The novel “Guide” is written by famous Indian author R.K Narayan and it was published in 1958. The novel was awarded with Sahitya Academy Award in 1960. The story of novel set in South Indian fictional town, Malgudi, and book story is centers around a protagonist named Raju, a smart guy who work as a guide.
THE GUIDE BY R.K NARAYAN
Summary of The Guide By R.K Narayan
The story of novel begins with major character named Raju, a small kid who lives with his father and mother in South Indian town of Malgudi. His father was shopkeeper who died at young age, since then Raju is taking care of his family by working in his father’s shop near Railway station. One day Raju realized that lots of people who come out from trains are tourists and they always look for guide, so he decided to become a tourist guide of Malgudi.
Raju makes himself a tourist guide but a fabricated one because he gives innocent tourists wrong information about tourist places. Soon Raju became famous tourist in his town and people starts calling him by name “Railway Raju”. There comes a new character named Marco Polo, a research scholar who is passionate about his work, he comes in Malgudi to study about caves, paintings, and ancient temples of town. He invites his beautiful wife, Rosie in Malgudi to explore beautiful paintings and temples of town. He hires Raju as his tourist guide. The story now jumps to Rosie who request Raju to help her in meeting Snake charmer as she wants to see the snake dance. Raju helps Rosie in meeting Snake charmer, when Rosie saw the dance of snake, she starts dancing like a cobra snake in happiness. Raju praises the dance of Rosie; he even told her that she is a greatest dancer in the world.
Later on, we learns that Raju and Rosie are attracting towards each other, Raju urge her to left her arrogant husband who doesn’t love her like him. The relation between Marco and Rosie is not good, it is because Rosie complains that he is always busy in his work and don’t give her time. On the other hand we have Marco, who complaints to her that she always behave like a child and one day in anger he left her in Malgudi town. Rosie is now alone in Malgudi and don’t know how to go back home so she decides to go in Raju’s home to seek help from him. When she goes in Raju’s home his mother was surprised after watching a woman in her home, but slowly-slowly she accepts her. Afterwards, Raju learns through his mother that Rosie is from a lower caste family, she was married to Marco just to raise her standard in society.
When Raju’s neighbor learns about Rosie living in their home, they starts spreading rumor like Raju and his mother are living with a married woman who belongs to a lower caste family. Raju is facing a financial problem in his life as his shop is not running greatly and he is also not getting any new tourists clients because of Marco. The story now introduce Uncle of Raju and brother of his mother who was shocked by the appearance of lower caste woman in their house. Raju and his uncle had a fight in which Raju’s mother take side of his brother, she decide to leave her own home with his brother while Raju and Rosie are left alone in home.
R.K Narayan The Guide Summary
The life of Raju is full of problems now because he was already facing a financial problem and now his mother and uncle also left him alone in house. When Rosie learns about the financial problem of Raju, she decides to pursue her passion which is dancing, she started practicing her art of classical dance. Rosie dropped her English name “Rosie”, and chooses new name which is Nalini. One day, Rosie announced that she is ready to show her dance to the world. Rosie started performing on stage with the help of Raju who became her manager, her debut dance performance became a huge success in town, they made great fortune out of it. The greed for money in Raju increases day after day, he started booking back to back dance performance which makes Rosie tired and bore of dance as her dream was to become a best dancer in the world, not a money making object.
The problem in Raju’s life occurs when he get an unanticipated parcel from Marco which is a book for Rosie, but Raju don’t want Marco in Rosie life again so he hides the book from her. He also hides a letter from Marco which he wrote to give back all her jewelry. Raju sign a fake signature of Rosie as he wants take all her jewelry from Marco without letting Rosie know. Later on, Raju’s crime is exposed and he was sentenced for 2 years in prison. After releasing from prison disappointed Raju is sitting on the banks of River thinking about his future, there he meets a strange man named Velan who consider him as Holy man and starts sharing his problem with him. Raju helps him out in convincing his sister to marry a man to whom Velan has considered for her. As a result Raju became popular in village and transformed himself as a Holy man.
Afterwards, there comes a problem of severe drought in town because of no rain which affects the village and due to misinterpretation villagers starts believing that Raju can bring out rain by taking 2 weeks long fast. Raju started fasting for two weeks to bring out rain, the news of his fast started spreading across the town and he became more and more popular in village. At the last day of his fast Raju became so weak unable to go on the banks of river to carry vigil. Velan helps him in going near the river and in the end he became unconscious after telling Velan that he has a feeling that rain is coming over the mountain.
The book story ends with suspense, we don’t know what happens to Raju, whether rain will come or not.
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