The English Teacher

by R. K. Narayan

  FIRST VINTAGE EBOOKS EDITION, MAY 2012

  Copyright © R. K. Narayan, 1945

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd., London, in 1945, and subsequently published in the United States by Everyman’s Library, an imprint of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., New York, in 2006.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-80382-5

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1_r1

  To My Wife, Rajam

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was on the whole very pleased with my day – not many conflicts and worries, above all not too much self-criticism. I had done almost all the things I wanted to do, and as a result I felt heroic and satisfied. The urge had been upon me for some days past to take myself in hand. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t say, some sort of vague disaffection, a self-rebellion I might call it. The feeling again and again came upon me that as I was nearing thirty I should cease to live like a cow (perhaps, a cow, with justice, might feel hurt at the comparison), eating, working in a manner of speaking, walking, talking, etc. – all done to perfection, I was sure, but always leaving behind a sense of something missing.

  I took stock of my daily life. I got up at eight every day, read for the fiftieth time Milton, Carlyle and Shakespeare, looked through compositions, swallowed a meal, dressed, and rushed out of the hostel just when the second bell sounded at college; four hours later I returned to my room; my duty in the interval had been admonishing, cajoling and browbeating a few hundred boys of Albert Mission College so that they might mug up Shakespeare and Milton and secure high marks and save me adverse remarks from my chiefs at the end of the year. For this pain the authorities kindly paid me a hundred rupees on the first of every month and dubbed me a lecturer. One ought, of course, to be thankful and rest content. But such repose was not in my nature, perhaps because I was a poet, and I was constantly nagged by the feeling that I was doing the wrong work. This was responsible for a perpetual self-criticism and all kinds of things aggravated it. For instance what my good chief Brown had said to us that day might be very reasonable, but it irritated and upset me.

  We were summoned to his room at the end of the day. Under normal conditions, he would welcome us with a smile, crack a joke or two, talk of nothing in particular for a couple of minutes and then state the actual business. But today we found him dry and sullen. He motioned us to our seats and said, ‘Could you imagine a worse shock for me? I came across a student of the English Honours, who did not know till this day that “honours” had to be spelt with a “u”?’ He finished his sentence with a sharp, grim laugh. We looked at each other and were at a loss to know what to reply. Our Assistant Professor, Gajapathy, scowled at us as if it were us who had induced the boy to drop the ‘u’. Brown cleared his throat as a signal for further speech, and we watched his lips. He began a lecture on the importance of the English language, and the need for preserving its purity. Brown’s thirty years in India had not been ill-spent if they had opened the eyes of Indians to the need for speaking and writing correct English! The responsibility of the English department was indeed very great. At this point Gajapathy threw us a further furious look. The chief went on for forty-five minutes; and feeling that it was time to leaven his sermon with a little humour, added: ‘It would be a serious enough blunder even from a mathematics honours man!’

  When going out I was next to Gajapathy. He looked so heavily concerned that I felt like pricking him so that he might vanish like a bubble leaving no trace behind. But I checked myself. It would be unwise: he was my senior in office, and he might give me an hour of extra work every day, or compel me to teach the history of language, of which I knew nothing. I had to bear with him till we reached the hostel gate. He kept glancing at his own shoulder, swelling with importance. He muttered: ‘Disgraceful! I never knew our boys were so bad … We cannot pretend that we come out of it with flying colours …’ I felt irritated and said, ‘Mr Gajapathy, there are blacker sins in this world than a dropped vowel.’ He stopped on the road and looked up and down. He was aghast. I didn’t care. I drove home the point: ‘Let us be fair. Ask Mr Brown if he can say in any of the two hundred Indian languages: “The cat chases the rat”. He has spent thirty years in India.’

  ‘It is all irrelevant,’ said Gajapathy.

  ‘Why should he think the responsibility for learning is all on our side and none on his? Why does he magnify his own importance?’

