Under the Banyan Tree

by R.K. Narayan

A collection of twenty eight short stories

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, India, Indian Literature, Classics, Literature

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

R. K. Narayan is among the best known and most widely read Indian novelists who wrote in English.

R.K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, in 1906, and educated there and at Maharaja's College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts, are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi and are only two out of the twelve novels he based there. In 1958 Narayan's work The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country's highest literary honor.

In addition to his novels, Narayan has authored five collections of short stories, including A Horse and Two Goats, Malguidi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree, two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and the re-told legends Gods, Demons and Others, The Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1982 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Most of Narayan's work, starting with his first novel Swami and Friends (1935), captures many Indian traits while retaining a unique identity of its own. He was sometimes compared to the American writer William Faulkner, whose novels were also grounded in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the humour and energy of ordinary life.

Narayan who lived till age of ninety-four, died in 2001. He wrote for more than fifty years, and published until he was eighty seven. He wrote fourteen novels, five volumes of short stories, a number of travelogues and collections of non-fiction, condensed versions of Indian epics in English, and the memoir My Days.

-Wikipedia & Amazon.co.uk

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

These are not the worst short stories that I have ever read, at least probably not, it's hard to be sure.

This collection has an introduction by the author, he says of his first story that it was flimsy, but after it was accepted that he was writing two stories a month for publication. His words gave me an impression of industrial production, and on the whole the stories are pretty much what you can reasonably expect for two weeks worth of work, they are good enough, in these stories Narayan achieves his average and maintains it consistently, which is good from an industrial point of view is good, but as a reader I found them mostly irritating. I might write 'you could do better' at the bottom of each of the stories in this collection, expect I don't know if he could.

Flimsy! I thought, no, that is not the right word, I feel these tales are all more flabby, certainly not athletic, if they were a person sitting down, they would struggle to stand up. In fact they would never get up , they would rise part way up unsteadily, before finally slumping exhausted back in their place leaving the reader feeling dissatisfied. I read once a parody about the world's worst writer of western novels, in one the hero gallops up to his fiancée, tied to a stake in the middle of the desert plains, asks how she's doing, 'kinda alright' she says ' well, then I best be getting along then' he says. All bar two of the stories in this collection were like that parody to me.

In Britain the only way to drink tea is with biscuits (cookies for American English readers) which one lowers into the hot tea to soften it, before removing it to eat it, but beware, if you hold your biscuit a moment to long in the warm tea, it crumbles and falls tragically into the liquid, leaving you with former biscuit sludge into your drink. This is very sad. All bar two of the stories were like that, too long into the tea.

The two which were somewhat better seemed to be autobiographical, in one the author is recovering from a cataract operation and he has hired a male nurse to care for him while his eyes are bandaged up. This story made no sense either in the end as it emerges that the hired man is woefully inadequate for the task in an unsubtle way, although quite how bad takes a while to find out. But wait! In the context of the story this wasn't a nurse that the hospital provided, but one who the author hired himself, why does he hire an obviously unfit person? Was the nurse recommended to him by his own worst enemy?

I don't know if Narayan only ever spent two weeks writing a story, but it seems fairest to assume that's what he did, in another story a deaf and dumb man is a beggar, but in two places in the story he asks for things, once for old clothes and once to get his monkey back. How does he ask? If he spent more than two weeks on a story then Narayan might have redrafted it and avoided that phrasing, it's hard for me not to imagine Narayan ripping his completed story out of his typewriter, stuffing it in an envelope while muttering 'it's good enough' and then sending it off to his publisher.

Overall the stories reminded me a little of reading some Russia literature from before the revolution in which the social gap before the aristocrat author and the peasants that they are writing about is so great that it is as though they are writing about a different species, these stories are not necessarily unsympathetic but there was a sense of a distance, if not an alienation between the author and his subject.

One story made me laugh - a little boy eager to make money is given a coin by his uncle, he rushes off to buy stamps and postcards which he resells with a mark-up to passers by. However since most of his customers buy on credit he soon ends up without stock or cash. I laughed, and I also cursed a little at blockheadedness of Adam Smith who in the wealth of nations asserts that before the invention of money financial transactions were all a matter of barter. A fiction Indian pre-schooler has a better and more thorough understanding of commerce than the founding father of anglophone economics. But don't worry, everything works out fine for the little boy in the end.

