CHAPTER – V

THE CRITICAL STUDY OF THE ENGLISH TEACHER

5.1 Introduction

The present chapter focuses on the novel, The English Teacher. The mentioned novel is
critically analysed on the basis of theme, plot, characterisation, setting, social values, cultural
values and philosophical values as depicted by Narayan. It was published in the year of 1945 and
is preceded by Swami and Friends (1935) and The Bachelor of Arts (1937). The novel dedicated
to Narayan’s wife Rajam, is not only autobiographical but also poignant in its intensity of
feeling. The story is a series of experiences in the life of Krishna, an English teacher and his
quest towards achieving inner peace and self development. It was published in the United States
under the title Grateful to Life and Death in 1955.

5.2 The Summary of the Novel: The English Teacher

The present novel is divided into eight chapters. Krishna is a main character of the
present novel and he is a teacher of English in Albert Mission College, Malgudi, where he has
been a student earlier. He recounts a typical day at work in the opening chapter of the novel. He
goes about his work mechanically without deriving any real pleasure or satisfaction out of it. He
is, therefore, amused when the Principal, Mr. Brown, convenes a meeting of the faculty after
college hours to impress upon his colleagues, especially those in the department of English, to
help maintain purity and perfection in the language. He is particularly agitated when the students
adopt American spellings for English words, e.g., spelling “honours” as “honors”.
 Krishna tries to make light of the situation but his head and former teacher Gajapathy
sides with Brown. He tells Gajapathy that there are blacker sins in this world than a dropped
vowel but Gajapathy just walks away. Krishna discusses the matter with his colleagues in the
hostel that evening and is told that the English department existed solely for dotting the i’s and
crossing the t’s. He is restless because his heart is not in the job and he is sticking to it only
because he is being paid a hundred rupees a month for it. Nor does he think very highly of his
colleagues.

Krishna decides to take himself in hand and decides to go for a walk early in the morning.
On his return, he decides to devote some time to writing poetry. He is convinced that he is going
to make a mark in this field and become a famous poet one day, although he has not yet decided
which language. English or Tamil, is going to be enriched by his contribution. He decides to put
this plan into action immediately before mugging up his lessons every morning and make his
unwilling students to mug them up in order to do well in the examinations.

The second chapter deals with the story of setting up the house. He receives a letter from
his father informing him that he should now start setting up his house with his wife and daughter
and leave the college hostel. He goes out hunting for a house. When he finds one, he moves out
of the hostel. His mother arrives with his wife and child and helps him in starting his own
household. His mother, a stickler for a neat and clean and well-ordered household, trains
Krishna’s wife Susila in all household matters and leaves after two months.

A period of domestic bliss starts. Susila waits for him every afternoon in the doorway
every afternoon when he returns from college and serves him coffee and snacks. While she is
busy preparing dinner, Krishna plays with the child and looks after her. His mother’s rigorous
training has made Susila a responsible housewife. She is a “ruthless accountant” who keeps track
of all the expenses. He finds that there is an autocratic strain in here, and unsuspected depths of
rage when it comes to keeping accounts and managing their monthly provisions. This often leads
to minor squabbles between the two. Susila is disturbed when Krishna’s mother sends an old
woman from the village to help her in the kitchen so that she can devote more time to the child.
An additional member in the house means more expenses and wastage, and Susila grumbles
about it. But eventually she accepts the old lady’s presence in the house. She is a firm believer in
the adage that they must live within their means and save enough for the child. She has firmly
decided to have just one child, and does not like it when Krishna jokes about having more
children. With the future in mind she plans all their finances.

Susila encourages Krishna to write poetry but makes fun of him as he tries to reproduce
Wordsworth’s lines, “She was a phantom of delight” to please and impress her since he cannot
hit upon any subject to give vent to his poetic aspirations. She accuses him of copying and urges
him to be original. Their first serious quarrel is caused by Susila’s selling of Krishna’s old clock,
which keeps irregular time and its alarm rings at all odd hours thus disturbing the sleeping child,
as well as his old papers. Krishna shouts at her and she starts sobbing. They refuse to talk to each
other for forty-eight hours. Both of them feel miserable about it. It is Krishna who eventually
breaks the ice by taking her to a film. They decide not to quarrel in the future because, as Susila
puts it, “They say such quarrels affect a child’s health.”

The third chapter deals with the story of their last day of happiness. Krishna is happy
when, on the occasion of the child’s third birthday, his father offers him a loan to buy his own
house in Malgudi. The couple start discussing the sort of house they would like to buy as Krishna
thinks it too much of a bother to buy a plot of land and build a house on it. So on a Sunday
morning after entrusting the child to the care of the old lady, they set out to inspect the various
houses on offer in Lawley Extension through Krishna’s colleague Sastri, the logic teacher-
turned-builder. Susila looks resplendent in her favourite indigo saree. She looks indeed “a
phantom of delight” to a bewitched Krishna.

There is ‘a perpetual smile in her eyes’ and she exudes the fragrance of jasmine. Krishna
decides to call her Jasmine hereafter and name their house Jasmine Home. But before going to
Lawley Extension, Krishna takes her to Bombay Ananda Bhavan for breakfast. Then they take a
detour to the river to wash her feet. They inspect a number of houses in Lawley Extension and
finally select one as their future abode.

As Krishna is discussing the price and other details with Sastri and the building
contractor, Susila walks into a filthy lavatory in the back of the house and locks herself in.
Krishna kicks open the door and when Susila comes out, she appears disturbed. The filth inside
the lavatory has nauseated her and a fly has sat on her lips. But she temporarily feels better as
they visit a nearly temple on their way back. Feeling uneasy, Susila lies down when they return
home. She is unable to have her food as she recalls her experience of having been locked up
inside the lavatory. She remains confined to her bed for the next four days. But when she shows
no signs of recovery, Krishna is worried. He decides to consult a doctor.

Krishna goes to Dr. Shankar of Krishna Medical Hall. Dr. Shankar is the most successful
medical practitioner in Malgudi and his clinic is always crowded with patients. There is a kind of
redtapism and mechanical nature of dispensing medicines in the clinic which Krishna doesn’t
like. But he has no choice but to bear with it. The doctor prescribes some medicines for Susila
but is too busy to visit her at home. But when these medicines have no effect, he visits Susila at
home and tries to cheer her. Initially he diagnoses Susila’s illness as malaria but when her fever
does not come down, he takes a sample of her blood and arrives at the conclusion that she is
suffering from typhoid. Susila’s room is turned into a sickward. Her concerned parents arrive and
her father takes turns with Krishna to nurse Susila and keep a vigil on her condition at night. The
child Leela is kept away from her mother. She is looked after by the old lady and Susila’s
mother. When Susila’s condition does not improve, Dr. Shankar has her examined by a visiting
doctor from Madras. But it is too late now. Susila dies leaving behind a “blind, dumb and dazed”
Krishna, her disconsolate parents and the child. She is cremated according to Hindu rites on the
banks of the river beyond Nallappa’s Grove. The short domestic idyll comes to an end.

