My Days by R.K. Narayan- summary

My Days

R.K. Narayan

R.K Narayan is one of the leading writers of Indian English Literature. The prose piece ‘My Days’ is an extract from his autobiography My Days. In this part he talks about his infatuation over several girls and his love for a woman and finally how it has ended up in marriage in a humoristic manner.

The beginning of the prose shows him as an immature one who falls in love with all the girls whom he comes across. He begins in a funny way about his love sickness and his longing for love. In 1920’s the society in which he was brought up was a strict one where boys and girls were segregated.  The books he read prepared his mind to fall in love with someone, whereas his society restricted it. Due to this he suffered with impossible love sickness. He fell in love with many but everything was one sided. Any girl who looked at him immediately became his lady love. Thus he fell in love with a girl in green sari who lived in the next street of the narrator. She was a sister- in –law of an engineer. He followed her everyday and wished to do some engineering business. It might help him to have contact with her brother-in –law and thus he could propose her. But suddenly the girl was not seen anywhere. Before falling in sadness, the narrator found another lady love who used to stand on the terrace to dry her hair. She was not a beautiful girl but he loved her. Later he realised that she was looking at all who pass by the street. This made him to lose interest on her. Soon he found another girl who got his attention. She was going to Maharani College and this too was a one-sided love. Though one-sided, such interest made him to feel with purpose.

Among his friends, they discussed about girls and this created an urge for him to fall in love. This took him to an extent of falling in love with a lady doctor, a British lady, who attended his mother. Later he describes about his infatuation for a pen friend, who lived in England. Every week they wrote letters. She wrote impersonal letters about her hobby and other things. Whereas, he wrote personal letters filled with his emotions towards her. She objected to receive such letters from him but continued to write, which encouraged him to write.

The narrator finally experiences the real love. In July 1933, he went to Coimbatore to drop his sister. As he did not have any urgency to return, he stayed in his sister’s house for some time. There he got glimpse of a girl and attracted towards her. She used to come out of her house only to fetch water from the street pipes and returned home immediately. He loved her and longed to get full vision of her. Her father, a school headmaster, was a friend of his sister’s family. The narrator became friendly with the girl’s father. As they both loved books and literary matters, they became close. Every day he met the girl’s father in the school campus and discussed about worldly affair.

One day when the girl’s father was chatting politics with him, the narrator finally announced his love for the girl. Due to his societal constraints he could not express his love to the girl so he uttered his desire to the girl’s father about marriage. The girl’s father was shocked and did not know to react. In his society, only parents decide about marriages but here the narrator spoke directly to the girl’s father about his interest towards the girl. Diplomatically the father said that this has to be consulted with the family members and then the horoscope should be matched. Another day the girl’s father asked him what he would do for living. This question has made the narrator to understand the headmaster’s interest on him. As his work “How to write Indian Novel” got published recently in a famous magazine ‘Punch’, he confidently boosted up about his promising carrier as a freelance writer. When the girl’s father asked him to get some work in Bangalore with his father’s influence, the narrator rejected this idea by explaining his economical principle. Neither his economic principle nor his expression of interest for the girl in modern ways damaged his marriage proposal. His horoscope played a villain role in his life. As they are from the conservative family, they bothered much about the matching of the horoscope. So the headmaster rejected his proposal for the marriage. The narrator suffered with a feeling of love failure. He could not eat food, stayed alone by rejecting other’s company. He used to go for walk in the evening without looking at others and by avoiding the direction of the street tap. He even self-dramatised the situation which was viewed with sympathy by others. His sister tried to cheer him up in many ways. He wrote a play named “The Home of Thunder” during that time which was a tragedy where all the characters die. That drama reflected his sad mood.

The headmaster was moved by the narrator’s pensive mood. The headmaster discussed the horoscope with his colleagues. Finally he sent the narrator to meet an old man Chellappa-Sir regarding the horoscope match. The old man was shouting with anger that he is not Brahma to change the horoscope. If they want to proceed with the marriage by leaving the matching of horoscope, they could continue with that. But the position of the stars could not be altered by humans. Finally the marriage was conducted grandly in spite of all the difficulties.