Living on the seam of two worlds: Reconstructing history through memory and oral ontology in Rasipuram Narayanaswami’s The Guide

Abstract

This paper examines how R. K.Narayan depicts the pre-colonial India and the effects of colonial intrusion in the Indian society. In The Guide the Indian past is embodied in the peoples collective memory which is reflected in arts, specific locations, myths, legends and spatial configurations. Narayan through the use of oral ontology gives a succinct presentation of the gradual erosion of the Indian culture and the dismemberment of the Indian people. The paper adopts a textual analysis, anchoring on Ngugi’s approach on memory in Something Torn and New to explore how Narayan in The Guide questions the hegemonic discourse that redefines the issues of civilization and the European claim of being a superior culture. In the novel, Narayan has memorialized “immaterial sites of memories” which are oral ontologies in the form of dances, songs, myths, folktales, ceremonies, proverbs and material sites of memory such as statues, inscriptions on caves, artifacts especially of the Indian culture to showcase the need to replace the colonial memory with Indian collective memory.