“Faith” in R. K. Narayan and
‘The Painter of Signs’
The history of the faith in Gods and religion is in some ways typical of a wide range of Indian experience in India. R. K. Narayan’s ‘The Painter of Signs’ is the most provocative of this narrative. It sensitively reflects a sonata of innocence and credulity on the part of rural people.
R. K. Narayan reveals a number of glimpses of religious ethos through his representation of Indian village culture and temperament. His various references to the temple, river, myth, religious and sacred places and the faith in these things symbolize the religious past of India that not only survives but moulds and shapes the new culture.
We know that the rustics believe in rebirth and to have the best form of life in the next birth, they perform various rituals. After the cremation, a cow is gifted to a Brahmin because they strongly trust that such a sacrifice and gift would help the dead man’s soul to ford a difficult river in the next world. His reminiscences are outstanding:
‘My father was a priest and officiated at birthdays, funerals, and all kinds of religious functions and brought home his fee in the form of rice and vegetables......’
And Raman’s aunt wishes to follow those shastras. She is the real heroine of ancient times. She draws a series of believable climaxes and concludes:
‘It is the duty of the living to help the dead
with proper rituals.’
One realizes a pattern of faith in succession. The aunt imbibed religious values on Raman. We come across Raman brooding over God’s Omnipresence.
“Past is gone, present is going, and tomorrow is day after tomorrow’s yesterday. So why worry about anything? God is in all this. He is one and indivisible. He is in yesterday, tomorrow, and today. If you think it over properly, you will never sigh for anything coming or going”
One realizes a religious pattern of life as well as a Hindu truth in the role of Raman’s aunt. She is filled with a feeling of holiness and felt gratified at the thought of God’s world. She believes God’s all pervasive power and control. She considered that God contributed her to look after her nephew. The aunt’s insinuation, though it irritates Raman, is full of faith:
“You see, on Friday’s I usually drop a ten-paisa coin into the money chest kept at the temple. Never failed even once these thirty years since I came to this house to look after you. That god protects us, remember you may put the coin in whenever you pass that way;…”
She feels disappointed for she can’t get time to visit the sacred places. She regrets her attachment with the ocean of samsara for she is detached from the world of spiritual satisfaction. She earnestly exposes it to Raman:
“I have drifted in the ocean of samsara
for countless years, don’t you think?”
His aunt, deeply involved in her devotion to God and the possibility of getting salvation by the grace of God, wishes to await death at Banaras. However, Raman passes through a number of experiences in his aunt’s life, he recollects the absolute faith in god his aunt generated in him and her acceptance of ‘Divine Will’ and the various forms of devotion. Raman is proud of his aunt’s faith in the gods. He boasted:
“Anyway, my aunt has complete trust in
the gods and possesses greater serenity
than anyone else I have known”
Thus, Raman’s view is orchestrated by R.K. Narayan. Then, the aunt convinces Raman of her faith in salvation:
"A visit to Kasi is the end. I may live for ten days or ten years or twenty, it is immaterial how long one lives after this stage. It is the ambition of everyone of my generation to conclude this existence at Kasi, to be finally dissolved in the Ganges. That is the most auspicious end to one’s life”
Thus, it seems that the novel has another sufficiently important motive that is renunciation but it doesn’t influence the central action of the novel.
Moreover, R.K. Narayan attempts to identify the distinguishing characteristic of the rustics, faith in God through Daisy’s visits to the villages to create awareness to control births. Through population control campaign, R.K. Narayan hits upon the credulity of the rustics. When Daisy insisted the villagers to limit the number of children and suggested no births in the village for the next five years, the elders of the village asked: “God gives us children. How can we reject His gift?”
A hundred year old man said in a trumping voice: Our shastras say that the more the children in a home, the more blessed it becomes”
The old man in the same village professes about the temple he had built. Once the goddess appeared to him in a dream and commanded him to build a temple and so he constructed it by making it his sole mission in life. The people of the village believe that the barren women come and pray there for three days and conceive within thirty days. It is the rustics’ strong faith that the old man can speak to the plants, mountains, birds and animals who all obey him.
At the end of the novel, R.K. Narayan deals with Raman’s aunt and her faith in Moksha (salvation). Throughout her narration she laces stories of departure from Sansar to achieve the ultimate goal of life.
