WAITING FOR THE MAHATMA

Librarian note: An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.This is the finest thing Narayan has yet achieved. His story of the triumphs and tragedies of a raw young zealot in the service of Gandhi is distinguished for its warmth, its humour, its lack of sentimentality and the stamp of absolute truth. Sriram's evolution into manhood is, for him, a strange and bewildering process. Bharati, the girl he worships, is witty, infuriating, capable, wonder of wonders, and is condescending to the moonstruck Sriram. Her first loyalty though, is to the Mahatma, a saint blessed with disconcerting common sense, whose tragedy is that he is so much greater than his followers. Most of them accept his ideas enthusiastically, and without realizing it, pervert them to suit their coarser personalities. Sriram is inspired by Gandhi, but he is too easily influenced by glamorous patriots of the type of Jagadish. It is a tale of remarkable insight into the upsurge of Indian nationalism as witnessed through the eyes and hearts of Sriram and Bharati, and told with the all genius and compassion we have come to expect from R. K. Narayan.