  ‘Good-night,’ said Gajapathy and was off. I felt angry and insulted, and continued my discussion long after both Gajapathy and Brown were out of my reach. Later when I went for a walk I still continued the debate. But suddenly I saw illumination and checked myself. It showed a weak, uncontrolled mind, this incapacity to switch off. I now subjected myself to a remorseless self-analysis. Why had I become incapable of controlling my own thoughts? I brooded over it. Needless to say it took me nowhere. It left me more exhausted and miserable at the end of the day. I felt a great regret at having spent a fine evening in brooding and self-analysis, and then reached a startlingly simple solution. All this trouble was due to lack of exercise and irregular habits: so forthwith I resolved to be up very early next day, go out along the river on a long walk, run a few yards, bathe in the river and regulate my life thus.

  After dinner my friends in the neighbouring rooms in the hostel dropped in as usual for light talk. They were my colleagues. One was Rangappa who taught the boys philosophy, and the other Gopal of the mathematics section. Gopal was sharp as a knife-edge where mathematical matters were concerned, but, poor fellow, he was very dumb and stupid in other matters. As a matter of fact he paid little attention to anything else. We liked him because he was a genius, and in a vague manner we understood that he was doing brilliant things in mathematics. Some day he hoped to contribute a paper on his subject which was going to revolutionize human thought and conceptions. But God knew what it was all about. All that I cared for in him was that he was an agreeable friend, who never contradicted and who patiently listened for hours, though without showing any sign of understanding.

  Tonight the talk was all about English spelling and the conference we had with Brown. I was incensed as usual, much to the amazement of Rangappa. ‘But my dear fellow, what do you think they pay you for unless it is for dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s?’ Gopal, who had been listening without putting in a word of his own, suddenly became active.

  ‘I don’t follow you,’ he said.

  ‘I said the English department existed solely for dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.’

  ‘Oh!’ he said, opening wide his eyes. ‘I never thought so. Why should you do it?’ His precise literal brain refused to move where it had no concrete facts or figures to grip. Symbols, if they entered his brain at all, entered only as mathematical symbols.

  Rangappa answered: ‘Look here, Gopal. You have come across the expression “Raining cats and dogs”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you actually seen cats and dogs falling down from the sky?’

  ‘No, no. Why?’

  Rangappa would have worried him a little longer, but the college clock struck ten and I said: ‘Friends, I must bid you good-night.’ ‘Good
-night,’ Gopal repeated mechanically and rose to go. Not so the ever-questioning philosopher. ‘What has come over you?’ he asked, without moving.

  ‘I want to cultivate new habits …’

  ‘What’s wrong with the present ones?’ he asked and I blinked for an answer. It was a long story and could not stand narration. Rangappa did not even stir from his seat; the other stood ready to depart and waited patiently. ‘Answer me,’ Rangappa persisted.

  ‘I want to be up very early tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Some time before five.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I want to see the sunrise, and get some exercise before I start work.’

  ‘Very good; wake me up too, I shall also go with you –’ said Rangappa rising. I saw them off at the door. I had an alarm clock on which I could sometimes depend for giving the alarm at the set time. I had bought it years before at a junk store in Madras. It had a reddening face, and had been oiled and repaired a score of times. It showed the correct time but was eccentric with regard to its alarm arrangement. It let out a shattering amount of noise, and it sometimes went off by itself and butted into a conversation, or sometimes when I had locked the room and gone out, it started off and went on ringing till exhaustion overcame it. There was no way of stopping it, by pressing a button or a lever. I don’t know if it had ever had such an arrangement. At first I did not know about its trouble, so that I suffered a great shock and did not know how to silence it, short of dashing it down. But one day I learnt by some sort of instinctive experiment that if I placed a heavy book like Taine’s History of English Literature on its crest, it stopped shrieking.

  I picked up the clock and sat on my bed looking at it. I believe I almost addressed it: ‘Much depends upon you.’ I set it at four-thirty and lay down.