The forth chapter talks about the Krishna’s loneliness. The days acquire a peculiar
blankness and emptiness for Krishna, the only relief being the sight of his child. He does not
wish to part with her; he decides to bring her up himself, to which end he concentrates his whole
being. His mother occasionally comes to stay with him to help him bring up the child. He loses
whatever little interest he has in his college work. Despite well-meaning advice, he refuses to
marry again. Krishna has disturbed sleep as his wife’s memories keep haunting him. He locks up
her room, which is opened once a week for sweeping and cleaning. And he spends all his time in
looking after the child and in listening to her prattle. He reads bedtime stories to her and this
keeps him occupied.
 The fifth chapter discusses how Krishna makes a medium to communicate with his dead
wife. One day as he has finished his work in college, a boy comes to see him. He has been
working for Krishna and he hands over a note from his father to Krishna. It contains a message
from his dead wife whose spirit has been trying to communicate with and has at last found
medium through whom she can get in touch with him. She has been watching over her husband
and the child since her death. Krishna accompanies the boy to his house a couple of miles away
and meets a gruff and cheerful peasant who takes him to a pond, an sitting there beside a temple,
tells him about he has been chosen to act as the medium between Krishna and the spirit of his
dead wife. He takes out a notebook and his pencil automatically moves over the papery trying to
receive a message from Susila for her husband. After a false start, he succeeds. Susila tells him
that she is quite happy in the other region and she wants him to be calm and relaxed in life; he
should stop worrying about the child who is quite happy. Krishna is elated. The medium asks
him to come there every Wednesday in the afternoon to continue these sittings, which Krishna
complies with. It is a rich experience - a glimpse of eternal peace for him.

Gradually Susila’s spirit starts communicating with Krishna and advising him on his day-
to-day affairs. For instance, she advises Krishna to put the child in school. Krishna finds out that
the child has already been going to a nearby school for small children run by an eccentric-
looking headmaster who has devoted his life to this cause. He meets the man and is impressed by
his dedication and devotion. Leela finds the school interesting and Krishna formally enrolls her
there one day. He goes about his work with a light heart. The sense of futility leaves him and he
attends to his work earnestly. He continues his Wednesday sittings with the medium although he
is sometimes disappointed with the outcome. The overall effect on his mind is calm and relaxing.
Susila’s spirit repeatedly asks him to look for her favourite ivory-sandalwood casket and the
bundle of fourteen letters she had written to him, which he has not been able to destroy even
though he has destroyed all her letters. But he cannot find them when he rummages through
Susila’s belongings. But a look at her possessions brings back fond memories, particularly of the
perfumes she was so fond of.

At the next sitting Susila asks Krishna about the perfume she is wearing. She is glad to be
near him. She tells him that she has evolved spiritually since her death and is always at his side.
She mentions the dress she is wearing at that time, the one he saw in her trunk and which he
always liked. It is a pity, he cannot see her out she hopes that Krishna will be able to see her one
day when his ‘sensibilities’ are improved. She still looks the same person as she was on earth but
without any of her ailments when she was alive, she says. While going home that evening,
Krishna plucks some jasmine buds and keeps them near his pillow at night. He can indeed feel
her fragrance and presence in the room. He is now convinced that she is with him.

The sixth chapter deals with the description of Leela’s school. Krishna decides to spend
the next Sunday in his daughter’s company but she is getting for school early in the morning.
Krishna learns that there are no Sundays in her school and decides to accompany her there.
About twenty children are already there, running about and playing; the see-saws and the swings
are in full use. Krishna is taken around his thatch-roofed room by the headmaster who shows him
the handiwork of children in pictures, cardboard cutouts and clay figures. He is trying a new
experiment in education which, he believes, should aim at shaping the mind and character of
students without undue emphasis on sports and games. For this no fancy building or elaborate
set-up is required. Only a shed and a few mats are required in addition to open air.

Krishna then witnesses a story session that the headmaster invites the children to
participate in. With the help of charts and pictures, the children follow the story of a bison, a
tiger and a bear in Mempi Forests. As the story progresses, they take sides with the various
characters and are thoroughly involved with the happenings in the story that the headmaster goes
on improvising.

At the end of the story Leela wants a cat and the headmaster promises to get her one. For
this she will have to come to his house. Leela readily agrees. On way to the headmaster’s home,
Krishna invites him to have dinner at his house. There the headmaster talks of reducing
everything to simple basics as the children do; he considers them gods on earth. Krishna is
impressed with this eccentric-looking man, tells him that he would have liked to remain a
bachelor without encumbrances so that he could devote all his time to the cause children’s
education,
 The headmaster lives in a neglected part of the town. It is full of dirt, dust and grime. His
wife is a virago and his children are uncouth and wild. The wife starts quarrelling with her
husband, unmindful of the presence of Krishna and the child. The cat that he promised Leela is
nowhere to be found and the headmaster returns to Krishna’s hoi where he feels more relaxed
and at peace with himself.

As they go for a walk on the riverside, the headmaster tells Krishna how he has been
forced into the marriage. He has left his parental home because he refused to take up a job after
graduation and his wife still misses the comforts of that house. After his father’s death, his house
is occupied by his stepmother and her children, and he refuses to get into litigation in order to get
his legal rights. This is what rankles his wife but he has not lost hope for her yet. We should not
despair even for the worst on earth, he tells Krishna. He has been inspired to start his school
because his teachers made him take a “wrong turn” in life. He is trying a new system of
education in which the children are left alone to pursue their hobbies and interests; this will make
them wholesome beings, and also help us, those who work along with them, to work off the
curse of adulthood. And he wants to work towards his end which is very near. An astrologer has
already worked out and told him the date and time of his death. Since the astrologer’s other
predictions in his life have turned out to be true, the headmaster is convinced that this will also
be true. That’s why he is so patient with his wife, he tells Krishna.

The seventh chapter discusses about the direct communication with Krishna’s wife.
Krishna’s sittings with the medium are disrupted for a weeks because the man is either ill or
away on some work. Krishna is desolate. Then they try sittings in absentia at fixed times and the
medium conveys it through letters to Krishna. Eventually he succeeds in directly communicating
with Susila’s spirit at the dead of the night. This gives “inexplicable satisfaction” to both of
them. Susila assures him that she is happy and she wants Krishna to be happy, calm and relaxed
for her sake. She assures him that she is always with him and is watching his every move and
activity.

One night the headmaster comes as Krishna is getting ready to communicate with his
wife. He says that his end has come, as predicted by the astrologer and he wants Krishna to take
charge of his school. His life has gone on strictly as predicted by the astrologer and he may not
see the sunrise. Krishna finds him the strangest man he has ever come across - one who is
looking forward to his own death as if he were going to the next street. The next morning
Krishna goes to the headmaster’s house to inform her of her husband’s ‘death’. She starts wailing
loudly and people crowd around her. Just then, the headmaster appears. His wife and children
cling to his feet. But he sees this as a new life for him. He is glad that the astrologer’s prediction
has gone wrong because he is meant for better things in life. He gives up his family life and
detaches himself for his wife and children. He fixes a monthly allowance for them but breaks all
ties with them. He stays in the school premises and is happy in the company of small children.

Krishna’s mother comes to visit him and the child. She brings a gold chain for Leela. As
she takes it out to put it round the child’s neck, Krishna notices that she takes it out of the ivory-
sandalwood box that Susila has mentioned. He takes the box and measures it. It has more or less
the same specifications as mentioned by Susila’s spirit. But he fails to unearth the bundle of
fourteen letters that she has talked of while communicating with him and his father-in-law is of
no help in this matter. Leela goes with her grandmother to the village. She is happy in the
company of other children and a teacher comes every day to teach her. Krishna visits her on the
weekends and gradually comes to accept the loneliness of his own existence. He is happy that his
child is being looked after and educated. She has also been well provided for by both her
grandfathers. So he has nothing much to worry about in life.

The last chapter concludes the entire novel with resignation of Krishna. Since he is at
peace with himself now, Krishna makes up his mind to give up his job in Albert Mission
College. It is monotonous, dull and dreary even though it gives him a regular Income of a
hundred rupees per month. The Principal asks him to reconsider his decision but Krishna is
determined. He is given a farewell at everyone calls him “an uncompromising idealist” at the
function held in his honour. But Krishna tells them that he is no idealist; he is going to do what
he likes to do: devote his time and energies to the education of small children in the headmaster’s
school at a paltry salary of twenty-five rupees a month. Krishna is now calm and relaxed as
he has direct communion with the spirit of his dead wife at night. He is at peace with himself at
last.

