Skip to main content

Book Review: The World of Nagaraj by R.K. Narayan

The World of Nagaraj is a plot less novella by R.K. Narayan. The protagonist of the novel is a man called Nagaraj: the novel has been built around his everyday chores. He whiles away day with nothing substantial to do in life, with no concrete aim. He longs to write a masterpiece on the sage Narad. As he is so much in fake preparation of the book that wherever he goes, he begins narrating the tales of the book to be written by him. For this reason people don’t take him seriously, including his elder brother Gopu, and his own wife Sita.


He is a rich man, lives in Kabir Street of Malgudi. Since he has inherited lot of farming land, thus he is free from the clutches of financial worries. This privilege keeps him from working anywhere. He has many school friends and to whom he often visits and consults on how to do business. One such friend is Coomer whom he helped by lending two thousand rupees. With that help, Coomer started Sari business and went on to open up Malgudi’s biggest Sari center.

Nagaraj took time to complete his B.A. but his elder brother Gopu did complete it quite easily. However it is Nagaraj who takes out the sayings and thoughts from the great literary figures like Shakespeare. After the death of their father both brothers divided the property and Gopu goes away to a village where he started gobar gas plant and other farming business. From Gopu’s point of view, Nagaraj is a useless man with no aim at all.

Well, one day Nagaraj’s nephew Tim comes to live with him after having squabble with his parents. Gopu and his wife want Tim to join the family business, but Tim hates the stench of cow dung and of other manure. Nagaraj is a childless parent hence he always longed and adored Tim ever since he was a kid. Tim is enrolled in the Albert Mission School to continue his schooling. Over a period of some time, Tim grows enigmatically silent and started coming late at night. At times he reeked of alcohol. Gopu for sure knew that Nagaraj would not be able to control his son. As a result, when one day Nagaraj goes to his school to see him or rather to spy over him, there he comes to know that Tim has left the school. Even after this, Nagaraj plans several times to question Tim but he comes late at night and in the morning slips away silently on his bicycle. Through Gopu, one day Nagaraj comes to know that Tim is working at a Kismet Bar and his future is certainly now goes out of control. And Gopu blames Nagaraj for this act. Well, Nagaraj’s plan to write a book about Narada keeps seeing procrastination.

At any point of time, the novel does not see any interesting climax or fight of destinies. Well, this book is based on a very popular theme of human lives i.e. conflict of nature - a theme prevalent in the works of R. K. Narayan.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
68 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
64 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more