In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower was re-elected President of the United States. Elvis Presley made his first entry into the US music charts, with Heartbreak Hotel. Artist Jackson Pollock died in a car crash. The average cost of a gallon of petrol in the US was 22 cents, and that of a house, $11,700. The first Hydrogen Bomb was tested over Bikini Atoll. Allen Ginsberg published Howl. And Indian author RK Narayan travelled to the US for the first time.
Three years after his books were first published in the States, Narayan received a Rockefeller Fellowship to visit the country. He spent nine months travelling across the US, from New York, through the Midwest, to California, and then south as far as New Mexico, before coming up again along the east coast, back to New York. During the time, he maintained a daily journal that was never intended for publication.
At one point in the diary he says, “My own comments on all this may be out of place since I know nothing about architecture, and dare to pronounce them here only because this is my own personal diary.” But it was not just anyone’s diary, and publication was inevitable. It happened eight years later, in 1964, with the title My Dateless Diary.
In a Foreword to the 1988 edition, written more than three decades after his travels, Narayan wrote, “I don’t know how to classify this book. It is not a book of information on America, nor is it a study of American culture. It is mainly autobiographical, full of ‘I’ over a short period of time in relation to some moments, scenes and personalities.”
Rediscovering the Dateless Diary
Recently, I chanced upon a yellowing copy of this book, its pages turned brittle and with random doodles across some of them, among the collection of old books in my parents’ home. I remembered it vaguely as being quite amusing. Having now lived in the US for over a decade myself, I found the book especially fascinating this time around.
It is not often that I come across Grand Rapids (where I live) in a book, and by an Indian at that. The train that Narayan took to get to East Lansing, home of Michigan State University, the American publisher of his books, cuts through the state of Michigan, and its final destination is none other than Grand Rapids. I was so delighted by this discovery that I resolved to write about this rare work of non-fiction by Narayan here, especially since it has, quite literally, occupied pride of place on my parents’ bottom shelf for years.
My copy of the book was so tattered with age that by the time I finished with it, several pages including the front cover came apart in my hands, a loyal testament to the affection with which I hold the book.
I’ve always been reminded somewhat of Jane Austen when reading Narayan’s fiction, for that same tendency to draw on a small place and a homogeneous group of people to create a vibrant microcosm. But the United States is not Malgudi. In contrast to the provincial, ordered setting that appeared in 22 of his books, here is a vast canvas stretching right across the United States, encompassing both the mundane and, well, Greta Garbo.
A confused and bemused Indian in the US
In America, Narayan experienced many of the daily confusions of a first-time traveller to the West. At the self-service cafeteria he waits to be served. Inside the carving tunnel prohibited to pedestrians, he stands against the wall while vehicles speed by. At the hotel, the electrician insists he must be Portuguese.
Everywhere he goes, his hunt for a strictly vegetarian meal produces much concern and mixed results. His dietary needs are met in inventive ways as restaurant managers and hosts concoct meals with rice, yoghurt, and whatever vegetables are at hand. In a delightful scene, watched in astonishment by the server on a train, Narayan and his South Indian friends take out packets of spices and powders from their bag and mix them deftly in their rice and yoghurt meal.
In his inimitable style, Narayan infuses each of these incidents, however inconvenient or awkward they might have been at the time, with droll humour, and manages to make every character, no matter how minor, both memorable and endearing.
But the views are not just those of any Indian. They are, to be quite specific, those of a South Indian – a Tamil Brahmin, to be even more precise. This might explain his extreme condescension towards the question asked of him when he wants coffee in New York: “Black or white?” Then follows an elaborate description of how filter coffee – not black or white but brown, the color of real coffee – is made in South India, and its role in social and family life. Such contrasts are drawn everywhere he goes, to make gentle distinctions between the way things are done in the two cultures.
In keeping with the prevailing sentiment of the times, Narayan emphasises the spiritual nature of Indian life. He tells an American host, “I definitely feel man to man, an average American is totally materialistic in the best sense of the term, work, wages, good wife, and good life – are all his main interests; while an Indian will be bothering about the next life in addition to all this.”