5.3 The Major Characters of the Novel

 Narayan is very choosy in the matter of characterisation he sketches very few characters
in his works whether it is novel or short story. In the same way in this novel we have five to six
major characters like Krishna, Susila, Leela, Headmaster, Dr. Sankar etc.

Krishna

Krishna is a lecturer at Albert Mission College in Malgudi, where had been a student
earlier. He is about thirty when the novel opens and he goes about his job of teaching students
mechanically by rote. He finds no satisfaction in it as he feels that his true calling is writing
poetry. Narayan does not tell us about his physical appearance or anything else about him.

Krishna does not think much of Principal Brown’s agitation over the dropping of a vowel
when Brown convenes a meeting of the staff over the word “honours” being spelt as “honors” in
accordance with American spelling. When his department head Gajapathy sides with Brown over
this obvious blasphemy, Krishna tells him:

Mr. Gajapathy, there are blacker sins in this world than a

dropped vowel... Let us be fair. Ask Mr. Brown if he can
say in any of the two hundred Indian languages: ‘The cat
chases the rat’... If we had Americans ruling us ... we could
say the same thing of the English people (Narayan: ).

Later, he talks it over with his colleagues in the hostel and is told by Rangappa that the English
department existed solely for dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s” But he is not satisfied. He does
not think much of his colleagues any way, and is surprised to find out that Sastri is interested
more in house-salesmanship than in teaching logic to students. On another occasion, Gajapathy
admonishes him:

You haven’t get dropped the frivolous habits of your

college days, Krishna ... You must cultivate a little more
seriousness of outlook (Narayan:).
Krishna has this “seriousness of outlook” only after he has a satisfying day in college. He
remarks:

I was on the whole very pleased with my day - not many

conflicts and worries, above all not too much of criticism. I
had done almost all the things I wanted to do, and as a
result I felt heroic and satisfied (Narayan:).

Inwardly though, he is wary of the monotonous and mechanical nature of his work. He
introspects:

Who was I that they (the students should obey my

commands? What tie was there between me and them? Did
I absorb their personalities as did the old masters and
merge them in mine? I was merely a man who mugged
earlier than they the introduction and the notes in the
Verity edition of Lear... I did not do it out of love for them
or for Shakespeare but only out of love for myself
(Narayan:).

He teaches in the college because he is paid a hundred rupees per month. Later when
Susila finds him hesitant to explain lines in a poem to her, she makes taunt that he is an English
teacher in school and not at home.

Krishna is convinced that his real calling is poetry. To satisfy this urge, he decides to get
up early in the morning everyday and go to the riverside for a walk. He is inspired by his natural
surroundings and writes a poem on the beauty of Nature. He aspires to be a great poet of Nature
and resolves to write at least a hundred lines of verse every morning before sitting down to
prepare his lessons for teaching his equally disinterested students. Comically enough, he tries to
pass off Wordsworth’s lines; “She was a phantom of delight” to Susila as his own; he feels
sheepish when she points it out to him. Later when he visits the medium man at his house,
Krishna admires the house and the surroundings. It is truly a haven for a tortured soul like him
with acres and acres of trees, shrubs, orchards, the murmuring casuarinas, a lotus pond and a
ruined temple on its bank. These are ideal surroundings for communicating with the spirit of his
dead wife.

When Krishna receives a letter from his father informing him of the arrival of Susila and
the child, he gets nostalgic about his past. After his B.A. he refused to enter government service,
as many of his generation did, but went back and settled in his village and looked after his lands
and property. He still writes with a steel pen with a fat green wooden handle and in his trademark
ink, the preparation of which Krishna still recalls. But more than that is the memory of his elder
brother bullying all his siblings in the cart that took them to the nearest town, Kavadi, for buying
ingredients for his father’s special ink. We learn that the elder brother’s wife, being the daughter
of a High Court judge, could not get along with Krishna’s mother, a stickler for household order
and neatness. But Krishna’s brother keeps sending presents on Deepavali to Leela and constantly
enquires about Susila’s health when she falls ill, Krishna fondly remembers him.

Krishna’s love for his wife and child transcends everything else in his life. He is
thoroughly devoted to them. He loses all sense of time in looking after Susila when she falls ill.
He tries his best to nurse her back to health and is completely devastated when she dies. He
contemplates suicide but the thought of his daughter Leela stops him from taking this extreme
step. He is “dumb, blind, and dazed” and loses all interest in life. He suffers from insomnia,
tossing about his bed in agony. Condolences, words of courage, lamentations, or assurances - he
is indifferent to them. His days are filled “with a peculiar blankness and emptiness” till he
receives a message from a stranger who helps him to communicate with the spirit of his dead
wife.

Krishna feels satisfaction when he comes to know that she is happy in the other world
and she keeps a benign eye over him and the child. She wants him to be happy and relaxed.
Gradually he learns to communicate with her on his own after he has improved his “sensibilities”
and seeks satisfaction in the work that enjoys. He gives up his well-paid college job and starts
working in the small children’s school run by the Headmaster at a pittance. He has the constant
company of Susila’s spirit which provides him with “a moment of rare, immutable joy - a
moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death” as he goes through his life with the zeal
of “an uncompromising idealist”.

Susila

Susila is the wife of The English Teacher Krishna. A loving wife and mother, she is the
replica of an ideal Hindu wife. Even though she enjoys a short happy married life, her presence
pervades the novel. Like Krishna, however, Narayan does not tell her much about her physical
appearance. All that we know is that she is extremely religious, sprightly and devoted to her
husband and child. Susila is introduced when she arrives at the Malgudi station along with the
seven-month-old Leela and her father. Krishna has been pacing up and down the station,
concerned about her and the child as well as the enormous amount of luggage she is bringing
with her to set up house there. Krishna’s mother is already there to train her in household chores
and Susila acquits herself creditably. After Krishna’s mother leaves, Susila takes up her duties as
a responsible housewife and reigns with an iron hand. Krishna is extravagant, whereas Susila is
parsimonious. She becomes his “cash-keeper” and proves to be “a ruthless accountant”. Krishna
says:

In her hands, a hundred rupees seemed to do the work of

two hundred, all through the month she was able to give
me money when I asked. When I handled my finances
independently, after making a few savings and payments, I
simply paid for whatever caught my eyes and paid off
anyone who approached me, with the result that after the
first days, I went about without money (Narayan: ).

With the arrival of Susila all these have been changed. She keeps a strict check on household
expenditure and whenever Krishna even slightly deviates from her list of groceries, it leads to a
minor squabble between the two. Krishna remarks:
 I found that there was an autocratic strain in her nature in
these matters, and unsuspected depths of rage (Narayan: ).

Only once does it lead to a fierce quarrel when Susila sells his old alarm clock with some useless
papers. Krishna is livid and he shouts at her. They do not speak for forty-eight hours and
eventually it is Krishna who makes the first move as he cannot bear her sobbing and crying.
Susila readily agrees and they go out to watch a film. They resolve not to quarrel because; as she
firmly believes that such quarrels can affect a child’s health. Susila waits in the garden when
Krishna returns from the college in the afternoon although she pretends:

I didn’t come out to look for you, but just to play with the
child... (Narayan: ).

She serves him coffee and tiffin, and Leela is looked after by Krishna till she goes about getting
the dinner ready. She regards the old woman sent by Krishna’s mother to help her in her
domestic chores as “unnecessary expense” but is soon reconciled to this. She firmly believes in
the adage that one must live within one’s means, and save enough. She has extracted a firm
promise from Krishna that Leela is going to be their only child and they must save for her
marriage. Whenever he jokes about having more children, she covers his mouth with her fingers
and reminds him of his promise.

Susila shares Krishna’s love for poetry and encourages him to write. But when he
reproduces Wordsworth’s lines, “She was a phantom of delight”, she is quick to pull him up for
copying and Krishna ends up bookish sheepish. And whenever Krishna shows the slightest
hesitation in explaining a verse to her, she declares that do not try to Explain English at home.
He should perform his duty as an English teacher only in school and not at home.

