ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

A belated contribution to #NovNov (Novellas in November), The Painter of Signs is R K Narayan’s eleventh of fifteen novels by this prolific Indian author.  Like his early novels (including Swami and Friends (1935), which I reviewed here), it is set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi, at an indeterminate time but recognisably in an era when women’s roles were starting to change.

Thirty-something Raman is a painter of signs for businesses in his local area, and he takes great pride in his work.  He lives beside the river where occasionally a gust of wind will blow a bit of sand onto a board which is not quite dry.  In the early part of the book we see him forego payment if his sign has flaws because his integrity matters more to him than money.

Raman lives with his elderly aunt, who has looked after his needs for his entire life.  She is a quiet presence in the novel, spending her days sourcing and storing the best ingredients for the meals he likes best.  Her sole amusement comes from visiting the temple at the end of the day and retelling her personal history.  Raman takes her for granted and apart from occasional moments of guilt and resentment about her interest in his doings, does not appreciate that her life has been devoted to his.  So it’s not surprising that he thinks marriage is unnecessary.

Scornful about superstitions, religion and caste, Raman although conservative in his lifestyle, thinks well of himself and his modern attitude to rationality.  He reads science and history books, which contribute to his sense of superiority. Although he works hard at his sign-painting, he does not recognise that he has the leisure to educate himself only because a woman is taking care of his needs.

Into this calm and settled life comes Daisy, a modern young woman whose very name signifies that she is an outsider of no caste or family.  She hires Raman to make signs for her government-sponsored program to limit population growth through family planning, and her fervent attitude makes her fearless in tackling what is an intimate subject in her society, especially in remote villages.  Raman is fascinated by her manner and appearance which signify her rejection of woman’s traditional role.  She is cagey about her past, but eventually Raman learns that she left home because she would not submit to being inspected for marriage and the inevitability of subservience to a man.

It just so happens that I am slowly reading A Woman of the Future (1979) by David Ireland, a novel which also explores the challenges that women’s liberation brought to relationships in the 1970s.  It is a very different book, much more explicit than Narayan’s coy allusions to Raman’s emerging lust.  (A single instance that hints at Raman going too far is expertly deflected by Daisy.)  And yet The Painter of Signs tackles the same confusion as Raman is confronted by long-established rules of behaviour that no longer apply.

Daisy does not need a man, and she is intransigent about her preference for complete independence.  While Raman frets about how to negotiate the simplest of interactions lest he offend her, she does not care whether the relationship progresses, or not.  Raman has no option but to submit to the way she wants things, or suffer her absence.  He is madly in love with a woman who has only a mild interest in him.

The crisis erupts when finally she agrees to marry him in the Gandharva style, a consensual marital union which involves no ceremony or rites and parents were not involved.  In the 70s in Australia, this was called ‘shacking up together’… but Wikipedia tells me that a Gandharva marriage has a more dignified lineage.  It is one of eight classical types of Hindu marriage, and there was nothing scandalous about it:

Dushyanta & Shakuntala in the Hindu epic Mahabharata (Wikipedia)

According to Apastamba Grhyasutra, an ancient Hindu literature, the woman chooses her own husband in Gandharva marriage. They meet each other of their own accord, consent to live together, and their relationship is consummated in copulation born of passion.

This form of marriage did not require consent of parents or anyone else. According to Vedic texts, this is one of earliest and common forms of marriage in Rig Vedic times.

In Rig Vedic opinions and classical literature, the commonly described marriage type was Gandharva, where the woman and the man had met each other in their ordinary village life, or in various other places such as regional festivals and fairs, begun to enjoy each other’s company, and decided to be together. This free choice and mutual attraction were generally approved by their kinsmen. A passage in the Atharvaveda suggests that parents usually let the daughter freely select her lover and directly encouraged her in being forward in affairs of the heart.

Daisy’s parents, however, are nowhere to be seen, and Daisy, moreover, has no concept of mutuality.  Raman is most disconcerted by her continued use of pronouns (me/my; you/your) that never become we/our.  And when Aunty, in a startling declaration of independence announces that she is making a one way trip to Benaras for spiritual reasons, he realises that Daisy is not going to take over Aunty’s role in the kitchen and the laundry, despite his efforts to modernise the house to accommodate her.

Too late, Raman discovers that his ingrained sexism is being subverted.

This bittersweet tragicomedy is the story of a man with love in his heart who tries to adapt to a woman determined to live a different kind of life without the restrictions of the traditional role for women.  It’s written from Raman’s distraught point of view, but it’s not an unsympathetic portrait of Daisy.  She is a strong, purposeful woman with an ambition to serve her country in the best way she can, even at the expense of domestic happiness.

It’s a story that has aged well.

Author: R K Narayan
Title: The Painter of Signs
Publisher: Penguin, 1982, first published 1976
Cover photo: Bruno Barbey/Magnum
ISBN: 9780140185492, pbk., 143 pages
Source: Personal library

Image credit: By Vintage Prints – http://www.oldindianarts.in/search/label/Mahabharata, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18688452