It is not difficult to see that the author has a deep sense of the East-West divide and does everything he can to perpetuate that view. Speaking of American architecture, he says, “One notices in this country a continual effort to ‘build up’ tradition in architecture as in other matters – although the tradition may stretch only to fifty years rather than five hundred.”
Looking down, not up
Throughout, I could not shake off the feeling that Narayan was being condescending towards Americans, mocking them, however gently, for nearly everything. The Americans he meets all talk very rapidly, giggle at their own jokes, and ask the silliest of questions. In short, they appear naïve and ignorant. Narayan is a bewildered onlooker swept along in their plans.
The many parties he has to attend are superficial, the conversations vapid. Some of the exchanges are downright ridiculous. Here’s an example from one of the countless – and pointless – gatherings the author finds himself trapped in:
Narayan’s tone is that of one who cannot believe the world can be so ridiculous. It is what makes this book so entertaining to read. The author pokes fun at everyone and everything, including himself. If you can ignore the Them vs Us undertone, the characters are delightfully idiosyncratic.
There’s Mrs S, the professor’s wife in Chicago, who wants to be driven past her childhood home a few blocks away from where she now lives. Once there, she becomes very sentimental and nostalgic, prompting Narayan to reflect:
Even the guide in Santa Fe is not spared.
How strange!
Few writers are as adept at revealing the absurdity in all human behavior as Narayan. This Diary goes further than that to shine the light on many absurdities he associates with America. But before you think he’s reduced only Americans to caricatures, let me assure you that he doesn’t spare Indians either. Whether it’s the garish décor of Indian restaurants in America, or the “mediocre” and “amateurish” Diwali cultural programme at the International House in Berkeley, he makes astute observations about many experiences that Indians would recognise half a century later.
And just to prove that there are no national preferences when it comes to his satire, he spends a good deal of time on the UN General Assembly when invited to attend a session. “For a while I diverted myself by listening to a speech in five different languages by pushing the button for a new tongue half way through each sentence, but still I grew bored with it.” This vision of the childlike Indian wandering around aimlessly on the subway or bemused by pretentious cultural events makes the narrator easily sympathetic. Narayan’s character becomes a sort of Everyman, floundering through the labyrinth that is America.
To add to this sense of innocence Narayan uses words like “baffled” to describe his response to many events and cultural objects, such as the paintings of the artist Abraham Rattner. He is surprised when he goes to hear Katherine Anne Porter read her stories. “To think that people have bought tickets for this. Extraordinary habits.”
While much of the observation is subjective, as he himself explains in the 1988 Foreword, the way he perceives some of the things that Americans take for granted make compelling reading and would be easily relatable to visitors. He makes the most regular of practices seem beguiling, as if he were visiting Jupiter or Saturn.
An entire section is devoted to the intricacies of parking. “Every third person has a car, which means every third man needs a space of 22 by 5, wherever he goes…There are parking facilities only for twelve minutes duration or for ten hours…” and so on.
Nineteen fifty-six was the year the US passed the Federal Highway Act, creating the national system of interstate and defence highways. When the author reaches California – where else? – he is fascinated by the futuristic image of the freeway.
This is one of those moments in the book that transcends time, for who among us (including Americans) has not reflected on the mechanisation of life in the States at one time or another?
Narayan’s audience may originally have been himself, but, by extension, it could be any number of other Indians like himself. Conversely, when speaking to the many Americans he comes across, he seems to take some pride in interpreting Indian culture for them. There is a tendency to make generalisations about Indian practices, which seem particularly limited when read today.
Many of his views are those of an orthodox Hindu. To explain the utter blasphemy of eating beef, he writes, “Probably suggesting the eating of beef may not sound abnormal in most parts of the world, but in India where the cow is a sacred object, beef cannot be eaten, no rationalisation is ever possible on this subject.”
But there are several instances when the author connects with ordinary Americans, and one suspects that he liked them all a lot more than he would admit. He writes of America with the kind of great affection he normally reserved for Malgudi.
About the man too
I am always amazed to see how some great writers find the time to attend every social event they are invited to and also manage to produce lengthy and excellent works of art. You could easily be misled into thinking that Narayan was on a vacation for nine months. In fact, he wrote 1500 to 2000 words a day, religiously, and the result was the manuscript that would become perhaps his most famous novel in two years – The Guide. It is really interesting to see his process of completing this manuscript. He himself comments on the irony of writing, during a downpour, parts of the book where rain – or the absence of it – features prominently. This was also the time when he was being courted by Viking Press, who would soon take over the rights to his US publications, and we see some of their machinations first-hand.".
