Abstract
A blurb, from a review in the Observer, printed on the
back cover of the Penguin version of The Painter of Signs
states that the novel "manages simultaneously to be funny
and desperate, topical and timeless, sardonic and fresh and
as seemingly natural and uncomplicated as milking a goat."
Though the pastoral allegory is strikingly gratuitous, this
example is especially pertinent as an underlying motif for
this paper because it reflects the popular recourse to the
seemingly "natural and uncomplicated" aspect of Narayan's
work. This readiness to classify R.K. Narayan as a writer
who depicts the "natural" state of India does a disservice to
the layered subtleties of Narayan's work, to a novel such as
The Painter of Signs, and especially to the complex cultural
and social milieu of India that is emblematic of colonial
imperatives and postcolonial negotiations