The Vendor of Sweets - R.K.Narayan

Every Indian is familiar with the great author R.K.Narayan, the creator of the fictional yet famous Malgudi. ‘Swami and Friends’ and ‘Malgudi days’ are his best known and widely read books even today. Even a Hindi classic film “Guide” was a movie adaptation of his novel “The Guide”. His fictional stories are pleasures for every reader.

During my journey of graduation, “The vendor of Sweets” and “Swami and his friends” were included in my syllabus. It is a pleasurable retreat to read his books again.

R.K.Narayan is best known for his works set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English, along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.

“The Vendor of Sweets” (1967) is a story of Communication and Generation gap between a father and a son. The story is written in simple English that can be read and understood easily.  Even a young school child’s vocabulary will be able to comprehend the sense of the story.

Let’s first have a look at the major character and the plot overview of the story.

The vendor of sweets from vaidehi Hariyani

This is a story of conflicts between a father and a son. Father is average man with Gandhian ideologies, who is constantly worried about his son’s future. He loves his Son a lot so he forgets about his crushed expectations. Jagan portrays the typical father image who wants his son to run his old generation sweet shop. We see him suffering throughout the story, which makes us feel sad.

On the other hand, Mali belongs to a different generation and don’t think as his father do. Of course we feel bad when Jagan’s expectations are hurt, but practically now it is not at all necessary that a son does the way his father wants.

: What are you writing now?

Mali: A novel

Jagan: Oh wonderful! Where did you learn to write novels?

Son: Are you examining me?

Jagan: Oh no, I’m just interested, that’s all. What story are you writing?

Son: I can’t tell you now. It may turn out to be a poem after all. I don’t know.

Jagan: But don’t you know what you are going to write when you sit down to write?

Mali: No! It’s not like frying sweets in your shop.

This dialogue describes the generation gap and communication gap in relationship of father and son. Many times even we feel that our parents don’t understand us and sometimes even we don’t understand them. A human relation creates a lot of complexities.

 The relationship of Grace and Jagan is my favourite part of the story. It is beautifully described in the story.

 Grace: - “Father, Mo wants me to go back.”

Jagan: - why?

Grace: - “Mo has no more use for me.”

Jagan: - “Use or no use, well you know, I looked after her all her life. If you read our Puranas, you will find that wife’s place is beside her husband whatever may happen.”

Grace is so comfortable to share her sufferings with Jagan. It reflects that “Family isn’t about blood relations”. Here we see Grace more close to Jagan rather than his own son Mali. Jagan also gives some money to his cousin for Grace.

The story itself is quite short, but there are few such incidents like Jagan diving into his reminiscences of childhood, interesting episodes of his youth, his freedom struggle as a Gandhi follower, etc…which makes the story tastier.

Enjoyable book!!!