“This is an advantage that age bestows on a man even if he is an utter ass!”

What follows is a paper by the legendary Indian photojournalist, T. S. Satyan, read on October 10, 2006 in Mysore at the international seminar to celebrate the birth centenary of eminent novelist & writer, R. K. Narayan. The seminar was organized by the Central Sahitya Akademi, Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and the Central Institute of Indian Languages. [Thank you Mr. Satyan for allowing this to be republished on Tiffinbox!]

I feel honoured to be asked to present a paper at this scholarly forum to mark the birth centenary of R.K. Narayan.  I am not an academic. I am only a foot soldier of Indian photography. My only credentials to speak on this occasion are that I knew Narayan since the early 1940s. I benefited from his unalloyed affection and guidance for some six decades. And I kept in touch with him till his end.

Being a photographer I am more interested in presenting a portrait of Narayan as I knew him than making an elaborate critical assessment of his works.

When I was in the Maharaja’s College in the early 1940s––where Narayan had studied earlier––I was greatly attracted by newspapers and picture magazines. I had already started contributing photographs to the Illustrated Weekly of India. Initially, I shared my father’s belief that the best way to improve one’s English was to read The Hindu regularly. However, its editorials put me off. The part of the paper that interested me most was the Sunday column by R.K.Narayan. He would write an essay or story which made delightful reading.  Reading his essays I felt that Narayan was chatting with me and making me laugh. I mentioned this to my English teacher, M.N. Parthasarathy––Pachu to his friends and students. “If you are interested in pursuing a career in freelance journalism, you better meet RK Narayan, our family friend. It might help,” he said. Pachu asked me to read Narayan’s first three novels––Swami and Friends (l935), The Bachelor of Arts (l937) and The Dark Room (l938). They had already been published in England and raised him to the status of a celebrity.

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