In the short story ‘The Gardener’ by P. Lankesh, there is a story within a story and there are two narrators. In the first story, the author in the persona of the first-person narrator introduces the protagonist Tammanna and the story of the owner of the coconut plantation. Then, the first narrator makes way for the second narrator to take over. Interestingly, in the story, the narrator is the protagonist and tells his own story to the second owner’* wife. However, the narrator employs the thirdperson narrative style and distances himself from the story. Thus ‘The Gardener’ is an example of the use of multiple narratives.
Multiple narratives describe a type of story that follows several protagonists rather than focusing on one main character. In some cases, writers choose this structure to show the individual perspectives of characters in a larger ‘macro story’ and how they relate to each other. ‘The Gardener’ is an example of the second type. Tammanna is the protagonist in both stories.
In the first story, we learn how Tammanna uses his own biography to indirectly give a message to the owner’* wife. He gives to the lady his own perspective of human life and experience. The author has used this technique of multiple narratives to reveal the mystery of human relationships.
In his own life, Tammanna has learnt lessons of being proactive in a rivalry with Basavaiah. He plays his game with Basavaiah, only until he . Basavaiah’ comes as a revelation to him about human nature. Only then does he theorise saying ‘man does not live with the intention of acquiring wealth, or education or art but for some kind of unbearable vengefulness’. Until then, both Basavaiah and Tammanna showed a keen interest in fighting and a zest for life. But once Basavaiah ****, Tammanna loses all enthusiasm for life. He says he is a non-entity now.
Now he has become philosophical. Therefore, when he finds the owner of the coconut plantation cultivating all kinds of vices and the lady getting desperate about her husband, the ‘guilt’ about Basavaiah’ *** that was pricking his conscience gets transformed into a virtue or a positive force and that motivates him to tell his own story objectively to the owner’ wife.
Had not the author used multiple narrative structures, Tammanna’ story could not have come out as a story to educate the owner’ wife. Thus, multiple narrative structures is able to unveil the mystery of human relationships.
