The short stories of Narayan are remarkable more for their workmanlikeness and finish than for the quality of the reading of life they offer; and one of the chief reasons for this is the limited role played by irony in them, though a persistent ironic note is by and large, their distinguishing feature. Narayan's short stories number more than four score, and are included in the following collections: Malgudi Days (1941); Dodu and Other Stories (1943), Cyclone and Other Stories (1944); The Astrologer's Day and Other Stories (1947); Lawley Road (1956) and A Horse and Two Goats (1970). A few uncollected stories like "The Cobbler and the God" have also appeared recently.

A sizable number of these stories are built round the principle of simple irony of circumstance, leading to the shock of discovery or surprise or reversal at the end. In "An Astrologer's Day", a town astrologer meets a client and reads his past correctly, saying that a man had knifed him in a village brawl years before. He tells the man that the person who knifed him is dead and adds. "I see once again great danger to your life if you go from home." The story ends with the shock of the discovery that the astrologer was himself the person who had knifed that man and then the irony of both his reading of the past and his advice to his client is brought home. In "Mother and Son" the mother of an unemployed and unmarried youth, who quarrels with her and does not return at night fears that he has gone and drowned himself in a tank nearby but is finally relieved to find him next morning sleeping on a bench near the tank-bund.

A final shock of surprise is the main point of stories like "Missing Mail" and "Out of Business". In the first story, an altruistic postman, conceals the news of a near relative's death from a family in order that a wedding, which for certain urgent reasons cannot be postponed, can take place on the appointed day. The bride's father comes to know the truth only at the end. In "Out of Business," Rama Rao, who is broke, wants to commit suicide by falling before a railway train, is saved because it is running late and returns home to find his financial problems temporarily solved.

Ironic reversal is the basic structural principle behind some of the stories. In "Father's Help", which is a "Swami" story, young Swami armed with his father's letter of complaint against the teacher Samuel addressed to the head master deliberately courts punishment at Samuel's hands, hoping to have his revenge at the end of the day when he would hand over the letter to the headmaster. His hopes are suddenly frustrated when he comes to know that the headmaster is on leave that day and hence the letter has to be given to his assistant—viz., Samuel himself! "Trail of the Green Blazer" operates on the same principle. Raju, the pickpocket expertly picks the purse of the man in the green blazer and removes the cash from it. As he is about to throw the purse away, he notices a toy baloon folded and tucked away inside it and filled with thoughts of affection and pity for the child for whom it is meant, tries to put the purse back in "Green Blazer's" pocket and is caught red-handed!

In all these stories there is a single stroke of irony each. Occasionally, ironic complications ensue in a linked chain, enhancing the comic effect. "Engine Trouble" provides an excellent example. The winner of a steam engine in a lottery finds that the prize is a perfect white elephant for him. It lands him into all kinds of trouble and expense when he tries to get it moved. He is charged rent for parking it; and in the attempt to get it moved by the temple elephant, a compound wall is demolished and the elephant injured, involving further damages. In the end, there is a lucky earthquake during which the engine falls into a dilapidated well, which solves at one stroke the problems of the owners of both the engine and the well.

In addition to the motif of the irony of circumstance, in a few stories, the irony is linked with a revelation of human psychology, though in a rather limited way. "Gandhi's Appeal" shows the transition from simple irony of situation to ironic revelation of psychology. Padma, moved by Gandhiji's appeal for funds at a public meeting, parts with her gold bangles and apologetically informs her husband about this. When, however, she learns that he too has given away the fifty rupees earmarked for rent to the same cause, she scolds him indignantly, while he has already forfeited his own right to do so! Dr. Raman in "The Doctor's Word" has the reputation of being always brutally frank and truthful in dealing with his patients. When his best friend is dying of a heart attack, however, the doctor deliberately lies to his patient, telling him that he will live and such is the force of his reputation for truthfulness that the patient does recover, to the astonishment of the doctor himself. In "Gateman's Gift" an illiterate watchman receives a registered letter and assumes the worst ('only lawyers send registered letters') so much so that he goes mad, and his sanity is restored only on learning that the letter contains a cheque presented to him by his boss.