Susila is excited when Krishna’s father offers to loan them money to buy a house on
Leela’s third birthday. They set out to inspect houses on an early Sunday morning. She is dressed
in her favourite indigo saree and smells of jasmine. Krishna is bewitched; he decides to call her
Jasmine hereafter and their house Jasmine Home. When he tries to flirt with her, she cautions
him that she hopes you’ve not forgotten that they are in a public road. Krishna treats her to a
sumptuous breakfast at Bombay Ananda Bhavan. Susila is taken up with the coloured marble
tiles on the walls there and, in spite of Krishna telling her that such tiles are used in European
bathrooms, she wants to have them in the house. When Krishna agrees, she quips:

“What if they are! People who like them for bathrooms

may have them there, others if they want them elsewhere
...” Krishna is keen to please her. Susila’s “helplessness,
innocence, and her simplicity” move him deeply. Her eyes
always laughed”, he recalls, “there was a perpetual smile in
her eyes” (Narayan: ).

Before going to Lawley Extension, Susila wants to take a detour to the riverside to bathe her feet.
Krishna agrees. He promises to take her on a tour to Europe when he has made enough money
from the money he makes out of his books that he is going to write. She must see the world, he
tells her. But, alas, this is not to be. Susila contracts typhoid after she locks herself in a filthy
lavatory in the house they have seen and liked. Krishna is so devoted to her that he loses all sense
of time as he tries his best to nurse her back to health. He is devastated when she dies after just
five years of happy married life.

There is a sense of “peculiar blankness and emptiness” in Krishna’s life. He is stunned at

this sudden loss till Susila’s spirit decides to communicate with him, first through a medium and
then directly. She assures him that she is happy in the other world and that she is keeping a
constant watch over him and the child. She is aware of their day-to-day activities and would like
him to be calm and relaxed, and improve his “sensibilities” if he wants to be in constant
communion with her. Under her benign watch and influence, Krishna goes about his work with a
light heart. The day seems to be full of surprise and joy even in such a dull, dreary and
monotonous routine that he follows in college. At every sitting she reminds of her ivory-
sandalwood box and the fourteen letters written by her to him which he hasn’t been able to
destroy. Fortunately, Krishna finds the box in his mother’s possession but is unable to trace the
letters. Krishna finds fulfilment at last and takes up the work that pleases him and gives him
immense satisfaction. He gives up his college job and starts working in the school for small
children at a quarter of the salary he was getting in college. With Susila’s spirit constantly by his
side, he experiences “a moment of rare, immutable joy - a moment for which one feels grateful
to Life and Death”. As in life, Susila is constantly with him even after her death, thus testifying
to the power and permanence of true love. She indeed proves to be “a phantom of delight” for
her husband as she continues to guide and inspire him long after she has departed from this
world.

The Peasant

Krishna is devastated after the death of his beloved wife Susila. He is “dumb, blind and
dazed”; everything is over in the world for him. He contemplated committing suicide but the
thought of his child Leela stops him from taking this extreme step. He goes about his work in
college like a zombie, devoting all his time to Leela’s care and upbringing. He feels “a peculiar
blankness and emptiness”, and is indifferent to condolences, words of courage, lamentations, etc.
all his senses are “blurred and vague”. He sleeps irregularly and is tormented by memories of his
short happy married life.

In the darkness I often felt an echo of her voice and speech

or sometimes her moaning and delirious talks in sick bed,”
he says. There were subtle links with a happy past...
(Narayan: ).

Then one day he received a message from a stranger through a boy. The note says:

This is a message for Krishna from his wife Susila who

recently passed over... She has been seeking all these
mouths some means of expressing herself to her husband,,
but the opportunity has occurred only today, when she
found the present gentleman a very suitable medium for
expression. Though him she is happy to communicate. She
wants her husband to know that she is quite happy in
another region, and wants him also to eradicate the grief in
his mind. We are nearer each other than you understand.
And I’m always watching him and the child (Narayan: ).
 The message rejuvenates Krishna. He accompanies the boy to his father’s house. He is in
a state of ecstasy and excitement when he meets a chubby, cheerful-looking peasant who
welcomes him warmly and takes him to a quiet retreat near a lotus pond, the mango tree and the
lovely ruined temple and explains to Krishna how he took a chance by contacting him through
his son. As the casuarina murmur in the background, the peasant sits down with a pad and pencil.
The pencil starts moving on its own as the spirits convey to him how they have been clamouring
to “bridge the gulf between life and after-life’”; they have been looking for a medium through
whom they could communicate. They ask the peasant to relax his mind and transcribe what
Susila’s spirit wants to convey to her husband. The message begins:

Here is Susila, wife of Krishna, but as yet she is unable to

communicate by herself. By and by she will be adept in it
(Narayan: ).

Wednesday afternoons are fixed for communicating with Susila’s spirit through the medium of
the peasant who closes his eyes through these trances as his fingers move automatically on the
paper. He is in a frenzy as he keeps on transcribing on paper till the spirits ask him to slow down
asking him to stop writing in precisely half an hour. Susila’s spirit conveys it through the
medium that she is eager to communicate with him. But she is very much excited and she is also
not able to collect her thoughts easily.

After a false start where Susila’s spirit gives the name of the child as Radha (whereas it is
Leela), she assures him that such initial difficulties will be gradually surmounted. All this while
the peasant acting as the medium is unself-conscious and his mind is passive. Conditions are
favourable at their next sitting and Krishna successfully communicates with the spirit of his wife.
Susila asks him why he has destroyed all the letters she wrote to him but says that there is still a
bundle of fourteen letters that he hasn’t been able to lay his hands on and destroy. She asks him
to find the bundle as well as an ivory-sandalwood box that was her favourite and in which she
kept her knick-knacks. Krishna returns home, opens Susila’s trunk but is unable to find these two
objects mentioned by her. At the next meeting she asks him not to fret about the child. The child
is happy; she has started going to a nearby school for small children. In fact, the child is closer to
her than her husband as “children are keener-sighted by nature”. She refers little to her departed
mother because she doesn’t want to hurt her father’s feelings. There is a certain peace about her
which the elders lack.

Krishna is elated. These days he goes about his work with renewed zeal; a void seems to
have been filled in his life. He devotes himself to his studies energetically and then plays with
the child, hearing her ceaseless prattle. One day he discovers that the child has gone to a
neighbourhood school. He takes her there and enrolls her as he is impressed by the headmaster’s
views on the education of children. The headmaster is another profound contact he makes. At
every subsequent sitting, Susila keeps providing him with more and more details about their
short but happy married life. She now shares with him the perfume that she has put on and says
that it is a pity he cannot smell it. She assures him that she is happy and that he should not worry
about her, adding:

Time as such does not exist in heaven. Life there is one of

thought and experience, of aspiration, effort and joy, A
considerable slate is taken up by meditation. The greatest
ecstasy lies in feeling the Divine Light flooding the souls ...
(Narayan:).

She asks him to develop his “sensibilities” through meditation and have a calm and relaxed mind
to facilitate direct communication with her.

Krishna is unable to communicate with Susila for the next three or four weeks as the
peasant is either ill or busy with family affairs. Then they decide to try sittings in absentia. They
sit in their respective places at a fixed time and meditate on Susila’s spirit. The medium then
conveys the message through letters to Krishna. Susila has found “fulfilment” in the other world.
She informs Krishna that she is always by his side watching his every move. She tells him how
she is dressed and what perfume she wears at a particular sitting. Krishna cannot, however, sec
her by his side, sitting to his left on the floor with her arm resting on his lap. She starts appearing
in his dreams. And if he wants to verify her presence in the room, she asks him to keep some
jasmine buds under his pillow at night and he would feel the difference when he smells them in
the morning.
 Krishna now wants to communicate directly with his wife’s spirit and seeks the
medium’s guidance in this matter. The spirit conveys to him that he must not allow his mind to
be disturbed by anything; he must not be gloomy and unsettled if he wants to establish direct
communication with her.

