The Guide – R K Narayan

'The Guide' is the most popular novel from the pen of R. K. Narayan. It was published in 1958 and won the Sahitya Academy Award for 1960. It has also been filmed and the film has drawn house-full collections

It recounts the adventures of a railway guide, popularly known as ‘Railway Raju’.  As a tourist guide he is widely popular. It is this profession which brings him in contact with Marco and his beautiful wife, Nalini. While the husband is busy with his archaeological studies, Raju seduces his wife and had a good time with her. Ultimately Marco comes to know of her affair with Raju and goes away to Madars leaving Nalini behind. Nalini comes and stays with Raju in his one-roomed house. His mother tolerates her for some time, but when things become unbearable, she calls her brother and goes away with him leaving Raju to look after Nalini and the house.

Nalini is a born dancer, she practices regularly and soon Raju finds an opening of a dance performance for her with quite attractive changed name ‘Rosie’. In the very first appearance, she has a grand success. Soon she is very much on demand to perform dance shows and their income increase enormously. Raju starts to live lavishly, entertains a large number of friends with whom he drinks and gambles. All goes well till Raju forges Rosie’s signatures to obtain valuable jewellery lying with her husband’s possession. The act of forgery of one’s signature made him land in jail. Rosie leaves Raju and Malgudi and goes away to Madras, her home town. She goes on with her dancing performances and she does well without the help and management of Raju, of which he was so proud.

On release from jail, Raju takes shelter in an old deserted temple on the banks of a river Sarayu, a few miles away from Malgudi, and close to the village called Mangal. The simple villagers consider him to be a Mahatma and all begin to worship him. They bring him a lot of eatables as presents. Raju is quite comfortable and performs the role of a saint to perfection.

However, soon there is a severe drought, and the villagers expect Raju to perform some miracle to bring them rain. So he has to undertake a fast. The fast attracts much attention and people come to have darshan of the Mahatma from far and wide. On the twelfth day of the fast, Raju falls down exhausted just as there are signs of rain on the distant horizon. It is not certain if he actually dead or merely fainted. Thus the novel comes to an abrupt end on a note of ambiguity.

Raju can be considered as he Chief Protagonist of the novel ‘The Guide’ though he upholds insincerity and pain. As a professional guide to Malgudi’s surrounding historical places, he invented a new historical pasts for bored tourists, he seduced a married woman, drifted away from his old mother from his house and acquired a falsehood,  gambling and drinking alcohol and spend money lavishly for simple physical pleasures. He even tried to forge the signature of Rogie to get her valuable jewellery from her former husband Marco. This forgery case made him land in a jail and being abandoned by everyone.

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