The short fiction Under the Banyan Tree by R K Narayan

Before I read it, I think the protagonist, a story-teller, might be a mysterious wizard. He tells a lot of fables, anecdotes and soothsaying, both historical and present characters might be made up in his stories. Since he is a prophet, he has the highest social status in the local and all of villagers respect and worship him. However, I am confused after reading. What does it happen? I ask myself and keep thinking. Although the end of the story is ambiguous, it is a long aftertaste.

The story-teller is an old men named Nambi who is illiterate but is able to attract all of the villagers and dominate their spiritual world by telling stories. The villagers live an isolated and backwardness life, they are completely enchanted by his stories because listening stories is the only recreation in their hard and drab lives. Usually, Nambi invents his stories at the rate of one a month and each story takes nearly ten days to narrate. There is a big banyan tree in the village. When he lights a small lamp and places it in a niche on the moonlight nights, the villagers gather under the banyan tree and wait for his story. Before he opens the story, he sits to meditates deeply as long as he like, with his eyes shut, and the villagers wait patiently. The first day, he often conveys the setting of the tale, and two or three days later, he opens the story again and develops the plot in details. By the time the next moon peeps over the hillock, he is ready for another story. He never repeats the same kind of story, and the villagers consider him a sort of miracle, quoted his words of wisdom, and prostrate before the Goddess when the story ends. However, one day, Nambi has trouble in getting beyond his previous stories and stumbling in his narration. He is so sad that he realizes he has become a dotard. So he stops to tell stories and keeps silent in the rest of his life.

The end of the story gives me a thought-provoking idea. Nambi says, ‘ it is the Mother who gives the gifts; and it is she who takes away the gifts.’ ‘But what is the use of the jasmine when it has lost its scent? What is the lamp for when all the oil is gone?’ That seems to be his inner monologue, but also is suitable to the villagers lives, I think. Maybe the story-teller no longer tells is a favorable turn for the villagers, they no longer live on an epic scale, they can start to a open, future-oriented new life.