English Literature GCE A/L Made easy-novel:

The English Teacher 

                               By N. K Narayanan

The story in brief

Krishna is the central character of the story. He is an English Teacher at the College, where he had his education. His wife Susila lives with her parents, after the arrival of their baby daughter, Leela.

The story opens with the presence of Krishna waiting anxiously, the arrival of his wife and the baby daughter to Malgudi, the place where he works as an English teacher at Albert Mission College.

His imagination of the tiresome train journey for a mother and a baby seems utterly absurd. But his extreme desire to live with his wife, and child surpassing all his other interests symbolize his ardent love for Susila, his wife and his baby daughter who would fulfil his intention to lead a perfect life.

A shadow of misfortune falls on Krishna's family as Susila gets succumbed to the mysterious ailment, later diagonised as typhoid. Antibiotics were not discovered then and Susila dies leaving her husband and her baby daughter getting subjected to grief and loneliness.

However Krishna a devoted father brings up the little girl by becoming a father and a mother to the child. In the course of time he's compelled to keep his daughter in his parent's care.

A sudden and unexpected change takes place in his life when he realised that he could communicate with his dead wife through a medium which brings him comfort in distress, though such inclusive could surprise the foreign reader while to the Indian reader and to the writer it seems to be a means of achieving some consolation and find joy believing that his true friend in life, his devoted partner, his loving wife is by him for ever.

Thus the writer Narayan has made an exemplary procedure by beginning the novel in a lovely and humorous manner recalling to Krishna's marriage with Susila, the arrival of the baby girl and the end of their happiness with the unexpected and sudden death of Susila subjecting Krishna to utter misery, loneliness and sorrow.

Mrs. C. Ekanayake, Retd. Specialist Teacher Eng. Lit., St. Anne's College, Kurunegala.