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107 pages

English

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An unusual and witty travel book about the United States of America. At the age of fifty, when most people have settled for the safety of routine, R. K. Narayan left India for the first time to travel through America. In this account of his journey, the writer s pen unerringly captures the clamour and energy of New York city, the friendliness of the West Coast, the wealth and insularity of the Mid-West, the magnificence of the Grand Canyon...Threading their way through the narrative are a host of delightful characters from celebrities like Greta Garbo, Aldous Huxley, Martha Graham, Cartier Bresson, Milton Singer, Edward G. Robinson and Ravi Shankar to the anonymous business tycoon on the train who dismissed the writer when he discovered Narayan had nothing to do with India s steel industry. As a bonus, there are wry snapshots of those small but essential aspects of American life muggers, fast food restaurants, instant gurus, subway commuters, TV advertisements, and American football. An entrancing and compelling travelogue about an endlessly fascinating land.

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USA

Travel writing

États-Unis

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	14 octobre 2000
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184758627
Langue	English

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Extrait

R.K. NARAYAN
My Dateless Diary
An American Journey
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Foreword
New York Days
Through the Mid-West
Chicago
Westward Bound
Los Angeles
Grand Canyon and Beyond
Gurukula in Tennessee
Washington D.C. and Onward
New York
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
MY DATELESS DIARY
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras, South India, and educated there and at Maharaja s College in Mysore. His first novel Swami and Friends (1935) and its successor The Bachelor of Arts (1937) are both set in the enchanting fictional territory of Malgudi. Other Malgudi novels are The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945), Mr. Sampath (1949), The Financial Expert (1952), The Man Eater of Malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), The Painter of Signs (1977), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983), and Talkative Man (1986). His novel The Guide (1958) won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country s highest literary honour. He was awarded in 1980 the A.C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature and in 1981 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. As well as five collections of short stories, A Horse and Two Goats, An Astrologer s Day and Other Stories, Lawley Road, Under the Banyan Tree and Malgudi Days, he has published a travel book, The Emerald Route, three collections of essays, A Writer s Nightmare, Next Sunday and Reluctant Guru, three books on the Indian epics, and a volume of memoirs. My Days.
Foreword
Datelessness has its limit. Sooner or later the seal of date shows up even in the most indifferently maintained diary. For example, the portion describing the progress of my novel, The Guide , is a date-seal, if you are watchful. The following pages arose out of a day-to-day journal kept when I first visited the United States of America on an invitation by the Rockefeller Foundation. Arriving in New York, I crossed to the west coast, went down south as far as New Mexico, came up again along the east coast back to New York, after nearly nine months.
I don t know how to classify this book. It is not a book of information on America, not is it a study of American culture. It is mainly autobiographical, full of I over a short period of time in relation to some moments, scenes and personalities.
This book was written thirty years ago and I do not know, as I ve said at the beginning of this foreword, how far dateless- ness can hold. I do not, for instance, know how many of the friends I mention are still alive or where they are and how many of them are still unseparated. In other ways, too, the country I first visited, has changed. But there are certain things that will endure.
Ultimately, as I ve written elsewhere, America and India are profoundly different in attitude and philosophy, though it would be wonderful if they could complement each other s values. Indian philosophy stresses austerity and unencum- bered, uncomplicated day-to-day living. America s emphasis, on the other hand, is on material acquisition and the limitless pursuit of prosperity. From childhood, an Indian is brought up on the notion that austerity and a contented life are good, a certain otherworldliness is inculcated through Grandmother s tales, the discourses at the temple hall, and moral books. The American has a robust indifference to eternity. Attend church on Sunday and listen to the sermon, but don t bother about the future, he seems to say. Also, he seems to echo Omar Khayyam s philosophy: Dead yesterday and unborn tomorrow, why fret about them if today be sweet? He works hard and earnestly, acquires wealth and enjoys life. He has no time to worry about afterlife, only taking care to draw up a proper will and trusting the funeral home to take care of the rest. The Indian in America who is not able to live wholeheartedly on this basis finds himself in a halfway house, he is unable to overcome his conflicts while physically flourishing on American soil.
But to return to the subject of this book. This is not a well-researched historical study of America and its inhabitants, merely a record of first impressions of people and places in that country. It should perhaps be read as a sort of subjective minor history of a country that I love.