You must keep your body and mind in perfect condition,

before you aspire to become sensitive and receptive.
Finally, she advises him: “Relax, be passive and think of
me, and be receptive.” (Narayan: ).

Krishna follows her instructions and henceforth he is able to communicate directly with her. But
the importance of the peasant who initially acted as the medium between Krishna and the spirit
of his dead wife Susila cannot be minimised. He plays a vital role in coming to Krishna’s rescue
when the latter is despondent and has given up all hope in life. After coming in contact with this
stranger, Krishna discovers a new meaning in life and after-life. As he relaxes and rids his mind
of gloomy thoughts, he is gradually able to establish direct communion with the spirit of his dead
wife. He is obsessed with her in death, as in life. This leads to an all-pervasive harmony in his
life. Susila’s spirit urges him to seek inner satisfaction and he consequently resigns his college
job to work in the headmaster’s school for a quarter of his college salary to pursue his
experiment in education. Susila’s spirit is there with him to guide him and this leads to “a
moment of rare, immutable joy - a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death”.

The Headmaster

The Headmaster, who runs a school for small children in Krishna’s neighbourhood, has
no name. When Krishna asks him his name, he says; “Just Headmaster will do...” We are
introduced to him when one day he comes to Krishna’s home to drop his daughter Leela, who
has been attending his school while Krishna is away at college. The headmaster appears to be an
eccentric character. He is a slight man, who looks “scraggy” as he evidently doesn’t much care
for his appearance. His hair falls on his nape because he neglects to cut it, and his coat is frayed
and un-pressed. Krishna likes him immensely and he wants to know more about him. There are
no restrictions in his school as children can come and leave at any time they like. Leela is
extremely happy when her father decides to enroll her there. She keeps on talking about the
school all the time. She wonders why her father doesn’t teach at her school, which is nearby, and
at one which is far off. There are no holidays. Children excitedly come to school even on
Sundays, and so does the headmaster. He hasn’t taken a holiday in the last fifteen years since he
has been running this school which keeps so busy and fruitfully engaged that he has not felt the
need for a holiday at all. “Holidays bore me,” he tells Krishna who finds him “an extraordinary
man”.

When Krishna goes to enroll Leela in the school, the headmaster is “in raptures over the
new arrival”. He takes Krishna round the school. He has partitioned the main hall into a number
of rooms. The partition screens can all be seen, “filled with glittering alphabets and pictures
drawn by children - a look at it seemed to explain the created universe”. One can find everything
one wants there —”men, trees, and animals, skies and rivers”. The headmaster explains proudly:

“All these - work of our children…. Wonderful creatures!

It is wonderful how much they can see and do! I tell you,
sir, live in their midst and you will want nothing else in life
(Narayan: ).

In the narrow space he has crammed every conceivable plaything for children, see saws, swings,
sand heaps and ladders. “These are the classrooms,” he says:

Not for them. For us elders to learn. Just watch them for a
while (Narayan: ).

The children are digging into the sand, running up the ladder, swinging, sliding down slopes all
so happy. The place is dotted with the coloured dresses of these children, “bundles of joy and
play”. The headmaster explains:

This is the meaning of the word joy - in its purest sense. We

can learn a great deal watching them and playing with
them. When we are qualified we can enter their life... When
 I watch them, I get a glimpse of some purpose in existence
and creation (Narayan: ).

He is putting into practice the game-way in studies which everyone talks of but no one practises
and he is enthusiastic about it. When Krishna accompanies Leela to school one Sunday, he is
surprised. There is no sign at the school to show that it is a Sunday. It is alive with the shouts of
children - about twenty of them have already gathered and are running about and playing: the
swings and see-saws are all in full use. The headmaster is already there, enthusiastically
participating in their games. He engages them in singing, hearing stories and playing. He takes
Krishna into his room. It is thatch-roofed. The floor is uneven and cool, and the whole place
smells of “Mother Garth”. It is a pleasing smell that takes Krishna back “to some primeval
simplicity, intimately bound up with earth and mud and dust”. Along the wall is a sort of running
ledge covered with “a crazy variety of objects: cardboard houses, paper flowers, clumsy
drawings and beadwork”. These are the work of children “the trophies of the school”, the
headmaster explains. Then he shows to Krishna the first creation of his child - a green boat.
Krishna is thrilled. There are not tables and chairs.

The headmaster considers children “the real gods on earth” and expounds his philosophy of
education to Krishna:

This will do for a school.... most of our time being spent

outside, under the tree... The main business of an
educational institution is to shape the mind and character
and of course games have their value (Narayan: ).

He is against much time being devoted to sports and games. He is a firm believer in “the
simplicity of human conduct” which the company of children has taught him. That explains why
he cannot get along With adults. He actively involves the children in his story telling session and
promises to get a cat for Leela when she insists on it. Krishna invites him home for a meal before
they proceed to the headmaster’s house in Anderson Lane. After he has washes himself, the
headmaster does not require a towel to dry himself. He keeps standing till the water evaporates
before sitting down for the meal. Leela is delighted to have her teacher’s company.
 Then they proceed to Anderson Lane where the headmaster lives. It is a neglected part of
the town full of dust, dirt and grime. The headmaster’s wife turns out to be a virago and his three
children are uncouth and wild. She starts quarrelling with him and doesn’t stop even when he
asks her not to “speak rubbish” in the presence of “a cultured visitor who will laugh at us”. There
is no cat to be found in the house and a disappointed Leela returns home with Krishna and the
headmaster. After seeing the headmaster’s wife, Krishna wonders, “Why people marry such
wives?” The headmaster explains his wife’s behaviour to Krishna. He wanted to remain a
bachelor to pursue his interests in life without any encumbrances but he was married against his
will. Then he refused to pursue law after graduation and take up a regular job. So he opened this
school for children. Paradoxically, his own children do not attend his school.

“I could sooner get the Emperor’s children. My school is

for all the children except my own,” he tells Krishna
(Narayan: ).

So he finally, his wife is bitter because he refuses to enter into litigation with his stepmother and
her children over his deceased father’s property. But he sticks on to her because he is convinced
that “we should not despair for even the worst on earth”. The headmaster firmly believes in an
astrologer’s predictions about his future. So far, he tells Krishna, his life has gone precisely
according to what the astrologer had told him. The astrologer has given the precise date and time
of his death, which the headmaster is convinced will turn out to be true. So one night, while
Krishna is getting ready to communicate with the spirit of his dead wife Susila, the headmaster
comes and tells him that this is the last night of his existence on earth and that he wouldn’t live to
see the light of the next day. Deeply disturbed, Krishna assures him that there is nothing wrong
with him and that he should not think of death. But the headmaster is adamant. He leaves
Krishna to spend the last night of his life with his wife and children. The next morning Krishna
goes to his house to enquire about him and is surprised to find out that the headmaster has not
been home at night. When he informs his wife of her husband’s death, she lets out a wail and
people crowd the house. She collapses on the floor and laments that her children have become
fatherless orphans. But the headmaster appears near the school gate as Krishna is returning
home. First, he thinks that he has seen a ghost but later he is happy to see the headmaster alive.
He tells Krishna that the prediction about his death has been “weighing” him down all these
years but now he can live “free and happy”. Krishna persuades him to go home to his wife and
children. He is surprised to see a crowd of people offering condolences to his wife and
comments:

I never imagined that I had such a large public! I thought I

was fairly obscure! (Narayan: ).

