31 India – RK Narayan – The Painter of Signs – January 2016 (Score 6.35)

We drop immediately into the crowded world of milling people, traffic, life (for some at least) being dictated by the doubtful prognostications of astrologers who dictate the exact timing of the fixing to a wall advertising the opening of a new correspondence course legal practice.

Raman is the sensible sign writer caught up in this affair, not even paid yet for his work, apart from a small deposit to buy the materials.

The story is written in a humourous way and we watch his trials and tribulations as he tries to get payment from shifty customers who had hidden their shiftiness well until payday after the signs were erected.

Then he meets a new customer, a girl called Daisy whom he hopes will become the love of his life. She wants him to travel round remote mountain villages with her, painting family planning messages on the walls. She works for the family planning clinic and has an ambition to reduce, drastically, the birth rate in her part of India.

After a good bit of to-ing and fro-ing we find that Raman is suddenly to marry Daisy.

I quite enjoyed the story, including the unexpected twist at the end. This is one of Narayan’s “Malgudi” stories, set in the mythical town of Malgudi. I hope to read one or two more. I scored the book at 6.5.