Tragic irony does not seem to appeal to Narayan to the same extent as comic irony, and the few examples of its kind in his repertoire hardly rank among the best of his efforts in shorter fiction. Even among them he appears to prefer the gentler evocation of pathos to the sterner effects of tragedy. "Iswaran" presents a college student, who, after repeated examination-failures, writes a suicide note to his father before proceeding to the river to drown himself; on the way, he casually checks upon his result, discovers that he has passed in second class, goes mad at the shock of joy and drowns himself in the river; and no one knows the real reason why he died. The ironic double-twist at the end seems to interest the author more than the psychology of the protagonist. In "Seventh House," the revelation of psychology is far more important. A young and devoted husband whose wife lies dying of a serious disease is assured by an astrologer that if he is unfaithful to her, that could propitiate the evil planets and thus save her. The husband's timid attempts to visit a prostitute are frustrated by a well-meaning horse-carriage driver whom he engages to take him to his desination, and finally, unable to explain his reasons to this cruel Good Samaritan, the husband pathetically resigns himself to his fate. Narayan also appears to fight shy of a tragic ending even when the logic of events in a story seems to demand it. In "The Gateman's Gift," which has already been cited, the protagonist's sudden return to sanity at the end is not adequately motivated; in fact, the edge of the irony in the story is blunted by this denoument, while a tragic ending would certainly have added to the final effect.

Considering the large number of eccentrics that figure in Narayan's novels, it is significant that he does not have many short stories-dealing with the comic exposure of eccentricity. This is perhaps another indication of the fact [that] in the short stories his finer artistic resources do not appear to have been brought fully into play. The half-wit in "Dasi the Bridegroom" has a trick played on him by people who tell him that a cinema star who has recently come to stay in the locality is his destined bride. The ensuing comic complications yield humour of a rather elementary variety, and the narrator's neutral tones leave no room for the possibility of the narrative developing an extra dimension of pathos. "Annamalai" is a fuller sketch. This old man who attaches himself to the narrator one day has had a colourful history. Running away from home at the age of ten, he has worked as a coolie in Ceylon and Malaya and has escaped from a Japanese prison there. A self appointed gardener at the narrator's house, he is guided more by whim than by the logic of his profession in carrying out his duties. His general ignorance (his response to a trunk call is 'No trunk or baggage here. Master is sleeping') and his complicated financial dealings with the people back at his village provide the comedy. But considering the space given to him (the story runs to 37 pages), Annamalai hardly emerges as a more memorable character than the eccentrics in say, The Man Eater of Malgudi, who are drawn with a few rapid strokes.

Not many of Narayan's stories can be classified as stories of character in which the psychology of the protagonist is the chief point. And even in the few examples of this genre, the author does not appear to exploit fully the opportunities offered by his subject. "A Willing Slave" is a case in point. Here, Ayah, the old servant who looks after young Radha, always frightens her ward by telling her about the 'Old Fellow' (meaning Ayah's husband) who wants to carry away his wife. One day the 'Old Fellow' actually arrives to carry Ayah away and Radha, who is mortally afraid of him does not even come out to bid Ayah goodbye. The situation here is reminiscent of that in Tagore's "Cabuliwallah," but the psychological richness of Tagore's story is hardly in evidence in Narayan's which remains at the anecdotal stage only. The same appears to be the case with "The Axe," the story of an old gardener attached to a sprawling house, who is dismissed when the ownership changes hands. The gardener leaves as the garden is being demolished a situation reminiscent of The Cherry Orchard, but here again, the reader gets the impression that in contrast to Chekhov, Narayan has not adequately met the challenge of his tragic theme here, and that there is a failure of the imagination in apprehending with the requisite power the experience sought to be conveyed.

This failure of the imagination is also evident in the group of 'Animal stories,' some of which seem to follow the creed: 'triteness is all.' "The Blind Dog" is a rather simplistic presentation of canine affection, which offers no variation on a commonplace theme. And in "Attila," the story of a dog, the fierce exterior of which conceals an extremely friendly disposition so that when it catches a thief it actually does so in spite of itself the irony does not rise above simple comic incongruity. Stories dealing with animals other than dogs too are in the same class, and the performing monkey in "Mute Companions" and the little mouse in "Flavour of Coconut" can offer only passing amusement. The squirrel story, "At the Portal" makes a half-hearted attempt at allegory which is frustrated because simple situational irony breaks in towards the close. Here we have a mother squirrel teaching her young one to climb up a wall, while the latter has its own fears and anxieties. The faint suggestion that this incident may have a larger significance on the human plane with an implied parallelism is nullified by the author's ironic comment in the end: "Watching him I felt here was an occasion for me to address an appeal to the university authorities to reduce the height of portholes on their compound walls" (Lawley Road And Other Stories.) The intrusive presence of the author as observer in the story further destroys all chances of an allegorical content. In contrast with this, in Liam O'Flaherty's "His First Flight," the purely objective narration of the first flight of a blackbird takes on a great allegorical significance in human terms while the story, at the same time, remains on the primary level a 'bird story' told with accurate realism.

