Interesting slice-of-life novel set in pre-Independence India, about a man who desperately wishes for wealth--but when he finally achieves it, he learns the ultimate irony: Wherever you go, there you are.
It doesn't matter that your money gives you power (of a sort--a quite limited and illusory sort). It doesn't matter that your money allows you to tell people what to do. It doesn't matter that your wealth gives you importance and makes you "a busy man whose time is valuable." You still bring to your new station the same you: unchanged and insecure as ever.
Actually it's even worse than that: in addition to bringing your unchanged self to your new station, you're also beset by new worries: how to manage the wealth you've accumulated, how to hang on to it, how to keep all the other people (now beneath you) from getting their grubby paws on it, and so on. And of course all this has little to nothing to do with leading a happy marriage or family, achieving one's intrinsic goals, finding one's calling, or living a centered and fulfilling life.
And if you forget these real values while chasing the false idol of wealth for its own sake, fate has a knack for putting you right back where you were, or worse.
I'm not sure I enjoyed this story exactly, but I learned from it: the main character does teach, quite well, certain anti-models for how not to navigate life, how not to behave, and how not to respond to earnest, good advice:
"Follow these rules."
"Will they produce results?"
"Who can say?" the priest answered. "Results are not in our hands."
"Then why should we do all this?"
"Very well, don't; nobody compels you to."
R.K. Narayan is a new author to me, he's a diverting writer with elements of Dickens (odd meetings and coincidences and memorable, idiosyncratic characters) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (a kooky, magical story with an odd anti-hero), and it's clear that this author influenced Salman Rushdie. I'll be reading another of Narayan's novels next: Waiting for the Mahatma.
Notes/Quotes:
* "...there are certain practices which become neutralized the moment they are clothed in words."
* He does forty days of meditation and prayer to the goddess Lakshmi, and there's a great scene where the reader follows his wandering thoughts just like we might experience when we try to meditate. He comes out of the forty days in worse straits than before: he loses his little lending business, starts to have an even worse scarcity mindset, and feels like people are trying to get the best of him--including the priest that recommended he do the meditation in the first place.
* He has tremendous egoic attachment to what other people think of him
* He keeps running into a journalist, the journalist sells him an explicit manuscript about sex and marriage; he takes over publishing the book and suddenly becomes wealthy doing so.
* Later he becomes embarrassed by most things in his life: by the book he published, by the publishing business, "did you ever notice how I have managed not to bring a single copy into this house? I don't want our [son] Balu even to know that there is such a book."
* His wife (suddenly, oddly) becomes a textured character; earlier in the story she was a totally flat character. "She understood that the best way to attain some peace of mind in life was to maintain silence; ultimately, she found that things resolve themselves in the best manner possible or fizzled out. She found that it was only speech which made existence worse every time. Lately, after he had become an affluent, she found that her husband showed excessive emphasis, rightly or wrongly, in all matters; she realized that he had come to believe that whatever he did was always right. She did her best not to contradict him: she felt that he strained himself too much in his profession, and that she ought not to add to his burden."
* The main character is further embarrassed by his son's indolence, lack of academic aptitude, etc. "Margayya's money and contacts would be worth nothing if he could not see his son through."
* The story also a "you can't buy class" story: you can't really change your station even after you obtain money. It's not in your hands, it's in the hands of your children or your grandchildren to change their station--if they can.
* When Margayya receives a (false) message that his son is dead, the story begins to take on kind of a Salman Rushdie (or even a Gabriel Garcia Marquez) flavor.
* A family secret is revealed to the reader: Margayya's great grandfather and brothers were low-caste corpse-bearers, fortunately that was three generations ago and now nobody knows.
* He dreams up a ponzi-type lending business: "...his mind was busy formulating a new plan which was going to rocket him to undreampt-of heights of financial success."
* India during the 1940s was a tremendously cash-based economy with people storing bundled up currency notes in boxes, hiding spots, in all kinds of ways: the main character wants to attract people to deposit their currency with him, and he guarantees artificially high rates to do so; then through a series of coincidences is ruined when all of his depositors want to pull their money. He loses everything, even including the house that he bought for his son.