  At four-thirty it shrieked my sleep away. I switched on the light, picked up Taine hurriedly, and silenced it. I went over to Rangappa’s room, stood at the window and called him a dozen times, but there was no answer. As I stood looking at his sleeping figure with considerable disgust and pity, he stirred and asked: ‘Who is there?’

  ‘It is nearing five, you wanted to be called out –’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You said you would come out.’

  ‘Not me –’

  ‘It is about five –’ I said.

  ‘It looks to me like midnight; go back to bed my dear fellow, don’t hang about windows pestering people –’ His voice was thick and the last words trailed off into sleep.

  I stepped out of the hostel gates. Our college and hostel were not more than a couple of hundred yards from the river. There was a narrow lane to be crossed and at the end of it we were on the sands. As I walked down the lane a couple of municipal lamps were still burning, already showing signs of paling before the coming dawn. The eastern skyline was reddening, and I felt triumphant. I could not understand how people could remain in bed when there was such a glory awaiting them outside. I thought of Rangappa. ‘A dry philosopher I suppose – not susceptible to these influences. A hopeless man. In any case not my business …’

  The sand was damp with the morning dew, but as I buried my feet, they felt deep down the warmth of the previous day’s sun. In the half-dark dawn I saw some persons already out at work, fording the river, bathing and washing. There were immense banyan trees hanging over the river, and birds stirred and chirped in their nests. I walked on at an even pace, filling my lungs with morning air, and taking great strides. I felt I was really in a new world. I walked nearly four miles down the bank. Before turning back, I selected a clean spot, undressed, and plunged into the water. Coming on shore and rubbing myself with the towel, I felt I had a new lease of life. No doubt in my village home and in this very river I had often bathed, but at no other time could I remember such a glow of joy as filled me now. How could I account for it? There was something in the deliberate effort, and the hour and the air, and surroundings … Nature, nature, all our poets repeat till they are hoarse. There are subtle, invisible emanations in nature’s surroundings: with them the deepest in us merges and harmonizes. I think it is the highest form of joy and peace we can ever comprehend. I decided to rush back to my table and write a poem on nature.

  I was going to write of the cold water’s touch on the skin, the cold air blowing on chest and face, the rumble of the river, cries of birds, magic of the morning light, all of which created an alchemy of inexplicable joy. I paused for a moment and wondered how this poem would be received in a classroom – the grim tolerance with which boys listen to poetry, the annotator’s desperate effort to convey a meaning, and the teacher’s doubly desperate effort to wrest a meaning out of the poet and the annotator, the essence of an experience lost in all this handling …

  I returned to my room before seven. I felt very well satisfied indeed with my performance. I told myself: ‘I am all right. I am quite sound if I can do this every day. I shall be able to write a hundred lines of poetry, read everything I want to read, in addition to class-work …’ This gave place to a distinct memory of half a dozen similar resolves in the past and the lapses … I checked this defeatism! ‘Don’t you see this is entirely different? I am different today …’

  ‘How?’ asked a voice. I ignored the question and it added, ‘Why?’

  ‘Shut up,’ I cried. ‘Don’t ask questions.’ I myself was not clear as to the ‘Why?’, except that my conscience perpetually nagged over arrears of work, books from libraries and friends lying in a heap on the table untouched, letters unanswered and accumulating, lines of poetry waiting for months to be put on paper, a picture of my wife meant to be framed and hung on the wall, but for months and months standing on the table leaning against the wall in its cardboard mount, covered with dust, bent by the weight of the books butting into it …

  This table assailed my sight as soon as I entered and I muttered ‘Must set all this right’, as I sat down on my chair. I called Singaram our servant. He had been a hostel servant for forty years and known all of us as undergraduates and now as teachers – an old man who affected great contempt for all of us, including our senior professors and principal. He spoke to us with habitual rudeness. Somehow he felt that because he had seen all of us as boys, our present stature and age and position were a make-believe, to which he would be no party. ‘Singaram,’ I called, and he answered from somewhere, ‘You will have to wait till I come. If you hurt your throat calling me, don’t hold me responsible for it …’ In a few minutes he stood before me, a shrunken old fellow, with angry wrinkles on his face. ‘Now what is it this time? Has that sweeper not done her work properly? If she is up to her old tricks …’

  ‘Tell the cook to bring my coffee …’

  ‘So late! Why should you dally over your coffee so long, when you ought to be reading at your table …’

  ‘I went for a bathe in the river, Singaram. I found it very fine …’ He was happy to hear it.