Another group of stories which also betrays the same disastrous failure of the imagination comprises the more then dozen exercises in the supernatural Narayan has attempted. The ghost stories—"The Level-Crossing," "An Accident," "Old Bones" and "Old Man of the Temple"— fail to rise above the level of travellers' yarns, and "The Snake Song," the tale of a Sadhu's curse, deserves the same verdict. The limitations of Narayan's imagination and his verbal resources are painfully evident in "Such Perfection" in which a sculptor fashions an all too perfect image of Nataraja, which, true to the belief that such perfection spells danger for this imperfect world, produces a cataclysm. Narayan's description of this is as follows:

The Moon's disc gradually dimmed. The wind gathered force, clouds blotted out the moon; people looked up and saw only pitch-like darkness above. Lightning flashed, thundered, roared and fire poured down from the sky. It was a thunderbolt striking a haystack and setting it ablaze. . People ran about in panic searching for shelter. The population of ten villages crammed in that village.. Women and children shrieked and wailed. .. . It rained as it had never rained before. The two lakes, over which the village road ran, filled, swelled and joined over the road. . . . 'This is the end of the world!' wailed the people (An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories.)

This is hardly "the end of the world"—only the end of a rather poor paragraph in which drab, matter-of-fact details are fondly expected to produce an effect which only a powerful imagination could have evoked, employing appropriate linguistic resources. Contrast this with Manjeri Isvaran's description of the same phenomenon in his short story, "Dance of Siva" in which an Englishman sees the great God's Dance Destruction in a dream: "He wakes up to see a gigantic figure towering to the skies with eyes like fiery globes, its matted locks a whirl with the whirling inky clouds. . . . Its forehead burst open in the middle like a smoldering planet, and pillars of flame shot forth and a wilderness of arms with lethal weapons. . . . A dread combustion roared, with the thunder of a billion rockets exploding; and every thing was an endless, immeasurable furnace into which the hounds of hurricane swept and swirled." Isvaran's description too has its own limitations (like its wordiness, for example) but it does stir the reader's imagination in a way which Narayan's tame effort totally fails to do.

Narayan's stories are normally built around either situation or character and occasionally when he discards these props and tries his hand at a different kind of a short story he is immediately seen to be out of his depth. "Fruition at Forty" offers little more than the somewhat trite reflections of an office clerk on his fortieth birthday. "Uncle's Letters" traces the life of a man from birth to his eightieth birthday by means of the letters written by an uncle to his nephew but the description here too clings obstinately to conventionalities. "A Night Of The Cyclone" is also a simple piece of description which is extremely pedestrian.

Narayan's technique of the short story clearly shows him subcribing to the idea of the "well-made short story". Almost all his short stories are compact and neatly structured. The only exceptions are some of the later stories like "Uncle," "Annamalai" and "A Horse and Two Goats," which tend to be rather "discursive," as C. V. Venugopal has rightly pointed out. The omniscient author's method of narration is obviously the most suitable one for his well-ordered narratives. The narration is sometimes put into the mouth of the "Talkative Man" in the manner of P. G. Wodehouse's 'Oldest Member' Stories. A variant device is to use the autobiographical T for narration. Most of the stories with a supernatural motif employ either the Talkative Man' or the autobiographical "I " as a narration in the hope of ensuring greater credibility for the yearns told, though they fail for other reasons, as already shown. The epistolary form is tried only once, in "Unele's Letters."

In the 'well-made short story' the beginning and the end are of crucial importance and Narayan, like O'Henry, rarely fumbles in handling either. A typical Narayan story may begin in a variety of ways but it almost always carefully establishes what H. E. Bates, referring to O'Henry described as "an instant contact between reader and writer." One method of doing so is to plunge straight into the action as in "Such Perfection": "A Sense of great relief filled Soma as he realized that his five years of labour were coming to an end" (An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories). In the case of a story in which the center of interest is the depiction of an unusual character, Narayan introduces the protagonist straightway as in "Dasi the Bridegroom": "His name was Dasi. In all the extension there was none like him," Sometimes an apt generalization relevant to the central situation makes a convenient starting point as in "Gateman's Gift": "When a dozen persons question openly or slyly a man's sanity he begins to entertain serious doubts himself." The autobiographical narrator may naturally begin by explaining his situation as in "Uncle": "I am the monarch of all I survey, being the sole occupant of this rambling ancient house. . . ." (A Horse and Two Goats). Alternatively, he may start the narration at a convenient point, as in "Chippy": 'I cannot give a very clear account of Chipp's Early Life' (Lawley Road And Other Stories.) The Talkative Man enjoys the same privilege, and sometimes starts his yarn in a manner reminiscent of the folk tale which begins with 'once upon a time'. Thus, "The Roman Image" begins with: "The Talkative Man said: 'Once I was an archaeologist's assistant" (Cyclone and Other Stories.)

