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Having faith in others is easy; it’s having faith
in oneself that’s a little less of a picnic. For example, Raju the corrupt
railway guide in R.K. Narayan’s The Guide is not your usual godman.
Well, of course, for one thing he can’t be, considering he was only taking
temporary refuge in a village temple after being released from prison when
he got mistaken for a wandering Sadhu by the villagers. And since it
had seemed a better alternative than going back to his hometown in disgrace,
he had decided to live the part, given the convenience of his new found
lifestyle.
But being a godman in a village is a whole
different ballgame than being a godman in the city as Raju finds out when
the region faces drought and famine conditions. For he is now expected to go
on a fast to get the rains to come.
By then he’s also gone too far into the game to cop
out. So he fasts and, in the process, the news spreads all over and before
we know it Raju’s become a phenomenon getting coverage in the press – both in
India and abroad. Even the government sends doctors to look after him. So,
do the rains come ultimately?
In the book Narayan leaves it ambiguous, telling us
only that in the end Raju says to Velan, his chief devotee, that it’s
raining in the hills and he can feel it coming under his feet and up his
legs – before he finally collapses. What we discover instead is that the
villagers have faith in him and he has faith in their faith. But does he
have faith in himself and does it come easy? No way. It never does.
What happened was, Raju had narrated his whole
squalid pre-guru life to Velan through on entire night. Perhaps it was a
cathartic effort; may be he just wanted out any which way, but one thing he
was sure of was that Velan would be disgusted by his sordid past and expose
him for a charlatan. “Now you have heard me fully,” he says.
“Yes, Swami,” replies Velan and Raju is taken aback
at still being addressed as Swami. That’s when the realization dawns on him
that if he doesn’t have faith in himself, all the other peoples’ faith in
him will finish him before he knows where he is. Fortunately it does finish
him but not before he knows what to do about it. On the twelfth day of his
fast Raju goes down to the river to pray for one last time. Then the truth
comes raining down on him. |