However, it is not his professional commitments but his social encounters that are the lifeblood of this journal, proving again that characterisation was his true gift. Through him we meet tour guides, cab drivers, young students, as well as the likes of Aldous Huxley and a mysterious woman called GG, who he learns only later is none other than Garbo. His anecdotes never sound self-important because he treats them all with self-deprecating humour.
One of the reasons this book is an old favourite of mine is that it allows us a glimpse into RK Narayan the man and the writer, revealing his writing habits, his personal and often perplexed response to his own growing celebrity, and above all, his prejudices.
My Dateless Diary may be aptly named because the journal entries are not dated but strung together casually, slipping between past and present tense, and often comprising fragments instead of complete sentences. It reads like a collage of anecdotes and observations.
However, the wonderful irony is that the book is anything but dateless. It is the very datedness of this diary that is so charming. University students smoke freely during their classes, vegetarianism is horrifying to most Americans, and Indians like Narayan have previously only encountered America through the images of a viewfinder. It is odd how even an account so decidedly dated can also feel so timeless.
Oindrila Mukherjee is a writer and an Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You can follow her on Twitter at @oinkness.
Three years after his books were first published in the States, Narayan received a Rockefeller Fellowship to visit the country. He spent nine months travelling across the US, from New York, through the Midwest, to California, and then south as far as New Mexico, before coming up again along the east coast, back to New York. During the time, he maintained a daily journal that was never intended for publication.
At one point in the diary he says, “My own comments on all this may be out of place since I know nothing about architecture, and dare to pronounce them here only because this is my own personal diary.” But it was not just anyone’s diary, and publication was inevitable. It happened eight years later, in 1964, with the title My Dateless Diary.
In a Foreword to the 1988 edition, written more than three decades after his travels, Narayan wrote, “I don’t know how to classify this book. It is not a book of information on America, nor is it a study of American culture. It is mainly autobiographical, full of ‘I’ over a short period of time in relation to some moments, scenes and personalities.”
Rediscovering the Dateless Diary
Recently, I chanced upon a yellowing copy of this book, its pages turned brittle and with random doodles across some of them, among the collection of old books in my parents’ home. I remembered it vaguely as being quite amusing. Having now lived in the US for over a decade myself, I found the book especially fascinating this time around.
It is not often that I come across Grand Rapids (where I live) in a book, and by an Indian at that. The train that Narayan took to get to East Lansing, home of Michigan State University, the American publisher of his books, cuts through the state of Michigan, and its final destination is none other than Grand Rapids. I was so delighted by this discovery that I resolved to write about this rare work of non-fiction by Narayan here, especially since it has, quite literally, occupied pride of place on my parents’ bottom shelf for years.
My copy of the book was so tattered with age that by the time I finished with it, several pages including the front cover came apart in my hands, a loyal testament to the affection with which I hold the book.
I’ve always been reminded somewhat of Jane Austen when reading Narayan’s fiction, for that same tendency to draw on a small place and a homogeneous group of people to create a vibrant microcosm. But the United States is not Malgudi. In contrast to the provincial, ordered setting that appeared in 22 of his books, here is a vast canvas stretching right across the United States, encompassing both the mundane and, well, Greta Garbo.
A confused and bemused Indian in the US
In America, Narayan experienced many of the daily confusions of a first-time traveller to the West. At the self-service cafeteria he waits to be served. Inside the carving tunnel prohibited to pedestrians, he stands against the wall while vehicles speed by. At the hotel, the electrician insists he must be Portuguese.
Everywhere he goes, his hunt for a strictly vegetarian meal produces much concern and mixed results. His dietary needs are met in inventive ways as restaurant managers and hosts concoct meals with rice, yoghurt, and whatever vegetables are at hand. In a delightful scene, watched in astonishment by the server on a train, Narayan and his South Indian friends take out packets of spices and powders from their bag and mix them deftly in their rice and yoghurt meal.