The endings of Narayan's short stories show a strong influence of O'Henry's celebrated technique of the trick finale. All the stories in which irony either comic or tragic—plays a shaping role naturally have a suprise ending, as already pointed out. The twist at the end is normally a single one, as in "An Astrologer's Day," "Missing Mail," "The Doctor's Word," "The Gateman's Gift" etc., but occasionally as in "Iswaran" it is, as noted earlier, a double twist, another example of which is provided by "A Career" the story of a trusting shopkeeper swindled by his assistant, who has run away. Year later the shopkeeper meets the man now a blind beggar, sitting in front of a temple. The second twist follows when the shopkeeper in a fit of pity for the man places a rupee on his outstretched palm thus adding a touch of irony to the shock of discovery. In one story, however, in an obvious attempt to trick the reader by not ending the story in an expected manner, Narayan resorts to a rather tame finale. "The Antidote" presents Gopal, a film actor, asked to enact a death-scene on his fortieth birthday which, he has been warned by an astrologer, is a crucial day for him, because it might really see him die. The imperatives of the shooting schedule, however, make all his protestations futile. Compelled to enact the death scene, he finds a solution to his problem: "Though he was supposed to be dead, he shook his head slightly, opened his right eye and winked at the camera, which he hoped would act as an antidote to the inauspicious role he was doing" (Lawley Road and Other Stories.) One wonders whether a further twist resulting in Gopal's actual death, in spite of the "antidote" would not have given the story a sharper point.

Where irony is absent, the stories peter out into equally tame endings. In "Wife's Holiday," Kanan, the gambler, seized the opportunity offered by his wife and child's temporary absence, to smash the little money box in the house and remove all the coins. As he returns home having lost the money, he meets his family coming back, and is now afraid of facing the consequences. The total lack of irony in the ending which rests upon a simplistic cause and effect relationship makes the story almost pointless. Equally pedestrian is "The Performing Child." Kutti, the talented little girl here is to act in a film, though she hates the idea. On the day the film people come for her, she hides herself in a linen basket and the parents abandon the project. What precisely is the point of the story is difficult to say, since no attempt has also been made to probe into the mind of Kutti which at least could have given the story an artistic centre.

The setting for most of Narayan's stories is Malgudi, but it is interesting to note that unlike his novels, some stories are enacted entirely against a background other than that of Malgudi. Madras provides the backdrop for five stories—"All Avoidable Talk," "Fruition At Forty," "A Willing Slave," "Sweets for Angels" and "Man-hunt". In "Chippy," "The Regal," "Dodu" and "Mother and Son," the setting is Mysore, while the action in "A Night of Cyclone" takes place against the background of Vizagapatnam.

