The Painter of Signs

Author : R.K. Narayan

Genre : Romance, humor

Written by R.K. Narayan, The Painter of Signs is a smooth work of fiction, the entire plot being very simple which can well be encapsulated into a short story. The beauty of the story lies in the way in which the author has handled the romantic angle between the two lead characters, Raman and Daisy.

But as R.K. Narayan mentioned somewhere in one of his essays, "It’s a bad habit to give out the entire story in a few words, on which the author must have worked laboriously to notch up over 80,000 words".

Anyway, what I’m going to write is something that can induce my reader to read The Painter of Signs.

Maldgudi is the little fictional town in South India where the story takes place. Many of R.K. Narayan's are woven around this town. His novel can give you a bright insight into the kind of life led by the people in South India, the daily dose of coffee ,the market place and so on.

Raman is a simple painter, as u might have already guessed ,the painter of Malgudi, who resides in a house near a river. Daisy, a new entrant to the author’s fictional town, is a social servant bent on bringing India’s population down. The intimacy between the two characters is well portrayed, without going overboard. I remember an essay by the same author where he says that he better likes to shut the door even when his characters are in deep love, a very unusual thought I would say.

The story is written in a particular style where the author narrates the story in a third person stand as if he was in the minds of Raman, a lot of his thoughts and comments add spice to the thrilling narration.

I can assure you a pleasant read and a feeling of being with Raman in Malgudi, in a very Narayan style.