In his inimitable style, Narayan infuses each of these incidents, however inconvenient or awkward they might have been at the time, with droll humour, and manages to make every character, no matter how minor, both memorable and endearing.
But the views are not just those of any Indian. They are, to be quite specific, those of a South Indian – a Tamil Brahmin, to be even more precise. This might explain his extreme condescension towards the question asked of him when he wants coffee in New York: “Black or white?” Then follows an elaborate description of how filter coffee – not black or white but brown, the color of real coffee – is made in South India, and its role in social and family life. Such contrasts are drawn everywhere he goes, to make gentle distinctions between the way things are done in the two cultures.
In keeping with the prevailing sentiment of the times, Narayan emphasises the spiritual nature of Indian life. He tells an American host, “I definitely feel man to man, an average American is totally materialistic in the best sense of the term, work, wages, good wife, and good life – are all his main interests; while an Indian will be bothering about the next life in addition to all this.”
It is not difficult to see that the author has a deep sense of the East-West divide and does everything he can to perpetuate that view. Speaking of American architecture, he says, “One notices in this country a continual effort to ‘build up’ tradition in architecture as in other matters – although the tradition may stretch only to fifty years rather than five hundred.”
Looking down, not up
Throughout, I could not shake off the feeling that Narayan was being condescending towards Americans, mocking them, however gently, for nearly everything. The Americans he meets all talk very rapidly, giggle at their own jokes, and ask the silliest of questions. In short, they appear naïve and ignorant. Narayan is a bewildered onlooker swept along in their plans.
The many parties he has to attend are superficial, the conversations vapid. Some of the exchanges are downright ridiculous. Here’s an example from one of the countless – and pointless – gatherings the author finds himself trapped in:
‘What’s Buddhism?’
‘Followers of Buddha.’ (Pronounced ‘Bew-da’ or ‘Booda’ in this country.)
Someone – “I am all for Buddhism.’
‘What does it oblige one to do or imply?’
‘Nothing. You are just a Buddhist – that’s all.’
One of the scientists sat rolling his eyes and parodying religious attitude, quite grotesque in a man usually grave, mumbling, ‘Oh, I’m the Buddha – I see him there, – I hear a knock on the door, – they are coming up – I prophecy there is a female coming – Buddha in female form…’
Just nonsense. And then they talk about monsoons and earthquakes.
Narayan’s tone is that of one who cannot believe the world can be so ridiculous. It is what makes this book so entertaining to read. The author pokes fun at everyone and everything, including himself. If you can ignore the Them vs Us undertone, the characters are delightfully idiosyncratic.
There’s Mrs S, the professor’s wife in Chicago, who wants to be driven past her childhood home a few blocks away from where she now lives. Once there, she becomes very sentimental and nostalgic, prompting Narayan to reflect:
Mrs S – was not really removed far enough to reminisce and feel sentimental either in time or space. She was recollecting something that happened less than five and not seventy years ago. And the place was only a couple of miles away from where she lived: someone even asked why she didn’t think of coming up here all these days to indulge in reminiscences, instead of waiting for our company.
Even the guide in Santa Fe is not spared.
He is ok, but for his frequent fascination for pointing “pumice,” which he calls “Palmess,” he is somehow fascinated by the rocks. He ought to be a geologist and not a guide.
‘It’s all “Palmess” – see that – it is red through oxidation, and nothing else, but if you scrap it off it’s white…see that! That’s palmess – '
Seeing that the whole mountain range surrounding surrounding us is Lava, "Palmess," or whatever you call it, he ought to see the absurdity of mentioning it again and again – an average of twice every five minutes.
How strange!
Few writers are as adept at revealing the absurdity in all human behavior as Narayan. This Diary goes further than that to shine the light on many absurdities he associates with America. But before you think he’s reduced only Americans to caricatures, let me assure you that he doesn’t spare Indians either. Whether it’s the garish décor of Indian restaurants in America, or the “mediocre” and “amateurish” Diwali cultural programme at the International House in Berkeley, he makes astute observations about many experiences that Indians would recognise half a century later.