The thematic connections between the short stories and the novels of Narayan are interesting. Some of these have been noted by P. S. Sundaram. Situations, characters and motifs from each novel by Narayan except The Painter of Signs appear in the short stories also, though in some cases the stories belong to an earlier date. As already noted, the exploits of the school-boy hero in Swami and Friends have spilled into "Father's Help" and "The Hero," and twelve year old Dodu in The Regal with his passionate devotion to cricket is only another incarnation of Swami. The failure of marriage negotiations owing to the incompatibility of horoscopes in The Bachelor of Arts is a motif repeated in "The White Flower." Savitri's attempt to drown herself into the river, her rescue by Mari and her final reluctance to repay her debt to him in The Dark Room are parallelled in "The Watchman." And The Dark Room situation of a husband throwing his wife out of the house also appears in "The Shelter." Krishna, in "Seventh House" finds his wife dying of typhoid like Krishnan in The English Teacher, though the remedy suggested by the astrologer in the short story naturally has no place in the novel. (The White Flower' motif reappears in this story also.) In Mr. Sampath Srinivas, goes to see the British Manager of the Engladia Banking Corporation. Govind Singh in "The Gateman's Gift" has spent twentyfive years in the service of "Engladia's." (Ramani in The Dark Room is local Branch Manager of the Engladia Insurance Company). The relationship between the private tutor and his truant charge in "Crime and Punishment" was later to be echoed in the dealings of young Balu with his tutor in The Financial Expert. Most of the women who attend Gandhi's meeting in Waiting For The Mahatma are without ornaments, knowing Gandhi's aversion to all show and luxury. Padma in "Gandhi's Appeal" also goes to hear Gandhi, without her jewels on, the reason however being the fear that he may ask her to donate them to his fund. (The meeting in the novel takes place on the bank of the Sarayu, but that in the short story is held on the beach). In "Four Rupees," Ranga finds the role of the 'well-man' thrust upon him, and is compelled to undergo the ordeal of descending into a well sixty feet deep, to recover a brass pot from it, though he has no experience of the job. He comes through the ordeal, unscathed, unlike poor Raju in The Guide whom compulsion drives to martyrdom. Rangi the temple dancer, who plays so crucial a role in The Man Eater of Malgudi is still plying her trade eight years later in "The Seventh House," though the timidity of the hero prevents, her from delivering the goods. Finally, "Such Perfection," only spells out in full Chinna Dorai, "Story of the dancing figure of Nataraj, which was so perfect that it began a cosmic dance and the town itself shook as if an earthquake had rocked it, until a small finger on the figure was chipped off in The Vendor of Sweets.

While Narayan has practically written no story which can be called dull, one might well ask at the same time whether he has written any which can truly be called a major achievement to rank with Maupassant's "Ball of Fat," Chekhov's "The School Mistress," Maugham's "Rain," Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" or Katherine Mansfield's "The Garden Party"—to mention only a few memorable examples. Even the most striking of Narayan's efforts like "The Doctors Word," "Engine Trouble" and "Seventh House" do not appear to deserve to be ranked with these universally acknowledged masterpieces. To compare Narayan, the short story writer, with his Indo-English peers is also to realize that he has produced nothing in this genre to match Mulk Raj Anand's "Birth" and "The Lost Child" or Raja Rao's "Javni" and "The Policeman and the Rose."

One explanation for this may be found in the fact that Narayan began his career as a a short story writer by contributing stories to The Hindu and it was difficult for him, under these conditions, to escape the influence of the slick 'magazine story' which has manifestly the limited purpose of providing the average reader with his dose of an hour's amusement alone. The well-made story technique encouraged him to be mostly satisfied with surface irony and snap ending, while depth and complexity of experience and subtlety of response were clearly elements not quite necessary. In the 'narrow plot of ground' of the short story Narayan's talent did not develop much, although, given the longer freedom of full-length fiction, his irony did mature in strength and purpose.

This perhaps accounts for the extremely limited thematic range of his short stories though, paradoxically enough, they evince a great variety of characters, drawn from all the strata of society except the highest. In these short stories we meet clerks, doctors, archaeologists, tutors, school and college students, housewives, shopkeepers, film actors, artists, sculptors, journalists, astrologers, postmen, ayahs, house-servants, gardeners, tree-climbers, foodvendors, coolies, beggars, vagabonds, pick-pockets and rustics apart from dogs, squirrels and parrots. This variety is, however, hardly matched by a corresponding thematic richness, because though all these characters are presented realistically, their dilemmas, as their creator sees them, are hardly meaningful enough in thematic terms and the author is mostly satisfied with the ironic twist these petty dilemmas provide. This makes for a general lack of social, political and even existential awareness and urgent emotional involvement in these short stories. The satire on the ways of the Municipality in "Lawley Road" and "Engine Trouble," and that on blackmarketing in "Half a Rupees worth" is slight and in "Gandhi's Appeal," Gandhism is only a prop to support the situational irony of the trick ending. Even when he deals directly with a communal riot in "Another Community," Narayan's tones remain so neutral that only the irony of the misunderstanding resulting in the death of the protagonist in a clash which soon develops a communal colouring is highlighted at the expense of the potential tragic effect.

Narayan's short stories therefore appear to be, by and large, a museum of minor motifs. They lack the kind of thematic weight and the richness of experience which the major short stories of the world invariably possess. The shorter fiction of Narayan generally reveals the artist as Autolycus—"A snapper up of unconsidered trifles," and not as Jacob, wrestling with the angel. In the major novels, Narayan rises to his fullest stature as a master of existential irony; in the short stories he mostly remains a small time ironist.