Books: Miniatures UNDER THE BANYAN TREE AND OTHER STORIES

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A number of Narayan's characters set out in the morning literally not knowing how or whether they will eat that night. In Four Rupees, a man is offered the job of recovering a treasured brass pot that has fallen down a well. He is horrified at the prospect of shinnying down 60 ft. into the unknown. Nevertheless, he succeeds. When he proudly brings his wages home, his wife looks at his disheveled state and decides he has robbed someone for the money. A similar outcome awaits the hero of A Horse and Two Goats. An old man, who daily pastures the two scraggly remnants of a once expansive flock, is accosted by a tourist from the U.S. The American wants to buy the stone horse on whose pedestal the Indian sits. The Indian wants to sell his goats. One speaks only English, the other, except for the phrase "Yes, no," only Tamil. After much "mutual mystification," a deal is struck. The shepherd returns to tell his stunned wife that he has made 100 rupees off the goats, even as they appear behind him, bleating at the door.

While inventing and telling such incidents the author remains both sympathetic and dispassionate. Narayan's mastery of lucid English has somehow been achieved without the condescension and exasperation that Western converts often feel toward their unenlightened compatriots. The narrator of Annamalai, a writer by trade, describes his method of coping with a difficult but intriguing servant: "The only way to exist in harmony with Annamalai was to take him as he was; to improve or enlighten him would only exhaust the reformer and disrupt nature's design." From Narayan's decision to suspend judgments hangs a galaxy of irresistible tales. --By Paul Gray