These stories are not contemporary, they are set in an India that is rural, in which literate people are very rare, and even the wealthy travel by bus.


Next back to Penelope Fitzgerald (I give a deep and peaceful happy sigh).

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great and varied collection of stories.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing and the characters stand out when it comes to R. K. Narayan's books. This collection of short stories didn't disappoint me at all.

The stories talk about rural livelihoods, the fast changing times, generation gap and the obsolete beliefs of the old times.
The debate in most of these stories are about the ideals most of us believe we have versus the ones we disapproved of at others'; the younger generation vs the older generations; the rural life vs the urban life;

Twenty-eight short stories in all, each story is delightful to read and has something important to say about the society we live in.

My most favourites in this collection are
*A Horse and Two Goats: poverty and old age; language barrier
*The Roman Image: irony regarding fame and hard work
*A Career: frauds and fate
*Old Man of the Temple: gave me goosebumps; creepy but witty
*A Hero: relatable childhood story
*Dodu: love this resourceful, innocent kid
*Another Community: communal riots
*Like the Sun: is truth worth it?
*Chippy: tale of a dog
*A Breath of Lucifer: introspection of one's life, a mysterious character
*The Mute Companions
*Four Rupees
*Fruition at Forty
*Crime and Punishment
*Half a Rupee Worth

I liked reading each and every story. Each story has something different to tell and something to learn from.

A must read collection.

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

If we want to relax and have a good time with a book, I'd like to recommend R. K. Narayan to you. One of the reasons is that his narrative is interestingly superb added by lively discourse in different contexts in rural India. From these 28 short stories, the readers would gradually know typical lay Indians with mysterious aspects in their walks of life, especially the poor living in those remote areas with different adversities related to their social and financial plight. While reading some of them, soon some abscure reasons hiding like surprising hidden agenda soon emerge and expose themselves for us and the world to see and be the witness, and thus we simply can't help admiring Narayan's sense of humor or abrupt finale. Therefore, more or less, some lingering thoughts can still be in mind inquiring the readers what they themselves should do or solve in such situations. However, these stories aren"t related to any detective genre. As for me, I prefer these 3 stories, that is, Annamalai (28 pages, the longest), At the Portal, and Half a Rupee Worth.

[Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition I read was the one published in the United States by Viking. At the tale-end of the book industry's golden era, this edition was printed on very sturdy paper. Each story title had an ornate design below it and the jacket was in shades of green and gold, with white lettering. It did not look like what's shown in the thumbnail on Goodreads.
To the book itself. R.K. Narayan gathered these stories in 1985, when he was almost 80 years old. He states in his introduction that the stories here were from the previous four decades. Two of them were written in 1985. Most of the stories are between four and seven pages. Some of the very short ones are fairly clearly the work of a newspaperman; these seem to be on a par with O. Henry. Chekov, of course, was a newspaperman as well, and the story "Dodu" is as much a masterpiece of compression as anything Chekov produced. It is deeper than many of the other stories. Its focus on a boy with ambition and imagination is compelling, and it becomes poignant as his family's conformity manifests itself. But there's more to the story than that, and it is achieved in a mere six pages.
The centerpiece of this collection is 'Annamalai," the story of a master and servant. It is narrated by a well-off single man of indeterminate age and an elderly man who offers to tend to his garden for room and board. What strikes me is that, as sympathetic as the narrator is toward his servant, the cultural gap between the two men keeps the narrator from being able to help the servant at a crucial moment. It is the most detailed character study in the book. At twenty-six pages, it reads like a short novella, as opposed to a long short story. A shocking moment of modernity comes through this tale which otherwise reads like a folk-tale. The servant, Annamalai, comes home after a night of chatting with friends. The narrator tells us:
"I asked casually, 'What is your news today?' and he answered without stopping, 'News? I don't go hunting for it, but I overheard that the chief ruler of America was killed today. They said something like Kannady [which means glass in Tamil]; could any man give himself such a name?'
"When I realized the import of his casual reference, I said, 'Look, was it Kennedy?'
"'No, they said Kannady, and someone shot him with a gun and killed him, and probably they have already cremated him.' When I tried to get more news, he brushed me off with 'Don't think I go after gossip, I only tell you what approaches my ears...and they were all talking...'
"'Who?' I asked.
"'I don't know who they are. Why should I ask for names? They all sit and talk, having nothing else to do.'"
This story was published in ENCOUNTER, according to the copyright page, and I think ENCOUNTER was an American magazine. A few other stories in UNDER THE BANYAN TREE hint at particular political moments, but as an American, the one moment which was thrown into high relief for me was Kennedy's death on November 22nd, 1963. While most of the stories make passing reference to the railroad or to transportation by bus, there are only a few to which I can point which seem definitely to occur after Indian independence: "Half A Rupee Worth," about a successful purveyor of rice who finds himself suddenly having to yield to government price controls is one, "Nitya" another (if only because the main character is a young man whose parents want him to get his very long hair cut) and "Annamalai," which obviously happens during and after 1963. "Another Community" takes place at a named time, "October, 1947." Its main character is alarmed that there are secret meetings in his town. He is dreading the coming of October 29th, less than a week away. Narayan starts the story with references to newspapers love of the phrases "One Community" and "Another Community." A Google search tells me the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-1948 began on October 22nd of 1947. India became independent at midnight on August 15th, 1947. A reader from India would have a better idea than I of the significance of the upheaval in late October, 1947 which the main character is panicked about. My main point is that the reference to John F. Kennedy in "Annamalai" reached me in a way I think many of the other stories could have reached me had I a sense of 20th century Indian history.
There is a humanism in this collection which shines throughout. A theme is the individual's attempts to maintain dignity under every circumstance.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't think of another writer who shares Narayan's particular combination of qualities. It's rare to find writers who are as funny, for a start, but then you have the humanity, the gentle irony, the sheer charm, and just a note of underlying sadness. He's like a chef who combines flavours in a way that's perfect but all his own.

