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Sriram's granny is a lovable, tender-hearted, traditional, superstitious and shrewd old woman. She suffers from some idiosyncrasies which make her an amusing character. She is sharp-tongued and forthright in her opinions and reactions. Her personality has a bracing quality. Age and experience have taught her worldly wisdom and farsightedness. Her bluntness is expressive of the sturdiness and maturity of her mind. William Walsh succinctly sums up her personality in these words:
"A quick note summons into being the gruff and vital granny, a woman of extreme devotion, touchiness, orthodoxy, and individuality."
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| Sriram's Granny |
Her tenderness for her grandson, Sriram, is unbounded. She has taken upon herself the onus of bringing him up her son's i.e. Sriram's father's death in War in Mesopotamia. She feels moved at the sight of the "brown, oblong cover addressed to her" when it is brought to her by the postman. This is an envelope containing the military pension of her dead son. Her integrity and far-sightedness lie in not spending the amount of the pension. She accumulates it in a street bank called Fund Office. She speaks these words, as if telling her dead son in heaven, "I don't have to spend your pension in order to maintain you. God has left us enough to live on." The welfare of her grandson is always in her heart. She has taught him many things. She advises him that he should leave the cold cement window-sill and mix up with persons of his age so that he may learn the worldly ways like his father and grandfather. She is happy on his twentieth birthday because she will now be free from her responsibility of looking after him as he has now become major. She celebrates this occasion with customary rituals like stringing "mango leaves across the doorway" and decorating "the threshold with coloureds rice powder." She takes him ceremoniously to the Fund Office and hands over "the brown calico-bound pass book" to him.
Sriram's granny is highly disturbed by Sriram's intermixing with the Gandhian flock. She fears all sorts of trouble from such activities. She advises him to keep away and to marry a girl who is her distant relative in a village. Later, the frequent visits of policemen to her house in search of Sriram leave her a broken woman. She feels very bitter about her grandson over his treachery in becoming an out law. In her embittered mood, she comments about him, "What can a little cobra do even if you have brought it up on cow's milk. It can only do what its breeding tells it to do." Her genuine affection for him is expressed in the joy, she feels, at his sight by her side at the cremation ground when she recovers her consciousness by a miracle.
Age and experience have inculcated worldly wisdom in her. She is shrewd and advises Sriram to make proper use of money. She advises him, "There is nothing so fleeting as the untethered cash." She tells him to be thrifty and secretive in money matters. She criticises her husband for his extrovert habit. When Sriram questions her to know why he should be secretive in money matters, she does not dilate much on this point. Tersely with a gesture of finality, she exhorts him that one should be secretive because "It's better so, that's all."
Sriram's grandmother is orthodox. She follows time-honoured traditions and customs. She believes in social stratification based upon caste system. Gandhi's ideas of abolition of untouchability and Harijan upliftment are an anathema to her. She expresses her disapproval of such radical notions through her carping remarks about Gandhi. While listening to Gandhi's speech about caste system, Sriram is reminded of his grandmother's. disrespectful attitude towards the sweeper who visits their house daily for scavenging. He remarks about this attitude of his granny, "Granny was so orthodox that she would not let the scavenger approach nearer than ten yards, and habitually adopted a bullying tone while addressing him." The same orthodox belief makes her reject the use of the canvas chair which has been purchased by Sriram for her. She dismisses the idea saying that she cannot use a chair made of leather. To her superstitious mind, there is no difference between canvas and leather. She says:
"It is no use for me. This is some kind of leather, probably cow-hide, and I can't pollute myself by sitting on it."
She thinks of Bharati like a siren who has cast a malignant spell on Sriram in order to wean him away. Superstitiously, she considers it inauspicious to tear away the bank withdrawal slip because her grandson has filled it up for the first time after assuming independent charge of his bank account. She is a puritan. She does not like her husband's habit of smoking a cheroot. She comments disparagingly about it by saying "Like a baby sucking a candy stick." Bitterness on this point goes to the extent that their married life is also threatened.
She is religious-minded and credulous. The extra-ordinary incident of her revival into life at the cremation ground is consistent, with her traditional belief in the probability of occasional recurrences of such scientifically inexplicable miracles. Her pyre is put on fire. Suddenly, the Fund Office manager, one of the mourners, notices the motion of her left big toe. She is taken out of the pyre. Gradually, she is fully revived. But according to a superstitious belief, she cannot be taken back home as that will spell disaster to the town. It is, therefore, decided that she will live the rest of her life in Benaras. This proposal satisfies her the most as she will be able to live a holy life on the banks of the Ganges. Thee traditional faith in the sanctity of life spent on the banks of the Ganges gives her supreme satisfaction. She passes her days there performing religious rituals, awaiting her ashes to be immersed in the Ganges one day after her death. Her life at Benaras is like a new lease of life granted to her. She is free from all worries and lives there in contentment. She thinks that this can be the best and the most desirable way of passing one's last days. The Fund Office manager tells Sriram in jail about his granny like this:
"She is keeping very well; bathes thrice in the Ganges, and prays in the temple, cooks her food, nas good company. A sublime life."
She is like other old grannies depicted in Narayan's novels. They are all known by their characteristics such as tenderness, tolerance, religiousness, superstitious beliefs, worldly wisdom and a complacent faith in time-honoured traditions and customs. Her life is very much typical of a Hindu middle-class old venerable lady.