The Painter Of Signs

Ram, a bachelor and a man of modern ideologies likes his painting nameplates job, meets different kinds of customers during his job. He gets obsessed with a woman named Daisy, a devoted Population control staff. His romantic thoughts and hilarious deeds to win her finally worked well. His aunt warns not to marry as the girl is of different caste and she has ran from her parents for her favor. He didn’t care the words of his aunt because he loves Daisy and he wants to marry her. But what happens at the end? To know it, one needs to read R. K. Narayanan‘s “The Painter of Signs”.

Ram’s aunt is really very good character that depicts typical Indian old people’s ideology. They spend their whole life to bring up their children and get involved so much in them that they don’t have any other aims in their life anything else, except worship God at the end of their life. Though they are more learned in spiritual matters they still can’t change some old dogmas. I think almost every person behaves like this at some point of time. Well, the age of reason may help to some extent to change them. But I really surprise to observe about their contentment at the end of their life.

Many incidents make us laugh. When talking about Family Planning campaign, Ram thinks whether she wants to control population or copulation? Though it’s a sleazy joke, the author played with words very well.

The lead roles in the novel can not always be rational or ideal. All the stories don’t end as expected, similar to real life. I wonder why sometimes humorous stories have some bizarre end.