This collection of 28 stories, written over several decades, is deliberately presented in random order, which as Narayan himself says in his Introduction, reveals 'a strange but convincing pattern of affinities and contrasts'. Cumulatively, they offer a rich picture of life in India during Narayan's lifetime, but they are also timeless and universal, a celebration of the diversity of human character. In Narayan's minute psychological details, we recognise ourselves and those we know.

For example, 'Nitya' is a tale of adolescent rebellion against parental expectation. No matter that it centres around a young man who refuses to have his hair shaved to thank God for saving him from the whooping cough as a baby. The circumstances may be unfamiliar, exotic even, but the story is one we already know well. We can even recognise the note of satire in Nitya's voice when he tells his parents, 'You had no reason to pawn my scalp without consulting me.'

Then there is 'Uncle's Letters', the story of a human life compressed into four and a half pages. Despite the specific details, we recognise the outline: millions of lives fit the pattern. There is something both comic and poignant about the rapidity with which Narayan rattles through the protagonist's birth, marriage, and old age, through the medium of letters sent to him by a well meaning uncle.

Not all the stories are comic. 'Another Community' deals with the violence that engulfed India in the mid-20th century, from the point of view of an innocent bystander, an everyman figure who is drawn into the conflict while he is preoccupied with the mundane minutiae of his daily life. 'The Watchman' compresses a good deal of the tragedy of human existence into four pages while maintaining Narayan's famous lightness of touch.

Other stories deal with characters who are at the bottom of India's social order, whose adventures are funny, but also highlight the precariousness of these people's existence. 'The Mute Companions' tells the story of a deaf and dumb beggar who teaches a monkey to do tricks, while 'Four Rupees' features a man who is persuaded to retrieve a brass pot from a well, at great risk to himself, for the titular reward - only to have his family accuse him of stealing the money.

The longest story in the collection, 'Annamalai', is a very amusing portrait of a watchman and gardener Narayan employed, which demonstrates how closely he observed people he knew in order to create the fictional characters in his other stories.

Perhaps the finest story of all is 'Under the Banyan Tree', which relates how an enormously popular village storyteller decides to give up his role and make a vow of silence in the face of advancing age and declining mental powers. Finally accepting reality, he tells his 'last story', a recognition that all our talents are God-given and transient. 'But what is the use of the jasmine when it has lost its scent? What is the lamp for when all the oil has gone?'

Narayan's readers are lucky that his lamp burned brightly for so long. Not all the stories in this collection are masterpieces, and he freely admits in his Introduction that some 'were born out of desperation' and rushed off to meet publication deadlines. But they are all enjoyable, and together, amount to more than the sum of their parts. Few writers offer such unalloyed enjoyment.