And just to prove that there are no national preferences when it comes to his satire, he spends a good deal of time on the UN General Assembly when invited to attend a session. “For a while I diverted myself by listening to a speech in five different languages by pushing the button for a new tongue half way through each sentence, but still I grew bored with it.” This vision of the childlike Indian wandering around aimlessly on the subway or bemused by pretentious cultural events makes the narrator easily sympathetic. Narayan’s character becomes a sort of Everyman, floundering through the labyrinth that is America.
To add to this sense of innocence Narayan uses words like “baffled” to describe his response to many events and cultural objects, such as the paintings of the artist Abraham Rattner. He is surprised when he goes to hear Katherine Anne Porter read her stories. “To think that people have bought tickets for this. Extraordinary habits.”
While much of the observation is subjective, as he himself explains in the 1988 Foreword, the way he perceives some of the things that Americans take for granted make compelling reading and would be easily relatable to visitors. He makes the most regular of practices seem beguiling, as if he were visiting Jupiter or Saturn.
An entire section is devoted to the intricacies of parking. “Every third person has a car, which means every third man needs a space of 22 by 5, wherever he goes…There are parking facilities only for twelve minutes duration or for ten hours…” and so on.
Nineteen fifty-six was the year the US passed the Federal Highway Act, creating the national system of interstate and defence highways. When the author reaches California – where else? – he is fascinated by the futuristic image of the freeway.
In all this, nearly a hundred miles drive up and down, one saw automobiles moving in a string, at nights like an endless torch-light parade, up and down the Bay bridge, along several lanes, but not a single pedestrian to be seen anywhere, nor a dog, nor a cow, nor a tree. This gave it all a touch of grim, machine-ageness (one of H.G. Wells’ nightmare visions.) The pedestrian has been successfully liquidated on the Freeway which may be defined as the most mechanised patch on earth.
This is one of those moments in the book that transcends time, for who among us (including Americans) has not reflected on the mechanisation of life in the States at one time or another?
Narayan’s audience may originally have been himself, but, by extension, it could be any number of other Indians like himself. Conversely, when speaking to the many Americans he comes across, he seems to take some pride in interpreting Indian culture for them. There is a tendency to make generalisations about Indian practices, which seem particularly limited when read today.
Many of his views are those of an orthodox Hindu. To explain the utter blasphemy of eating beef, he writes, “Probably suggesting the eating of beef may not sound abnormal in most parts of the world, but in India where the cow is a sacred object, beef cannot be eaten, no rationalisation is ever possible on this subject.”
But there are several instances when the author connects with ordinary Americans, and one suspects that he liked them all a lot more than he would admit. He writes of America with the kind of great affection he normally reserved for Malgudi.
About the man too
I am always amazed to see how some great writers find the time to attend every social event they are invited to and also manage to produce lengthy and excellent works of art. You could easily be misled into thinking that Narayan was on a vacation for nine months. In fact, he wrote 1500 to 2000 words a day, religiously, and the result was the manuscript that would become perhaps his most famous novel in two years – The Guide. It is really interesting to see his process of completing this manuscript. He himself comments on the irony of writing, during a downpour, parts of the book where rain – or the absence of it – features prominently. This was also the time when he was being courted by Viking Press, who would soon take over the rights to his US publications, and we see some of their machinations first-hand.".
However, it is not his professional commitments but his social encounters that are the lifeblood of this journal, proving again that characterisation was his true gift. Through him we meet tour guides, cab drivers, young students, as well as the likes of Aldous Huxley and a mysterious woman called GG, who he learns only later is none other than Garbo. His anecdotes never sound self-important because he treats them all with self-deprecating humour.
One of the reasons this book is an old favourite of mine is that it allows us a glimpse into RK Narayan the man and the writer, revealing his writing habits, his personal and often perplexed response to his own growing celebrity, and above all, his prejudices.
My Dateless Diary may be aptly named because the journal entries are not dated but strung together casually, slipping between past and present tense, and often comprising fragments instead of complete sentences. It reads like a collage of anecdotes and observations.
However, the wonderful irony is that the book is anything but dateless. It is the very datedness of this diary that is so charming. University students smoke freely during their classes, vegetarianism is horrifying to most Americans, and Indians like Narayan have previously only encountered America through the images of a viewfinder. It is odd how even an account so decidedly dated can also feel so timeless.
Oindrila Mukherjee is a writer and an Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You can follow her on Twitter at @oinkness.
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