The English Teacher

The English Teacher, by Indian novelist R. K. Narayan, tells the story of a young professor, Krishna, who must adapt first to family life with his wife and daughter and then to his wife's death. This short novel, written in simple prose, examines many large issues--love, death, loyalty, fate--but always with equanimity. Krishna teaches himself, and the novel tries to teach us, to be, as it is put by the novel's last words, "grateful to life and death."

Set a few years before India gained its independence, the novel begins with Krishna living in a hostel near his university, the same one he had occupied as a student, and going about his routine. He is not very happy as an English teacher. He soon learns that his wife and daughter are coming to live with him, and with this his life gently changes. The now-united family rents a house, and Krishna finds contentment in their daily affairs. He and his wife Susila raise their daughter Leela from an infant to a boisterous young girl, and they even think of purchasing a new, bigger house, but Susila contracts typhoid and after a long illness dies. All this occupies the first half of the novel, and provides a foundation of normalcy, of everyday lived reality, for the more philosophical second half.

After the poignantly precise imagery of the mourners' journey to the cremation grounds, the reader emerges into a vague and dismal retrospect. Feverless days pass unwanted; the professor endures his classes; the child grows. Then one day a boy accosts Krishna after class: He has a letter to him from his wife. A local man, this boy's father, has accidentally found a contact with the afterlife and has received a message specifically for some man named Krishna. So Krishna begins anew, making regular visits to this medium, conversing with his wife in eloquent detail. Although the possibility of fraud is left open until the end, when Krishna has a vision of Susila, his