But the headmaster refuses to live with his wife and children now. He tells them that they should
give him up as dead from now onwards. He will give them a monthly allowance but they should
never try to see him again. He now wants to devote all his time and energy to look after his pet
project, the school for small children. His wife and children, however, visit him often. He treats
them kindly but refuses to visit them home, and strictly forbids them to call him father or
husband. His wife is a chastened person now. She begs him to allow her to bring him food but he
firmly declines the offer.

Contact with the headmaster has a profound influence on Krishna. He feels that his real
calling lies not in pursuing his monotonous, dull and dreary job at Albert Mission College but
elsewhere. He resigns and joins the headmaster’s expanding school at a quarter of the salary he
was getting in college to seek inner satisfaction. His dead wife’s spirit guides him in this and,
under these twin influences, Krishna attains peace of mind.

Dr. Shankar

Krishna’s wife Susila falls sick when she locks herself in a filthy lavatory in the house
they have gone to inspect in Lawley Extension. Her fever does not go down and she keeps lying
on the floor all the time. Food is distasteful to her. It is then that the old lady working in
Krishna’s house suggests that a doctor be consulted to treat her. At this stage we are introduced
to Dr. Shankar of Krishna Medical Hall in Malgudi. But despite his reputation as “the greatest
physician on earth” and “easily the most successful practitioner in the town”, Dr. Shankar fails to
cure Susila and she dies an untimely death.

When Krishna reaches the doctor’s clinic, he is away but all around the benches and
chairs are filled with patients and patients’ relatives. An accountant and a clerk sit next to each
other at the entrance pouring over leather-bound ledgers and making entries. The walls of the
clinic are lined with glass shelves loaded with the panacea that drug manufacturers invent -
attractive boxes, cellophane wrappings. Bitter drugs are a thing of the past. A dispenser is
distributing medicines to patients, issuing instructions and charging them money. He answers the
patients’ questions in a routine manner but some of the patients are keen to consult the doctor
himself and tell him in detail about their ailments.

The doctor’s car stops and he steps out. Everyone presses around him. He looks like a
film star being mobbed by his admirers. He waves his hand, smiles and gently presses all his
admirers to their seats. When his turn comes, Krishna tells the doctor about his Wife’s condition.
Calling him “professor”, Dr. Shankar writes down a prescription for his wife and puts it away for
the dispenser. Then he starts attending to another patient who gives him a long-minded account
of pain in the back of the head which travels all the way down to his ankle and then goes up
again. The doctor hardly gives attention to him. He cracks a couple of jokes at the expense of the
patient and writes down a prescription for him. Krishna is disappointed with the mechanical red
tape method and returns home with the medicine for Susila. Dr. Shankar appears as a mere
“automaton” to him.

But when Susila’s fever doesn’t come down and Krishna wants the doctor to visit her at
home, he confidently tells Krishna:

Oh no, it is just malaria. I have fifty cases like this on hand,

no need to see her (Narayan: ).

When, however, Krishna insists, Dr. Shankar condescends to examine Susila at home. There he
seems to be an old friend amiable and cheerful. He tells Susila:

Many people take it as an opportunity for a holiday…..

(Narayan: ).

Although his visit cheers Susila it does not in any way help cure her. Then he decides to conduct
a blood test and he revises his earlier diagnosis to typhoid. He assures Krishna that it is a mild
attack and prescribes new medicines along with issuing instructions for looking after the patient.
He is now certain that he can cure Susila. Malaria, according to him, is the most critical and
temperamental thing on earth. He seems glad that it is typhoid, the king among fevers - it is an
aristocrat who observes the rules of the game. He is confident that Susila will back on her feet
after typhoid has run its course.

Susila’s room is turned into a sick ward with Krishna and his father-in-law alternately
keeping vigil over the patient. Dr. Shankar’s visits, though regular, are of no help. To cheer up
Susila he narrates the humorous story of a daughter-in-law of a family who was in bed for two
weeks during which she had put on weight. Her husband came to the doctor privately and
requests him to cure his wife as early as possible. On hearing this story, Susila laughs so much
that her face becomes red and she breaks into sweat. As Susila’s condition deteriorates, Dr.
Shankar brings a reputed, Madras physician to elicit a second opinion but to no avail. Dr.
Shankar eventually gives up hope.

Narayan has very skillfully portrayed each and every character in this novel. All
characters perform the leading role to get the desired effect of readers. Through these characters
the novel enlivens the readers fully.

5.4 The Autobiographical Elements

My Days (1975) is an autobiographical piece of Narayan in which he says that:

Krishna is a fictional character in the fictional city of

Malgudi, but he goes through the same experience I had
gone through and he calls his wife Susila, and the child is
Leela instead of Hema. The toll of that typhoid and the
desolation that followed with a child to look after and
psychic adjustment, are based on my own experience
(Narayan: 2006, 153).

The English Teacher is thus an essentially autobiographical novel and Narayan can
justifiably claim as Dickens claimed of David Copperfield: “The pen that wrote David
Copperfield was often dipped in my own blood.” The English Teacher may be said to be a
fictional autobiography of Narayan’s own life.

The most momentous event in Narayan’s life occurred in 1933 when he went to
Coimbatore and fell headlong in love with a girl drawing water from a street tap. It was lucky for
him that the girl was not already married and belonged not only to the Brahmin caste but the Iyer
sub-caste. Contrary to custom, negotiations were set in motion from the boy’s side - but, alas,
when horoscopes were scrutinized they did not match. Narayan was not going to be put off by
this. The services of another astrologer were requisitioned, and he overruled that the planets were
not malefic and that the marriage would prove successful. Within five years Narayan lost his
wife in the tragic manner set forth in The English Teacher, and the first astrologer was proved
right.

This terrible experience left its indelible mark on Narayan. He never married again and,
as an author was to return to theme of star-crossed lovers. Not only in The English Teacher,
where it dealt with it? at length, but also in The Bachelor of Arts and two of his short stories, The
White Flower and The Seventh House where frustrated love provides the topic and frustration is
caused by horoscopes that don’t agree. The rest of Narayan’s story is easily told. It took him a
while to recover from his wife’s death, but his little daughter Hema occupied his thoughts and
tethered him to life. In The English Teacher, Krishna makes no secret of his delight in his
daughter Leela. He loves and looks after Leela just as Narayan loved and looked after his only
daughter Hema. Krishna is as loving and protective a father as the novelist himself.

Krishna writes of his father that he was generous of heart who offered him money to buy
a house of his own. In real life, however, it was his father-in-law who offered him money for
purchasing the house. Narayan thus sifts and selects material from his own life in the novel. He
describes in detail about the house-purchasing episode, the search and selection of the house,
Susila’s entry into a filthy lavatory and of her being locked in there, her pounding at the shut
door, her screaming, her repulsion at what happened inside, her subsequent refusal to eat
anything and then her illness. This is really what happened to Narayan’s own wife Rajam.
Narayan also writes of his father’s continued illness and his dependence on his wife. His mother
could not often visit him because she had to look after her sick husband. He speaks of his
mother’s passion for housekeeping. He speaks of the love for his daughter and how he did not
allow his father-in-law to take the child with him after his wife’s death. He loves her so much
that he does not even allow his mother takes her to the village. He feels guilty and repentant that
he is unable to spend much time with the child.

Like Katherine Mansfield, Narayan judiciously organises the material at his disposal. But
The English Teacher is, above all, an imaginative and emotional transcription of Narayan’s
immense love for his wife and her sudden and premature death. The novel almost their love story
of the author’s love for his wife to a sublime level. Like Narayan, Krishna is dazed when Susila
dies. He is so desolate that he thinks of ending his own life. He thinks of a thousand ways of
committing suicide. And but for the intense love of his daughter he would have committed
suicide. Narayan himself was so disillusioned and desolate that, after Rajam’s death, he stopped
writing for a long time. He resumed writing only when he was persuaded and inspired to do so
by his two friends; Dr. Paul Brunton and the novelist Graham Greene. Krishna in the novel, stops
writing poetry but he also resigns his well-paid job at Albert Mission College. Like Narayan, he
doesn’t marry again though he is still young.