[Neha Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of beautifully crafted 28 stories! I had high expectations from R.K. Narayan and he did not disappoint me. The writing is impeccable! Strong but unpredictable characters. My favorite one, without a doubt, is A Horse and Two Goats. I also loved A Breath of Lucifer, Annamalai and Under the Banyan Tree.

[Glenna Barlow · Rating 3 out of 5]

a rather pleasant read, more fables than short stories really. each with a particular twist or moral. one of the reviews said it captures india.. i'd have to amend that to it captures the spirit of rural south india about 50 years ago.

[John Stiles · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I like is the sense of humour and underlying social political commentary of Indian life, with almost no regard for Colonialism or that Raj era point of view. I can see why John Updike compared him to Dickens.
Another great discovery.

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narayan was a masterful writer whether producing novels or short stories. Each story in this collection is a small gem. Highly recommended.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narayan wrote clearly and simply about India, usually in villages and small towns. He is best known for his novels the fictional town of Maludi, which he has immortalised as well as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. As good as The Guide or The Vendor of Sweets are, I always felt the short story was better suited to his talent. He packs an amazing richness of pathos, emotion and crisp reportage, and often into barely a dozen pages.

[Osama Siddique · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was quite taken aback to see that this book by India's iconic master storyteller didn't exist on GoodReads. And so I considered it my privilege to create it.

Upon revisiting them I realize that Narayan's art lies in not just writing very simply but also - and this can be a short-coming if you are looking for complexity, multi-tiered characters and layering - crafting rather simple stories. Quite often there is really no great tension or twist or outcome and the charm of the story lies in that it seems like a fragment of life which are often undramatic. They are invariably set in the fictional Malgudi and at times in Mysore or unnamed small villages and towns in Southern India and involve incidents in the lives of everyday people.

The stories range from those of a reluctant son being taken by parents to a temple on a hillock to have his hair tonsured due to a childhood vow; an ascetic distracted by a neighbor of loose morals; a poor goatherd encountering a foreigner and being at cross-purposes; an archaeologist's assistance who thinks he has excavated a roman statue; a watchman comes across a distraught young woman; a shopkeeper hires an assistant who appears too good to be true; a driver comes across a ghostly priest at night; a boy is afraid of the dark; a child devising means to earn extra money; an ordinary man discovers how mob violence erupts; a man decides to stick to the absolute truth for a day; a dog gets fed-up of sharing his master; a lazy servant asked to tackle an intruding cobra in the yard ; ; and, a story teller forgets how to tell stories.

[Jayal · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a supremely self-assured foreword, Narayan states that though the collection of short stories in the book span several decades, he does not believe that a writer -or more correctly his stories- evolve with time. As such, he has not placed the stories in any chronological order.
I feel the great wordsmith is at error on this point.
The stories feel jumbled, and while the occasional one shines through, a surprising majority seems to have neither plot nor direction, ending up as rather one-dimensional sketches of the Indian rural life.
To misquote, with great power comes great expectations, and for me, the book does not live up to that greatness.

[Shalini Pandey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was given to me by my Dad ..... When I was in class 12th I didn't knew what to do during summer vacation ( since I had board exams in class 12th and in every summer vacation we used to visit our village but we didn't went that year) ... So my dad brought this novel for me.... Stories are too simple to read, however it's language hooks you to read this book as much time as you can...even if you have read it once...This book makes me feel as if I am actually in my village.... Thank you Daddy.. 😌😌

[amal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had higher expectations for it Cus in the beginning it was nice

[Nofar Spalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of short stories (most of them very short), all taking place in Narayan's fictional region in India. Most of the stories are little anecdotes and vignettes, with no "point" to them: stories that are bewilderingly better without a definitive ending. Some are better than others, but in all cases the headily vibrant personality of the characters pops off the page. The setting is exquisitely crafted - a slice of exotica made familiar and even mundane.
Narayan is a very deft writer, and it hard to put down this book which seems so pointless at first. But be patient and let yourself immerse in the stories - no great suffering. The reward in the end is a gem of human understanding - like taking a step back from an impressionistic painting to discover that the blobs of colour you have been trying to puzzle out have been turned suddenly and effortlessly into a magnificent landscape.

