who is Verma what was his role from the chapter selvi from malgudi days
Answers
Page-1
Selvi is a very talented singer from a lower class family in Malgudi until Mohan, a former Gandhian freedom fighter, “discovers” her and becomes both her husband and impresario. Under Mohan’s management Selvi achieves fame and success, but when her mother dies alone in her poor house, Selvi decides to leave her husband and her glamorous life to establish herself in her late mother’s destitute dwelling place, where she gives free concerts and apparently lives on offerings. Likewise, in The Guide Raju, the protagonist, becomes Rosie’s lover and manager. Rosie is a Bharata Natyam dancer who achieves fame and success thanks to the man’s support. As time goes by, the manager-lover loses interest in art and becomes all-absorbed in business. Raju exploits Rosie’s art to make money until he gets into trouble and ends up in prison; this puts an end to his affair with the dancer who becomes her own manager. In “Selvi", the manager is actually a “lawful” husband. The Guide is the story of Raju, told partly by an omniscient narrator, partly by himself; “Selvi” is the story of a woman, told by a semi-omniscient narrator with an internal focalization shifting from Mohan, Selvi’s husband, to Varma, a representative of Selvi’s fans. 1 In the story Mohan boasts a very thick agenda, so that Selvi is not free for performances before 1982, implying that it sounds a far off date. At the time of the epilogue we know that Selvi and Mohan have been married for twenty years. This might mean that the story is set in the mid Seventies, which is probably also the time when it was written, or revised. The peculiar choice to bind the focalization to characters other than the alleged protagonist triggers the reader’s curiosity to know something about Selvi as a person, her conscience. Narayan’s technique creates a void beyond Selvi’s name. Her true self remains a mystery. Selvi becomes the name people give to a body or to a performer, but never a character in its own right. Selvi is the protagonist in the same way the mystery may be the protagonist of a detective story. Selvi’s choice to retire from the world may be read as a typical Hindu choice of leaving the world of deception. Possibly the only person who ever saw Selvi as a human being was her mother, but we are never given a glimpse of her. By “self” I mean here the same kind of consciousness Proust refers to, a reflection of one’s personality that is not public. As with Mohan, his perception of the singer does not help to solve the mystery of her true self. The reader’s curiosity is enhanced by casual remarks on Selvi’s alleged secrets. It is told, for instance, that nobody has ever seen the true colour of Selvi’s skin, and only Mohan knows her real face; likewise Selvi’s marriage has taken place almost secretly. Every time the narrator begins a description of Selvi, as a young girl or as a singer, or of her story, the narration ends up relating the puzzled impression that this or that character (usually Mohan) got of her. We find an example when Mohan shows her the new fancy house he is about to buy. Everyone is impressed by the former East India Company’s mansion, but Selvi, who, only upon insistence, comments that the place is “very big” – it adds to the mysteries whether this is a reason to like or loathe the place. This technique of focalising on minor characters leaving the protagonist unfocused is rather peculiar to “Selvi”. One of the most striking differences between Narayan as a novelist and Narayan as a short story writer is that as a novelist he explores the consciousness of his characters in detail, while as a story teller, he entails a behaviourist reading. Characters are mostly described from outside, and even when their thoughts are described, they are usually sociable thoughts, unspoken sentences directed to someone, not inner perceptions. Story readers can only make a guess at people’s thoughts judging from their apparent behaviour3. Selvi is rather uncharacteristic in that it mixes these two different stances; it does enter characters’ consciousness and describes their unexpressed thoughts, but these characters are not the protagonist, who is observed only from outside. This technique is frustrating for the reader who is eventually left in doubt. Readers will seek clues about Selvi in her interaction with her husband and in the opinion of her admirers. In the marital relationship, Selvi is by far the stronger, while Mohan suffers from an inferiority complex. Consequently he tries his best to assert his own importance by Selvi’s admirers and often prevails upon her for no other reason than to be 3 Obviously there are exceptions to this general statement. “Father’s Help” is one such, but this sketch was probably written for inclusion into Swami and Friends, with which it shares the protagonist and the setting.