to appease the rain gods, it will surely rain and hence the famine will be over.
Raju Does Ritual
Accepting this responsibility, Raju begins the ritual. Each day, although he remains hungry, he finds within himself a new sense of fulfilment. His body grows weaker day by day, to the point where he can’t even walk without the villagers’ support, but this bodily impoverishment is accompanied by an emotional delight.
Raju’s death is bittersweet and the ending of the novel is not a definitive one but is rather open to interpretation. Raju asks the villagers to take him to the river, where he used to visit daily as a part of his ritual, and there he utters his final words,
“Velan, it’s raining in the hills. I can feel it coming up under my feet, up my legs.”
The Ending
And then Raju droops down. The ending is confusing because the reader cannot understand whether it actually rains or was Raju’s final “observation’’ just a hallucination – something that was not happening in reality but was just a vision perceived by Raju.
Regardless of the reality of the rain, Raju’s death certainly marks his journey from being a tour guide in Malgudi to a spiritual guide in Mangal.
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The Guide is the most popular novel of R.K. Narayan. It was published in 1958, and won the Sahitya Akademy Award for 1960. It has also been filmed and the film has always drawn packed-houses.
It recounts the adventures of a railway guide, popularly known as ‘Railway Raju’. As a tourist guide he is widely popular. It is this profession which brings him in contact with Marco and his beautiful wife, Rosie. While the husband is busy with his archaeological studies, Raju seduces his wife and has a good time with her. Ultimately Marco comes to know of her affair with Raju and goes away to Madras leaving Rosie behind. Rosie comes and stays with Raju in his one-room house. His mother tolerates her for some time, but when things become unbearable, she calls her brother and goes away with him, leaving Raju to look after Rosie and the house.
Guide R K Narayan Novels India
Rosie is a born dancer, she practices regularly and soon Raju finds an opening for her. In her very first appearance, she is a grand success. Soon she is very much in demand and their earnings increase enormously. Raju lives lavishly, entertains a large number of friends with whom he drinks and gambles. All goes well till Raju forges Rosie’s signatures to obtain valuable jewellery lying with her husband. The act lands him in jail. Rosie leaves Malgudi and goes away to Madras, her hometown. She goes on with her dancing and does well without the help and management of Raju, of which he was so proud.
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On release from jail, Raju takes shelter in a deserted temple on the banks of the river Sarayu, a few miles away from Malgudi, and close to the village called Mangla. The simple villagers take him to be a Mahatma, begin to worship him, and bring him a lot of eatables as presents. Raju is quite comfortable and performs the role of a saint to perfection.
However, soon there is a severe famine drought, and the villagers expect Raju to perform some miracle to bring them rain. So he has to undertake a fast. The fast attracts much attention and people come to have darshan of the Mahatma from far and wide. On the twelfth day of the fast, Raju falls down exhausted just as there are signs of rain on the distant horizon. It is not certain if he is actually dead or merely fainted. Thus the novel comers to an1 abrupt close on a note of ambiguity.
The last pages of Narayan’s best novel, The Guide, find Raju, the chief protagonist, at the end of a lifetime of insincerity and pain. As a professional guide to Malgudi’s environs, he invented whole new historical pasts for bored tourists; he seduced a married woman, drifted away from his old mother and friends, became a flashy cultural promoter, and then tried, absentmindedly, to steal and was caught and spent years in jail, abandoned by everyone.
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His last few months have been spent in relative comfort as a holy man on the banks of a river: a role imposed on him by reverential village folk. But the river dries up after a drought and his devotees start looking to him to intercede with the gods. Raju resentfully starts a fast, but furtively eats whatever little food he has saved. Then abruptly, out of a moment of self disgust, comes his resolution: for the first time in his life, he will do something with complete sincerity, and he will do it for others: if fasting can bring rain, he’ll fast.
He stops eating, and quickly diminishes. News of his efforts goes around; devotees and sightseers, gathering at the riverside, create a religious occasion out of the fast. On the early morning of the eleventh day of fasting, a small crowd watches him quietly as he attempts to pray standing on the river bed and then staggers and dies, mumbling the enigmatic last words of the novel, “It’s raining in the hills. I can feel it coming up under my feet, up my legs….”
Characteristically, Narayan doesn’t make it clear whether Raju’s penance does actually lead to rain. He also doesn’t make much of Raju’s decision, the moment of his redemption, which a lesser writer would have attempted to turn into a resonant ending, but which is quickly passed over here in a few lines. What we know, in a moment of great disturbing beauty, is something larger and more affecting than the working-out of an individual destiny in an inhospitable world.
It is and the words are of the forgotten English writer William Gerhardie, on Chekhov, but so appropriate for Narayan that sense of the temporary nature of our existence on this earth at all events…through which human beings, scenery, and even the very shallowness of things, are transfigured with a sense of disquieting importance.
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Rk Narayan Novel The Guide
It is a sense of temporary possession in a temporary existence that, in the face of the unknown, we dare not overvalue. It is as if his people hastened to express their worthless individualities, since that is all they have, and were aghast that they should have so little in them to express: since the expression of it is all there.