Narayan became a mystic after Rajam’s death, practised psychic art and communicated
with his wife. So does Krishna who communicates with Susila’s spirit, first through the medium
and then on his own after he has developed his “sensibilities”. Rightly does William Walsh call
The English Teacher “a personal tragedy”. Narayan also acknowledges the fact:

More than any other book, The English Teacher is

autobiographical in content, very little part of it being
fiction (Narayan: 2006, 150).

The English Teacher is thus “largely an autobiography in disguise”. No doubt in many ways the
novel touches us, moves us and overwhelms us with tragic pathos. Like Hardy killed Tess,
Narayan kills Susila. He had to kill her somehow because he was recounting his own experience
after Rajam’s death. Susila must die because Rajam died.

5.5 The Theme of Love

 The English Teacher, dedicated to R.K. Narayan’s wife Rajam, is not only
autobiographical but also poignant in its intensity of feeling. The tragic love story is a series of
experiences in the life of Krishna, an English teacher, and his quest towards achieving inner
peace and self-development after the untimely death of his wife Susila. For several years Krishna
has enjoyed a bachelor’s life, but this changes when his wife Susila and their child Leela move in
with him. Krishna’s life expands to include the happy domesticity of living with his child and
wife: nearly half the novel focusses on the mundane joy of his day-to-day experiences with his
family. However, one day Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory and dies from
the illness. Krishna is devastated by her loss but receives a letter from a stranger indicating that
Susila has been in contact with him and wishes to communicate with Krishna. This leads to
Krishna’s journey for self-enlightenment, with the stranger acting as a medium to Susila in the
spiritual world and eventually learning to communicate with her on his own, thus concluding the
entire story itself, with the quote that he felt a moment of rare, immutable joy - a moment for
which one feels grateful to Life and Death. Krishna thus undertakes an emotional, intellectual
and spiritual journey to come to terms with the irreparable loss.

The English Teacher is the tale of love; the saga of loving someone so dearly. It is
exclusively a love story but interestingly different from the love stories one reads. By a love
story traditionally we mean the love before marriage which consequently ends, or may not end in
marriage. But here we have the love story which starts when Krishna is already a married man
and Susila already a mother. There is not much physical passion in the Krishna-Susila
relationship. Nor is there much romance in it. They have decided not to have any more children
and when Krishna talks about it, Susila covers his mouth and asks him:

Where is your promise?... I often reiterated and confirmed

our solemn pact that Leela should be our only child
(Narayan: ).

Krishna sometimes becomes romantic, for instance when he is going with his wife in search of a
house. But Susila asks him to control himself because they are walking on a public place. Their
love is fresh because it is not staled by familiarity. There is always the first flush of love in their
short lived companionship. Susila does not express her love openly but she is frank, open-hearted
and sprightly behaviour when she says:

Why can’t each keep his or her own heart instead of this
exchange? She then put out her hand and searched my
pockets ‘in case you have taken away mine (Narayan: ).

Her love for Krishna is expressed by the tears she sheds when he loses her temper after learning
that she has sold his old alarm clock as well as useless papers. They do not talk for forty-eight
hours, each of them sulking separately. But when Krishna makes the first move towards making
up, she immediately agrees. They decide not to have any more arguments, since as Susila says
that such quarrels can affect the child. On his part, Krishna is concerned about his wife. This is
evident from his anxiety when he paces up and down the Malgudi railway station awaiting her
arrival. He pays the coolie thrice his portage so that he may take precaution in unloading her
luggage from the train which stops there for only seven minutes. He worries unnecessarily and
ceaselessly about her as Narayan depicts:

Suppose fifteen days hence I was still in this state and they
arrived and had nowhere to go outside the railway station!
This vision, was a nightmare to me (Narayan: ).

When she likes the coloured marble tiles in Bombay Ananda Bhavan, he offers to have them on
the walls of their own house even though he knows that they are normally used in bathrooms.
When he becomes rich and famous through writing poetry, he plans to take h. on a trip to
Europe. And when she falls ill, he keeps nightly vigil her bedside to see that she is not
uncomfortable and that she sleeps peacefully. He leaves no stone unturned to treat her but, alas,
all his efforts come to nought when she dies.

Krishna is distraught. He feels dumb, blind, and dazed. He is so miserable that he loses
all interest in life. Only the thought of the child keeps him away from committing suicide. But
the story does not end there. Indeed we are just halfway through. Death is not, need not be, the
end of life. Contracts can be established beyond the funeral pyre with a little patience. Krishna is
rejuvenated when a stranger offers to act as the medium between him and his wife’s spirit. When
he is able to do so, first though the medium and later on his own, he feels reassured when the
medium informs him:

The lady wants to say that she is deeply devoted to her

husband and the child and family as ever. Ultimately she
comes and sits on Krishna’s bed, looking at him with her
bewitching smile, and tells him: Yes, I’m here, I have
always been here (Narayan: ).

Krishna’s zest for life is renewed and he goes about his work. His “sensibilities” are improved
through contact with his dead wife’s spirit which urges him to be cheerful and relaxed.
Eventually to satisfy hit inner urge, Krishna gives up his well-paid college job. Further, at a
quarter of the salary that he was getting in a college, he joins the headmaster’s school for small
children. Finally, he comes to terms with life when his daughter Leela leaves for the village with
her grandmother and he realises the fact of life.

The headmaster’s company gives him solace. After his near-death experience, the
headmaster has distanced himself from his wife and children. This has a profound impact on
Krishna who, besides enjoying his newfound vocation now, is at peace with himself in the
company of Susila’s spirit. It is a moment of rare, immutable joy - a moment for which one feels
grateful to “Life and Death”. This is how his love story culminates in a strange, happy ending.
Narayan obviously believes that nothing is impossible for true love. The novel, for all the searing
tragedy of the death of Susila, ends on a note of fulfilment. Narayan has effectively put the
element of love in the present novel.

5.6 The Elements of Humour and Pathos

Humour and pathos are the integral parts of Narayan’s work. Narayan’s earlier novels
like Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts are mainly comic. In his third novel, The
English Teacher, there is a judicious blend of comedy and pathos because it is based on a
personal tragedy. Here the humour mingles with pathos, and there is, almost a Shakespearean
inter-penetration of the comic and the tragic in the novel.

Narayan’s humour is marked by an amused detachment which sharply distinguishes him

from Jane Austen, with whom he has often been compared. Here we have the humour of
character, humour of situation or farcical humour, irony wit and satire. For instance, Mr. Brown,
the Principal of Albert Mission College, is concerned with the dropping of the vowel “u” in
spelling “honours” by students. He believes that it would a serious enough blunder even for a
mathematics honours man. Gopal, the mathematics teacher, is the butt of Narayan’s humour
when Krishna says:

His precise, literal brain refused to move where it had no

concrete facts or figures to trip. Symbols, if they entered
his brain at all, entered only as mathematical symbols
(Narayan: ).

Krishna’s old table clock shows the correct time but is eccentric to its alarm arrangement. It lets
out a “shattering amount of noise” and sometimes goes off by itself and butts into a conversation.
Narayan writes:

There was no way of stopping it... short of dashing it down

... But one day I learnt... that if I placed a heavy book like
Taine’s History of English Literature on its crest, it stopped
shrieking (Narayan: ).

