In all the stories and authors featured in “Global Tales”, R.K. Narayan is the most respected and nicely-recognized author. From the quick description of him at the end of the book, he created a space for himself called “Malgudi” and created his personal characters, like a puppet master generating his personal puppets from cloth and giving them life when he does the show. His stories are universal, almost certainly due to the fact the themes and characters of the stories are straightforward to determine with. He ought to be ninety-seven this year (year 2000). From what I know, his other books include things like “ Malgudi Days”, where “ An Astrologer’s Day” is taken from.
Narayan is a very observant man, sharp and sarcastic at the same time. His sarcasm become humour and it is not quite obvious sometimes. We have to read amongst the lines to catch the joke. He is incredibly descriptive in his writing and his planet comes alive with the mood by way of the informative and colourful description, the qualities and the internal thinkings of the characters, the suspense and the dialogues made use of. I in particular admire the way he brings the story to a close, not too dramatic, yet satisfactory. Some writers typically leave an unfinished ending where it is up to the reader to choose, treating this as their style and adding a sense of mystery to the story. On the other hand, these are occasionally the most horrible sort of ending, not only irritating, but also annoying. The ending is the element that wraps up the complete story, but the writer left it out, like a jigsaw piece went missing. It is not a complete piece of writing. Lastly, I locate R.K. Narayan to be naughty at occasions, from the way he phrased his sentence, and the sarcasm, but we like it.
In “ An Astrologer’s Day”, an astrologer meets a stranger and tells his fortune. Surprisingly, the “fake” astrologer managed to inform what was true for the stranger. Then, it is only when the astrologer reveals his secret, did we know how his “magic” worked.
We are brought into the planet of the streets of India exactly where there is small lighting but “a bewildering cris-cross of light rays and moving shadows”. The in-depth description offers us the setting, which can be observed in our minds. Not only working with the sense of…