Orality or folk which is always an alternative tradition in India has never been marginalized in India because it incarnates in it both traditional and modern characteristics. It may be located in power structures with a speaker exercising some authority over the listeners and this too can simply be reversed in the story telling in domestic environs. But it is the telling which is significant and the teller enjoys full freedom to impose his point of view and ideas. Orality seems to subsume a number of prose narrative forms, ranging from myths, fables to fairy tales. Each form of orality is differentiated from the other by its grounding either in the supernatural or in historical happenings, and they are about animals or narratives full of commonsensical edicts. The daily life of the Indians, the traditional beliefs of the land, the superstitions and values of Indian life which formed the core of the ancient story telling tradition of India earn a conspicuous place in Narayan’s short stories. It is worth exploring how effectively Narayan could put orality within the tighter form of his short stories. The Kathasaritsagar and the two major epics in India are the ancestral resources for this narrative. Humour may occasionally be a tool in it. Orality is a tradition shared by Buddhism in the Jataka Tales, Hitopadesa and it is also found in the fables of the Panchatantra. The prose narratives, sometimes allegorical and didactic, imparting practical wisdom based on moral values, are the other side of orality. Orality has been masterly used by writers as widely different as Jorge Luis Borges and Githa Hariharan. As a writer R. K. Narayan’s roots in orality can be traced back to his childhood memory of oral narration which he undoubtedly “absorbed from his grandmother and other old relatives” (Krishnan 1080). Narayan’s Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories is a collection of short stories which may be called an exquisite quintessential representation of Narayan’s use of orality, contributing functionally to the structure and texture of his stories.

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