The Vendor Of Sweets Analysis

The cousin introduced in The Vendor of Sweets is an excellent comic-omni present creation, the significance of whose being a ‘man¬ about town’ characteristic is brought out quite admirably. He seems to be the cousin of the whole of Malgudi; and in that capacity he has entry into the houses of judges, businessman advocates etc. The reader comes to know through him that he does various chores for a great number of families in the city of Malgudi. A great lover of sweets, like most of us, he is a self-appointed sweet-taster of extraordinary importance to Jagan. A reader is free to discern that besides being of service to people, flattery is also his accredited business in life. A flattery which neither does any harm to the other party nor
Mali is a college drop out lured away by the worst of West. Jagan, his father also could not obtain a degree from college, but at least he tried for years; but Mali, sincerely has no inclination to exert any efforts in endavouring to obtain a degree. Stealing money from his father's savings, Mali goes to the U.S.A., and returns a few years late with new fangled ideas and contempt for Indian ways but devoid of either practical knowledge, training or degree of any kind. Mali, when back, embarks on a grandiose but fantastic scheme for marketing story-writing machines with the help of Grace- a half¬American-half-Korean girl, who he has brought along with him from America. Mali’s Westernism seems to be skin-deep and it takes very superficial forms like eating beef and tinned-food, drinking, smoking and living with a girl without marrying her. This is set in complete contrast with the ways and manners of Hindu and also of Indian society, of which Jagan is a product and part. Mali's live- in -partner Grace is post graduate in Domestic Economy from Michigan University, although she depends entirely on Jagan for economic matters and her degree cannot help her 'husband' Mali in starting his business. In the company of Mali, she makes every effort, which no doubt are laudible, to become a good Hindu wife and
Like Narayan, Jagan too lost his beloved wife at an early stage. And like Narayan, Jagan also never remarried. And more important, Jagan and Narayan were almost the same age (Jagan being fifty five, Narayan being sixty) at the time the novel was written. Besides, Jagan was of the same caste to which Narayan himself belonged. A reader may recall here that almost all the chief characters Narayan has drawn in his novels like Swami, Chandran, Ramani, Krishnan, Shrinivas and now Jagan come from orthodox Brahmin families of which Narayan himself was a member – like Jane Austen's main character, all of whom belonged to almost the same age-group and social status to which Jane Austen herself