“Faith” in R. K. Narayan and
‘The Painter of Signs’
A. S. Gangane
The
history of the faith in Gods and religion is in some ways typical of a wide
range of Indian experience in India. R. K. Narayan’s ‘The Painter of Signs’ is
the most provocative of this narrative.
It sensitively reflects a sonata of innocence and credulity on the part
of rural people.
R. K.
Narayan reveals a number of glimpses of religious ethos through his
representation of Indian village culture and temperament. His various references to the temple, river,
myth, religious and sacred places and the faith in these things symbolize the
religious past of India that not only survives but moulds and shapes the new
culture.
We know
that the rustics believe in rebirth and to have the best form of life in the
next birth, they perform various rituals.
After the cremation, a cow is gifted to a Brahmin because they strongly
trust that such a sacrifice and gift would help the dead man’s soul to ford a
difficult river in the next world. His
reminiscences are outstanding:
‘My father was a priest and
officiated at birthdays, funerals, and all kinds of religious functions and
brought home his fee in the form of rice and vegetables......’
And Raman’s aunt wishes to follow those shastras. She is the real heroine of ancient
times. She draws a series of believable
climaxes and concludes:
‘It is the
duty of the living to help the dead
with
proper rituals.’
One
realizes a pattern of faith in succession.
The aunt imbibed religious values on Raman. We come across Raman brooding over God’s Omnipresence.
“Past is gone, present is going, and
tomorrow is day after tomorrow’s yesterday.
So why worry about anything? God
is in all this. He is one and
indivisible. He is in yesterday,
tomorrow, and today. If you think it
over properly, you will never sigh for anything coming or going”
One
realizes a religious pattern of life as well as a Hindu truth in the role of
Raman’s aunt. She is filled with a
feeling of holiness and felt gratified at the thought of God’s world. She believes God’s all pervasive power and
control. She considered that God
contributed her to look after her nephew.
The aunt’s insinuation, though it irritates Raman, is full of faith:
“You see, on Friday’s I usually drop
a ten-paisa coin into the money chest kept at the temple. Never failed even once these thirty years
since I came to this house to look after you.
That god protects us, remember you may put the coin in whenever you pass
that way;…”
She feels
disappointed for she can’t get time to visit the sacred places. She regrets her attachment with the ocean of
samsara for she is detached from the world of spiritual satisfaction. She earnestly exposes it to Raman:
“I have
drifted in the ocean of samsara
for
countless years, don’t you think?”
His aunt,
deeply involved in her devotion to God and the possibility of getting salvation
by the grace of God, wishes to await death at Banaras. However, Raman passes through a number of
experiences in his aunt’s life, he recollects the absolute faith in god his
aunt generated in him and her acceptance of ‘Divine Will’ and the various forms
of devotion. Raman is proud of his
aunt’s faith in the gods. He boasted:
“Anyway,
my aunt has complete trust in
the gods
and possesses greater serenity
than
anyone else I have known”
Thus,
Raman’s view is orchestrated by R.K. Narayan.
Then, the aunt convinces Raman of her faith in salvation:
"A visit to Kasi is the
end. I may live for ten days or ten
years or twenty, it is immaterial how long one lives after this stage. It is the ambition of everyone of my
generation to conclude this existence at Kasi, to be finally dissolved in the
Ganges. That is the most auspicious end
to one’s life”
Thus, it
seems that the novel has another sufficiently important motive that is
renunciation but it doesn’t influence the central action of the novel.
Moreover,
R.K. Narayan attempts to identify the distinguishing characteristic of the
rustics, faith in God through Daisy’s visits to the villages to create awareness
to control births. Through population
control campaign, R.K. Narayan hits upon the credulity of the rustics. When Daisy insisted the villagers to limit
the number of children and suggested no births in the village for the next five
years, the elders of the village asked: “God gives us children. How can we reject His gift?”
A hundred
year old man said in a trumping voice: Our shastras say that the more the
children in a home, the more blessed it becomes”
The old
man in the same village professes about the temple he had built. Once the goddess appeared to him in a dream
and commanded him to build a temple and so he constructed it by making it his
sole mission in life. The people of the
village believe that the barren women come and pray there for three days and
conceive within thirty days. It is the
rustics’ strong faith that the old man can speak to the plants, mountains,
birds and animals who all obey him.
At the end of the novel, R.K.
Narayan deals with Raman’s aunt and her faith in Moksha (salvation). Throughout her narration she laces stories
of departure from Sansar to achieve the ultimate goal of life.