Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami was born in Madras, a large industrial coastal city in India, on October 10, 1906. Narayan stayed in Madras with his grandmother, who read him classic Indian tales and myths from an early age and encouraged his imagination. Narayan is one of the most widely read of the Indian authors writing in English. He has published more than thirty novels and collections of short stories and essays, and was still producing new work well into his eighties.
Click here to solve ⇒ MCQ on A Horse and Two Goats About the Story "A Horse and Two Goats" The story ' A Horse and Two Goats' is about misunderstanding between an Indian named Muni and an American businessman. Old Muni and his wife, a poor, childless couple who lives in Kritam, a tiny South Indian village. At one time Muni was a relatively prosperous herdsman, with “a flock of forty sheep and goats.” However, those high old times are past. Now Muni’s flock has dwindled to two goats. Still, Muni follows his daily routine of taking the animals to graze near the highway two miles away, where he sits on the base of an old clay statue and watches the world go by.
Suddenly, a foreigner in a yellow station wagon comes barreling down the highway, only to stop abruptly in front of Muni after running out of gas. Both Muni and the American businessman differ in their respective level of wealth. The story presents a comic dialogue between Muni, a poor Tamil-speaking villager, and a wealthy English-speaking businessman from New York. They are engaged in a conversation in which neither can understand the other’s language. The red faced man reveals that he is interested in buying the statue from Muni, whom he assumes to be its owner. Muni again fails to understand him and, when the foreigner pets his goats, surmises that he is offering him one hundred rupees for the goats themselves, rather than the statue.
He misunderstands the offer of money as a request for change, Muni advises the foreigner to approach the village moneylender. After a while, Muni understands that the money is indeed for him. Taking the money, Muni walks off, leaving his goats to the foreigner. Muni returns home triumphant. Muni's wife does not believe his story. Her suspicion is confirmed when the goats find their way home. She shouts at him and says, " If you have thieved, the police will come tonight and break your bones.
Meanwhile, the foreigner confusedly waits beside the statue, assuming that Muni has gone to get help to hoist the statue of the horse off its pedestal so that he can put it in his car. After waiting a while on the side of the highway, the foreigner manages to stop a truck passing by and pays the drivers to help him maneuver the statue into his car.
The story ends with both men utterly oblivious to what the other had attempted to convey. With gentle humour, Narayan explores the conflicts between rich and poor, and between Indian and Western culture.