English · Chapter 6
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
"An Astrologer's Day" is a short story by R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001), one of the best known Indian writers in English and the creator of the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. The story first appeared in 1947 as the title piece of the collection An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories. Like most of Narayan's work, it is written in plain, gently ironic English and deals with ordinary people trying to make a living. The story is admired for its economy: in a few pages it builds a vivid street scene, a tense confrontation and a twist ending that changes the meaning of everything the reader has seen.
Every day at midday the astrologer opens his "professional equipment" under the boughs of a spreading tamarind tree on a path that runs through the Town Hall Park. He spreads out a dozen cowrie shells, a square piece of cloth covered with mystic charts, a notebook and a bundle of palmyra writing. His forehead is bright with sacred ash and vermilion, his eyes gleam, and he wears a saffron coloured turban, so that people are drawn to him as bees are drawn to flowers. The path is crowded with vendors selling medicines, stolen hardware, cheap cloth, magic and groundnuts. There are no municipal lights, so the astrologer works by the flares and lamps of the shops around him, which suits him because the half light hides his face.
The narrator makes clear that the astrologer knows no more about the stars than his customers do. He had never meant to become an astrologer at all. He had left his village suddenly, without any plan, and if he had stayed he would have followed the family line and tilled the land. Instead he has become skilled at reading people: he lets a client talk for ten minutes, studies the face and guesses the troubles of marriage, money and family that everyone shares, and gives answers that please and comfort.
As the day ends and the light of the groundnut seller's flare is about to go out, a stranger stops before him. The astrologer invites him to sit and consult. The man is aggressive and challenges the astrologer to prove his skill. They argue over the fee, and a bet is fixed: if the astrologer tells him something true, the man will pay a rupee, and if not, the astrologer must return the money with interest. The stranger lights a cheroot, and in the brief flame the astrologer sees his face and is startled. He tries to withdraw from the bargain, but the man grips his wrist and refuses to let him go.
The astrologer then speaks with unusual confidence. He tells the stranger that he was once stabbed with a knife, left for dead and thrown into a well in a field, and that he survived only because a passer by looked into the well. The stranger is amazed. The astrologer calls him by his name, Guru Nayak, and tells him that the man he has been searching for died four months earlier, crushed under a lorry in a far off town. He warns Guru Nayak to go back to his village at once, never to travel southward again, and promises that he will then live to be a hundred. Guru Nayak, satisfied that his enemy is dead, throws a handful of coins to the astrologer and walks away into the night.