  ‘I’m glad you are ceasing to be the sort who lounges before bathrooms, waiting for a hot bath. A river bath is the real thing for a real man. I am eighty years old, and have never had a day’s sickness, and have never bathed in hot water.’

  ‘Nor in cold water, I think,’ I said as he went away to send me my coffee.

  I made a space on the table by pushing aside all the books; took out a sheet of paper and wrote a poem entitled ‘Nature’, about fifty lines of verse. I read and reread it, and found it very satisfying. I felt I had discharged a duty assigned to me in some eternal scheme.

  I had four hours of teaching to do that day. Lear for the Junior B.A. class, a composition period for the Senior Arts; detailed prose and poetry for other classes. Four periods of continuous work and I hadn’t prepared even a page of lecture.

  I went five minutes late to the class, and I could dawdle over the attendance for a quarter of an hour. I picked out the attendance register and called out the first name.

>   ‘Here, sir –’, ‘Present’, and I marked. Two boys in the front bench got up and suggested ‘Sir, take the attendance at the end of the period.’

  ‘Sit down please, can’t be done. I can’t encroach into the next hour’s work …’

  A babble rose in the class, a section demanding that the attendance be taken immediately and another demanding postponement. I banged the table with my fist and shouted over the din: ‘Stop this, otherwise I will mark everyone absent.’

  ‘Attendance takes up most of our hours, sir.’

  ‘We can’t help it. Your attendance is just as important as anything else. Stop all noise and answer your names; otherwise, I will mark all of you absent …’ At this the boys became quiet, because I out-shouted them. The lion-tamer’s touch! In a sober moment perhaps I would reflect on the question of obedience. Born in different households, perhaps petted, pampered, and bullied, by parents, uncles, brothers – all persons known to them and responsible for their growth and welfare. Who was I that they should obey my command? What tie was there between me and them? Did I absorb their personalities as did the old masters and merge them in mine? I was merely a man who had mugged earlier than they the introduction and the notes in the Verity edition of Lear, and guided them through the mazes of Elizabethan English. I did not do it out of love for them or for Shakespeare but only out of love for myself. If they paid me the same one hundred rupees for stringing beads together or tearing up paper bits every day for a few hours, I would perhaps be doing it with equal fervour. But such reflections do not mar our peace when we occupy the classroom chair. So that I banged the table – shouted till they were silenced, and went through the attendance; all this tittle-tattle swallowed up half an hour.

  I opened my Verity. I had made a pencil mark where I had stopped on the previous day: middle of the first scene in the third act.

  I began in a general way: ‘You will see that I stopped last time where Lear faces the storm. This is a vital portion of this great tragedy …’ The words rang hollow in my ears. Some part of me was saying: ‘These poor boys are now all attention, cowed by your superior force. They are ready to listen to you and write down whatever you may say. What have you to give them in return?’ I noticed that some boys were already sitting up alert, ready to note down the pearls dropping from my mouth … I felt like breaking out into a confession! ‘My dear fellows, don’t trust me so much. I am merely trying to mark time because I couldn’t come sufficiently prepared, because all the morning I have …’ But I caught myself lecturing: ‘This is the very heart of the tragedy and I would like you to follow this portion with the greatest attention …’ I stole a look at the watch … Only fifteen minutes more. ‘As usual I shall read through this scene first, and then I shall take it up in detail …’ I looked at the page on the table – ‘Enter Lear and Fool. Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!…’ As I read on I myself was moved by the force and fury of the storm compressed in these lines. The sheer poetry of it carried me on …