So rooted

R. K. Narayan’s My Days does not share secrets about childhood, parenthood, writing, or fame. Instead, we see how Narayan learns to belong to something bigger than himself, a knowledge that cannot get shaken. Narayan describes his pet monkey (and peacocks and cats and dogs), his strict grandmother, his fondness for Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the Rebecca and Ruths of the Bible - and his continuing aspiring distractedness. Once, he walks out of a university entrance exam because he skips too dull a reading. To align with his royalties, he negotiates paying rent biannually. Like his novels and short stories, his retelling of The Ramayana explores moral circumstances in the modern world.