Mysore
R. K. Narayan
March 1988
1
New York Days
Over a Cup of Coffee
Y ESTERDAY , at the self-service cafeteria, I made the mistake of waiting for someone to ask what I wanted. Today I know better. You enter the cafeteria, pull out a check (on which prices are punched) from a machine, pick up a tray and spoons, and study the various dishes displayed on the long counter under a glass cover, trying to judge what s what and how far a vegetarian could venture-whether that attractive yellow stuff might not be some prohibited food such as lobster; the men here evidently do not like anyone to stare so long at their display; one of them asks in a surly manner, What do you want? (instead of the ever-polite Can I help you? ) They are black-haired, hatchet-faced men, possessing a Latin temper perhaps; not the blond, soft-spoken Mayflower descendants. How differently you got through a restaurant-session in Mysore. You took your seat, asked for the morning paper and a glass of water-just to mark time before deciding whether you should have Masala Dosai again or Idli, or as you generally felt inclined (but resisted) both; but indecision could never be an end in itself, and you devised a further postponement of issues, by asking, when the reading of the paper was over, What have you? A routine question. The waiter would give a quick recital of the day s menu-nothing new or startling, but you enjoyed hearing it all over again. Coming from a civilization used to this pace of life, I felt unequal to the speed of a Broadway Cafeteria. If you hesitated with the tray in hand, you blocked the passage of others and made them silently fret. I fumbled and obstructed only for a day. Today I was as good as my neighbour. I picked up my breakfast and assembled it with deftness, and had on the whole acquired so much smartness that when I approached coffee and was asked, Black or white? Neither , I said haughtily. The server looked up rather puzzled. What do you mean? he asked. I want it neither black nor white, but brown which ought to be the colour of honest coffee-that s how we make it in South India where devotees of perfection in coffee assemble from all over the world . He must have thought me crazy, but such leisurely talk is deliberate, like the extra-clutches on the track of a train rolling downhill. I wanted to apply a deliberate counter-action to Broadway s innate rush, just to study the effect. It could prove disastrous as I learnt later about an Indian anthropologist who went to an Automat and nearly paralysed all business while he beamed on every one with, Well, my man, how are you? or Where do you come from? or How many children have you? and so forth. He attempted to make genial conversation with all and sundry, got in everybody s way, fumbled with his purse, asking elaborately: Can you give me change please? at the wrong place, while all the time five-cent coins were rolling out, as from the mint, at the right place. He felt so discouraged at the end of it that he slipped away losing all hope of mastering the art of ordering food in New York; he subsisted for a week on hot chestnut sold at the street corner.
Today I wanted to discourse on the philosophy of brown coffee, but there were other breakfasters, holding their trays, standing behind me inexorably, to secure their coffee and race for a table space. They were too well-mannered to push, but I knew they were fretting inside, each must have had a dozen things to do after breakfast, and how dare I block their business? Still I was in a communicative mood; I smiled at those behind me and said, Sorry . I told the coffee server, When you have more time, come to me, I ll tell you all about brown coffee . I bore away my tray and sat at a secluded table and began to work my way through cornflakes and milk, marmalade and toast, which were to be my main diet for the next ten months. A man in a sports-jacket came over and asked, Do you mind? Not at all, I said. He set his tray on the table, and said, I overheard your remark about coffee. You know of any special trick in making it? God-given opportunity for me to start off a lecture on coffee, its place in South India (in the North they favour tea), its place in our social life, how the darkest condemnation of a family would be the warning uttered at their back, Their coffee is awful , how at wedding parties it was the responsibility of the bride s father to produce the best coffee and keep it flowing all day for five hundred at a time; how decoction drawn at the right density, on the addition of fresh warm milk turned from black to sepia, from which ultimately emerged a brown akin to the foaming edge of a river in flood, how the whole thing depended upon one s feeling for quality and eye for colour; and then the ding of sugar, just enough to mitigate the bitterness but without producing sweetness. Coffee making is a task of precision at every stage. I could not help mentioning my mother who has maintained our house-reputation for coffee undimmed for half a century. She selects the right quality of seeds almost subjecting every bean to a severe scrutiny, roasts them slowly over charcoal fire, and knows by the texture and fragrance of the golden smoke emanating from the chinks in the roaster whether the seeds within have turned the right shade and then grinds them into perfect grains; everything has to be right in this business. A daughter-in-law who comes into the family will have to go through several weeks of initiation before she may dare to make the family coffee. Three spoons for six persons. Place the powder at the bottom of a stainless steel vessel and pour boiling water over it and then strain it slowly t