Under the Banyan tree is an interesting story written By famous Indian author, R.K Narayan. The story was originally published in 1985.
Under the Banyan Poem Tree By R.K Narayan
Summary of Under the Banyan Tree By R.K Narayan
R.K Narayan’s “Under the Banyan tree” story begins village, Somal, a small village of India where around 300 people lives. In village, there is small water tank where villagers bathe their cattle and also drink water from the same tank.
The water tank is so dirty that it spreads diseases like Malaria and typhoid. The main character of story is Nambi, an old and uneducated storyteller who tells stories to people. No one can guess Nambi’s age by his appearance, when someone ask him his accurate age, he does not tell them and distracts people’s mind with his stories.
Although, Nambi is illiterate but still he is sharp enough to create interesting stories. He can fascinate anyone by his entertaining stories. Nambi tell one story every month to his villager and takes around 10 days to complete his story. He lives in small temple of village, there is a banyan tree in temple where people gathers to listen Nabmi’s stories. Nambi spend most of his time under Banyan tree.
At evening, villagers gathers under Banyan tree for their entertainment. The people loves Nambi’s observation, sometimes he take a break before telling stories and pray to goddess to provide power to him so that he can tell new story.
He prays so that people can believe that goddess provide him power to tell stories. The villagers comes temple at every friday evening, at the same time Nambi blows lamp so that people gather under Banyan tree. The Burning lamp is a signal to villagers to gather at Banyan tree because goddess has ask him to tell one more story. Whenever Nambi wants to tell story, he blows lamp. When villagers see lamp burning, they understand that new story is ready.
Nambi starts his story with a very interesting way, like he ask question before starting story, he talks about kings, Mahal and capitals. He used to tell everything with detail so that it can create a big picture in people’s mind. It take great time for Nambi to create story. He sometimes raise his voice or down his voice while telling story. He tells about villains, Heroes and super natural powers. The best thing about Nambi is that he never repeat his old stories.
One day, something strange happened, Nambi burn lamp and people as usual gathers at Banyan tree. He starting telling story about King Vikram Aditya and his Mantri but suddenly he stopped while telling story. He repeated same sentence while telling story and his voice was becoming unclear.
He prays to goddess to provide him power but suddenly he forget rest of the story. It was very humiliating moment for Nambi as villagers were waiting in front of him what he would say next. As Nambi could not tell rest of the story, villagers started going home.
Nambi feels like that he is getting old, and not worth to tell stories. Few people were still sitting with him, Nambi tells them I don’t know how I forget the story.
Next day, Nambi again burn the lamp and people again started gathering faithfully. They forgot what happened yesterday. That day Nambi had worshipped to goddess for whole day. He started his story again and tells story for an hour.
He was praying to goddess to not to leave him in middle of story. After few minutes, Nambi stopped again and he did not have words to start the story. Like yesterday, villagers get up silently and started going home. But Nambi doesn’t feel bad about it.
After 2 days, Nambi start one more story but this time his story couldn’t even last for an hour. And people as usual ignore him and started going. The people also started ignoring Nambi’s lamp which he used to blow. Nambi started feeling humiliation.
He locked himself in one of temple room and used to eat very less food. One day at evening, he burns lamp again in a hope people would gather again to listen his story. But very few people were gathered to listen him as people weren’t taking him seriously.
Nambi keep waiting for people and doesn’t tell story as very few people were gathered. Next day, he goes to every villagers and tell them that he has wonderful story to tell. So you all have to come under Banyan tree at today evening. The villagers feel good as Nambi got his power back.
That evening, a large number of people gathered under Banyan tree. But they doesn’t know that Nambi isn’t gonna tell story this time. Nambi says I’m getting old, the power which goddess gave me are taken from me. What is the use of this lamp that I light if there is no oil in it. These were the last words of Nambi which he said to villagers. Afterwards, he goes away from there.
The innocent villagers don’t get what Nambi said to them. They goes to him at inside of temple to ask what happened ? But Nambi did not have anything to say them. Maybe those were his last words which Nambi said to them. Thereafter, he never spoke to anyone.
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