R.K. Narayan in his book A Story-Teller's World writes about his own world, his role as a story-teller in Indian society, the nature of that society, the life of the people, and the way the story-teller takes the details of that world and transforms them through narrative. The nature of story-telling is the primary issue, and each essay in the book should be seen as a separate story. These are fact-based stories, but how the writer shapes them gives them their meaning, their effect, their reason for existence.
In the first essay in the book, Narayan discusses precisely the art of the story-teller and the way in which the story-teller uses language, stock characters and situations, symbols, and the elements of life to entertain and enlighten. Narayan is talking here specifically of a certain type of traditional narrative that has been handed down over time, the legends and the myths that have particular meaning to the Indian people. The story-teller is part of the Indian village, said to be isolated from the mainstream of modern life:
Looking at them from outside, one may think that they lack the amenities of modern life; but actually they have no sense of missing much; on the contrary, they give an impression of living in a state of secret enchantment (3).
Part of this enchantment is their relationship to the story-teller and the stories he tells. Narayan is not himself a story-teller in this sense, but he is making the analogy between what he does as a chronicler of Indian life and what the story-teller does on a smaller scale for the people of one village. The story-teller teaches a lesson, and in these essays Narayan teaches lessons.
He is more explicit about his own role in the essay "The Problem of the Indian Writer," and what he says here is important for much of what follows in his book. It is clear that the key element in modern Indian history, the element that colors much of what takes place today in s...