Miniatures

In a brief introduction to this collection of 28 tales, Indian Author R.K. Narayan states that "the short story is the best medium for utilizing the wealth of subjects available. A novel is a different proposition altogether, centralized as it is on a major theme, leaving out, necessarily, a great deal of the available material on the periphery. Short stories, on the other hand, can cover a wider field by presenting concentrated miniatures of human experience in all its opulence."

At first blush, this assertion seems to drop conventional wisdom on its head. Everyone knows that the novel is literature's great grab bag, shapeless enough to accommodate nearly everything a writer wants to cram into it. Short stories allow little wasted motion. But Narayan, 78, turns out to be a perfectly accurate commentator on his own methods. Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories, while shorter than most novels, is a riotous mosaic of small details in which nothing, finally, seems irrelevant.

The common ground holding most of these tales together is the Malgudi district, a fictional area of southern India that Narayan has been tilling for the past 50 years. Not much changes in Malgudi. The British, who are rarely mentioned in this book, have come and gone. World War II is recalled for its temporary effects on the price of rice. The riots that break out between Hindus and Muslims when India achieves independence are seen through the eyes of a neutral, nondescript hero: "It was on the whole a peaceful, happy life--till the October of 1947, when he found that the people around had begun to speak and act like savages." The assassination of John F. Kennedy reaches this region as a rumor, and a fairly incredible one at that. The slain President's last name sounds like the Tamil word for glass. "Could any man give himself such a name?" asks one local skeptic.

The life in Narayan's stories consists largely of people doing just what they and their ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years. They propitiate the gods as best they can. In Nitya, a couple remember a solemn vow to shave their two-year-old son's head and offer his hair as tribute if he recovers from whooping cough and convulsions. Unfortunately, the healthy young man is now 20 and in no mood to cooperate: "You had no business to pawn my scalp without consulting me." The hero of All Avoidable Talk is a clerk who learns from his astrologer that a period of bad luck will end if he can avoid saying anything that might give offense to anybody for one more day. Naturally the employee has nothing but grief at the office and finds himself, to his horror, visiting his boss's house, brimming with insults, as the deadline approaches.