[Gabrielle Danoux · Rating 5 out of 5]

C'est essentiellement la campagne indienne (son fin fond) qui est décrite, pittoresque avec un côté « exotisme facile ». L'humour constitue l'une des caractéristiques principales du style de Narayan dont les histoires sont rarement bien sérieuses. Il y a de l'irrationnel : rencontres fortuites, interventions proches du surnaturel (astrologie indienne), parfois révélatrices ou anecdotiques.
Dans la dernière nouvelle qui donne son titre au recueil il y a une intéressante mise en abyme : dans le village isolé de Somal vit le conteur séculaire Nambi, qui invente une histoire par mois et met dix jours à la raconter sous le banian, tout en étant illettré. Un soir, il se révèle incapable d'arriver au bout de ce qu'il a à dire. Il en va ainsi plusieurs fois jusqu'à ce qu'il annonce qu'il a une merveilleuse histoire à raconter. Son public, qui l'avait déserté, revient en masse. Il annonce alors que ses dons de conteur se sont évanouis et que ses paroles sont ses dernières.

[Yadhu Nandhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a hot summer day after hours of toil being under the Sun how would it be to sit under a hundred year old Banyan tree? Won't all the heat breeze become cool in all of a sudden?. If you can't visualise this scenario then you should read this book which would act as the Banyan tree.

Reading this book is such a delightful experience and these stories stole my heart in 28 different ways, yes every one of them is unique with the writing being so good.

Some parts of this book made me laugh louder on it where some provoked me to think and some put a good smile on my lips.

The plots which RK Narayan has chosen for his stories are just unimaginable and I'm sure that I would read these stories furthur much more times.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am no connoisseur of fiction writing. To explore the genre I have been selecting collections of short stories by authors I know nothing about. 'Under the Banyan Tree' contains twenty eight tales, most of them just a few pages in length, in just under two hundred pages.
The Penguin Classic describes these stories as 'enchanting' and 'luminous masterpieces'.
R.K. Narayan was certainly a distinguished writer whose novels would perhaps be worth exploring, but mostly I was somewhat underwhelmed by this collection. The stories that I did appreciate were the longer ones, 'A horse and two goats', 'A breath of Lucifer' and 'Annamalai'.

[Stefy Arul Brabhaher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of vignettes that offer a slice of village life from many wonderfully different and unique perspectives. Narayan's writing is as usual delightful and witty, and the characters are impeccably written and developed. My favourites were 'Annamalai,' 'The Shelter,' 'Dodu,' 'Flavour of Coconut,' and 'The Antidote.' The stories often condense a rich variance of emotions, irony, humour, and a subtle note of poignancy into a mere few pages.

Some stories are better than others, as Narayan himself admits. 'Another Community' was disappointing; it seems to lack the nuance that Narayan's other works usually do. But the overarching theme of humanism shines throughout this collection of stories, and it is definitely worth a read.

[Afaf · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked it up looking for something lighthearted to read. It kept me occupied but I didn't really like it. The stories weren't engaging enough for me. At times it felt like a chore to read the book, I always dislike that. Some stories were better than others and had interesting characters, while others just felt like fillers just added to fill the pages.

[Nuzhat Azra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the stories. However, they are not very well written. English is not the language the author is comfortable with and I could feel it in every sentence. If you can get past the writing itself and concentrate on the stories (which is often very hard for me), they are very impressive. My personal favorite was "Under the Banyan Tree".

[Anousha · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a well-written collection of short stories written by R.K. Narayan that take place in the town/village of Malgudi in the 20th century. Some stories have an interesting plot while others are just a fun read of some everyday records. I really liked the book.

[Ashita]

The book again brings R K Narayan at his best. Written in a simple style, this plot of stories is realistic and that which you can relate to in your day-to-day life. It can be easily read by corporate professionals on the go. Will make your public transport trips more enjoyable.

[Josh Gering · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of short stories. It covers characters from all walks of life and with different social status. It's an excellent read.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this while visiting family in India. It so captures the slivers of society he protrays. Some stories were humerous, others sad. I wish it had been longer.

[Aadhavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good

[Upendra R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple and beautiful is the hallmark of R.K. Narayan and this book serves as a great example to this. There were many stories that I just didn't want to end. A real page-turner, this.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

go look up what a banyan tree is rn. they are so cool

[Anupriya Chaubey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic collection of short stories.!!!