No wonder, Susila sells it when it starts ringing on its own when the child is asleep. This leads to
their first serious quarrel after marriage because Krishna is attached to it. Then Krishna
comments on his wife’s habit of underlining the town three times in her letter to him as she
seemed to be anxious lest the letter should go off to some other town. Later when he does not
care to explain the contents of a poem to her, Susila remarks:

Perhaps you don’t care to explain English unless you are

paid a hundred rupees a month for it (Narayan: )
When Krishna tells Susila that the coloured marble tiles used on the walls of Bombay Ananda
Bhavan are used in bathrooms but he will have them fitted along the walls of the house they are
going to buy, Susila says:

So that you may call it a bathroom (Narayan: ).

The sick Susila’s sides ache with laughter when Dr. Shankar relates the anecdote of a sick
daughter-in-law to cheer her:

Her (the ailing daughter-in-law’s) husband came to him

privately and said, ‘Doctor, please keep her in bed for a
fortnight more. It is almost her only chance of being free
from the harassment of her mother-in-law’ (Narayan: )

Krishna’s account of the travelling pain is equally humorous:

Last night, the other began and gave a long-winded

account of a pain in the back of his head, which travelled
all the way down to his ankle and went up again (Narayan:
).

The boy who accompanies him to the old, half-blind landlord is described thus:

He had his pockets filled with fried nuts, and was

ceaselessly transferring them to his mouth (Narayan: ).

And then:

If I hear that you have broken any leg, I will break your
head,” says the old peon Singaram to “the creaking cart
driver” when he is putting Krishna’s luggage in the cart
(Narayan: ).

Krishna’s childhood recollection of his elder brother is tinged with irony:

 My elder brother would extract obedience and we would
have to take our seats in the cart according to his
directions. The way he handled us we always expected he
would become a commander of an army or a police officer,
but the poor fellow settled as auditor in Hyderabad and
was nose-bed by his wife (Narayan: ).

Krishna wonders how his colleague at college, Sastri, a logic’ teacher, has got into the building
of houses. He is rather rude when he asks him:

Oh, Sastri, how did this house-salesmanship get into your

blood instead of logic? (Narayan: ).

Then he comments:

He had taken upon himself this task for scores of people,

and some uncharitable ones remarked that he made a
better living out of this than as a logic lecturer (Narayan: ).

Dr. Shankar, otherwise, a cheerful person, becomes “an automaton” once he sits in his “official
seat”. The headmaster’s wife sounds bitter when he returns home with Krishna and Leela after
dinner: “So you have found your way home after all.” When she continues her tirade the
headmaster says:

I can’t bring a gentlemen to visit me without driving him

away with your fine behaviour (Narayan: ).

Along with such abundant use of humour and irony in the novel, Narayan does not miss a chance
to have a dig at his surroundings. For example, he speaks of the hostel of Albert Mission College
thus:
 “Hostel bathrooms are hell on earth... [God said to his
assistants, ‘Take this man away to hell’, and they brought
him down to the hostel bathroom passage, and God said,
‘torture him’, and they opened the room and pushed him
in... No, no, at this moment the angels said ‘the room is
engaged’... God waited as long as a god can wait and asked
‘Have you finished’ and they replied ‘still engaged’, and in
due course they could not see where their victim* was, for
grass had grown and covered him up completely while he
waited outside the bathroom door... (Narayan: ).

Krishna has a similar experience waiting outside the bathroom’ door in his hostel while a student
is busy singing inside. When at last the student comes out and apologises to Krishna for having
made him wait, Krishna replies:

Yes, my dear fellow, but how could you come; out before
finishing that masterpiece of a song? (Narayan: ).

Narayan feels that railway carriages are not safe for mothers carrying small children when they
are travelling. So he makes Krishna say when Susila arrives in Malgudi with the child:

This seemed to my fevered imagination the all-important

thing to say on arrival, as I otherwise fancied the child’s
head was sure to be banged against the doorway... And
how many infants were damaged and destroyed by careless
mothers in the process of coming out of trains! Why
couldn’t they make these railway carriages of safer
dimensions? It ought to be done in the interests of baby
welfare in India (Narayan: ).

Then, there is the habit of women travelling with a lot of luggage. As Narayan writes:
 Women never understood the importance of travelling
light. Why should they? As long as there were men to bear
all the anxieties and bother and see them through their
travails! It would teach, them a lesson to be left to shift for
themselves (Narayan: ).

When she sets up home, Susila, like her mother-in-law, does not trust the government measures.
She is convinced that they weightless; so she uses her own measure. As Narayan puts:

She had a bronze tumbler, which she always declared as a

correct half-measure, and she would never recognise other
standards and measures. She insisted upon making all her
purchases... with the aid of this measure, and declared that
all other measures, including the government-stamped
ones, were incorrect, and were kept maliciously incorrect
because some municipal members were businessmen!
(Narayan: ).

Narayan’s scathing criticism, however, is reserved for the municipality of Malgudi about whom
he says:

Malgudi had earned notoriety for its municipal affairs. The

management was in the hands of a council with a president, a
vice-president, and ten elected members; they met on the last
Saturday of every month and battled against each other. One
constantly read of disputed elections, walk-outs, and no-
confidence motions. Otherwise they seemed to do little by way
of municipal work (Narayan: ).

There are also some quacks dispensing medicines “under no known system” in Malgudi. The
headmaster’s remarks on the prevailing system of education in the country are as valid today as
they were when the novel was written. He tells Krishna that they are poor country man and they
do not have luxury of life. They want only water, food and open air. This is not a cold country
for the heavy furniture and elaborate buildings.

He is against the undue importance given to sports and games. Humour interpenetrates
tragedy when Susila falls ill and eventually dies of wrong diagnoses when malaria that she is
supposed to suffer from turns out to be typhoid. Her room is turned into a sick ward and Krishna
congratulates himself on how meticulously he has done it and with what precision he goes about
his nursing duties. The underlying pathos behind all this is unmistakable. It is pathetic that the
lovely and sprightly Susila is now called a “patient” throughout her illness; no one refers to her
real name. When Krishna gets a letter from his elder brother enquiring after Susila’s health, his
childhood memories are tinged with pathos:

Good fellow - I remember the bullying he had practised me

in the cart... remember him helplessly pacing up and down
when his wife and mother had heated arguments over
trifles and now auditing, henpecked, and with twelve
children - a life of worry-so good of him to have thought of
me in all this distress (Narayan: ).

Susila’s death leaves Krishna blind, dumb, and dazed. He is unhinged physically, mentally and
spiritually. As Susila’s dead body lies on the ground:

We mutter, talk among ourselves, and wail between

convulsions of grief. All sensations are blurred and
vague….. (Narayan: ).

as he accompanies the bier to the cremation ground across the river. With Susila gone, Krishna
loses his zest for life; he is miserable and contemplates suicide. But the thought of the child
prevents him from taking this extreme step. It is only when a letter from a stronger arrives and
he is able to communicate with his dead wife’s spirit that he finds his moorings. Whenever he
cannot communicate with her, he feels miserable. Finally, when Leela goes to the village with
her grandmother, Krishna realises that no one can escape from the loneliness and separation i.e.
from wife, husband, child, brothers, parents etc. One day we all have to separate from all the
family members. Loneliness and separation are the continuous movements of the life. No one
can stop it. No one can break the law of life and no one can battle against it. Krishna attains
mental peace at last. He resigns from his well-paid college job and takes up work in the
headmaster’s school at a quarter of his present salary in order to satisfy his inner urge. Susila’s
spirit is present with him and he has found a purpose in life. It is “a moment of rare, immutable
joy - a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death”.

Thus, humour and pathos are woven in the works of Narayan. With the elements of
humour and pathos his works have become so famous not only in India but also on the foreign
land.

5.7 Conclusion

Thus, the present novel The English Teacher is an autobiographical and most acclaimed
novel of Narayan. In this novel he has effectively and artistically inserted all the literary elements
like love theme, autobiographical elements, humour, pathos, irony, tragedy etc. Krishna is an
immortal character of the novel. Through the characters he expresses his views on education and
philosophy of life.