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Out of the various dimensions of youth its being fresh, energetic, rebellious, innovative etc. are the most dashing traits which have attracted not only to the society but the literary artists also. The rebellious aspect of youth could not pass unnoticed by the great dramatist William Shakespeare: “Youth to itself rebels, though none else near”1. Youth is never satisfied with the familiar, the known. He never believes in walking over the trodden path of life, rather hankers after something novel, uncommon, unseen and unknown even if adventurous and hazardous. This dimension of youth has highly been admired by Robert Browning: “It yearned nor Jove nor Mars Mine be some figured flame, which blends, transcends them all”2 Browning prizes such doubts and condemns those lacking it by calling them ‘Low kinds exist without’. If such is the universal importance of youth, how can a great artist R.K. Narayan be unnoticed to this vital force? His novels are the replica of Indian society along with all the customs, blind beliefs and such other practices prevalent in real life. This impasse and stagnation is generally broken by the youth and monotony is replaced with colour and movement in life. They have to pay a very high price for bringing these changes in the society. They have to challenge the barriers of class and caste, orthodoxical tradition, generation conflict, age old professions etc. to make a new world of liberty and equality. It is not only male youth who are the champion of the changes in society but Narayan’s heroines are equally bold rather bolder than their counterparts in their attempt of making the new society. It is not necessary that the changes brought by youth are always good, sometimes they bear a contrary result but stagnancy is broken. His Malgudi is not a mere passive observer of the changes introduced by the youth, rather go to a see change from the small town in the thirties to a metro city in nineties. The change is noticed on all sides; ever the names of the character like Swami, Chandran, Balu and Savitri, Shantabai are transformed into Raju. Marco, Tim, Rosie, Daisy etc.

The social segmentation by caste discernible in the early novels is completely ignored by the young people. Hero of Narayan’s second novel Chandran is relieved to discover that the girl he has fallen in  love with, is  not only of the same caste but also of the sub-caste. But Sriram, Raju, Mali, and Raman of the later novels have no such misgivings in their emotional involvement. Sriram falls in love with Bharati [Waiting for Mahatma] of unknown caste and family. Undeterred by Rosie’s social status Raju [The Guide] forms an attachment with her who belongs to a family ofDevdasi. Mali [The Vendor of Sweets], is restless to see the world beyond Malgudi hence leaves for the United States and returns with American Korean girl Grace. Conventional Malgudi assumes that they are married as it cannot conceive any other relationship. The discovery to the contrary causes consternation.

The ‘Bachelor of Arts’ is the fruit of earlier phase of novels by R.K. Narayan. where the hero of the novel is delineated with short lived rebellion. Chandran is projected as a collegian fostering a feeling of independence. A person who is determined to decide his future. In words of O.P. Mathur: “Chandran is essentially a spirit hedzed round by rules and regulation both in college and at home” 3

It ultimately proves to be a limited freedom when it comes to the choice of a marriage partner. He falls in love with Malathi when he sees her for the first time on the banks of Sarayu. He wants her hand at any cost even by breaking the age old Malgudian traditions. Trapped by her physical charm, he chafes against ‘custom’ “to the dust-pot with your silly customs”4 which prevails over reason. He was finally defeated by the ruling of the horoscope. Chandran breaks into open rebellion through frustration and escapes from the familiar Malgudi to the strangeness of Madras where he comes through various experiences.  Finally ,tied in orthodoxy bondages of 30’s, Narayan brings Chandran back. But the changing social pattern is indirectly made known to the readers through Chandran’s emotional attachments to Malathiwhich leads to challenge the controlling influence of existing conventions.

In Balu,  [The Financial Expert] Narayan depicts a child character grown up to a spoilt young man. Balu’s importance in developing the reaction of young Malgudian to environmental change lies in his midway position between pre-independent and post-independent Malgudi. Balu is the product of corrupting power of money, which is real modern age, as Suresh Nath says:

“The corrupting power of excessive money
is evidenced in the novel by growth of Balu
into a frustrated corrupt young man. Once
set in the lure of money, he becomes
 irresistible and continuous.” 5

Through Balu, Narayan marks the negative change that is taking place in Malgudian  youth. It awares us of new pleasures of Malgudi – drinking, gambling and the company of theatre girls etc.

Love has ever been the source of revolution in Narayan’s novel. Like Chandran it is a case love at first sight in post independent phase of novel.  Sriram, Raju, Raman all these young men display reticence in their relationship unlike Chandran. Neither public opinion nor conventions refrain them as it had done earlier in the case of Chandran. This marks a change in the young Malgudians post-independent era, which is the light of a latter development. Sriram’s determined attachments to Bharati and his departure from Kabir Street, where he used to live with his  old grandmother, for the sake of love, marks the new trend among young Malgudians. In the later novels, it is followed by Raju and Mali. Like Chandran, Sriram feels the ancient pull Malgudi exerts on all its inhabitants. However unlike the case of Sriram and Chandran the pull of the family, the incentive to return is absent.

Raju [The Guide] belongs to the same social level as Balu and Sriram. He inherits his father‘s shop at the Railway Station. But his ambition and elocution transform him into a professional guide and later as Rosie’s partner parallels New Malgudi with his spurious values. The confrontation between  Malgudi of Rama,  Buddha, Shankaracharaya and  Malgudi of foreign tourists and urban pleasures takes place in Raju.          

Raju like preceding young Malgudians makes his choice free from any conventional impositions and abides by his decisions. He has to choose between his mother and Rosie as there can be no compromise between the old and the new and both choose to care for themselves to set aside traditional ties. A son’s duty of looking after his parents as enjoined by Hindu scriptures is rejected in favour of modern way of leaving them to care for themselves as in the case of Shriram’s grandmother.

Raju-Rosie relationshipmakes the growing change in young Malgudi over the years. What was once considered sacrosanct -respect for Hindu society -is now wearing down to the point of almost complete annihilation in the confrontation between the old age and the young in Malgudi.Desire for money ,gambling and drinking the pleasures of Malgudi are intensified in Raju.This generates breakage in Rosie-Raju relationship which gives Raju a new life when draught affected villagers turn to Raju, the sanyasi to save them by performing certain ascetic practices. Raju is faced with a new problem requiring a decision more crucial than the first. He has to make a choice between the old and the new to save his people as had been done through centuries by various saintly sages or to slip away at night and shake of his role of sanyasi. He chooses the former which affects his salvation for he dies  in performing the penance in order to save the lives of the villagers. Malgudi brings back to its fold another of its young ;who had strayed but return is cast in a different mould from Chandran and Balu.

Mali [The Vendor of Sweets]is the most revolutionary and radical character in thought and attitude. He is the apostle of western world. His zeal takes him to America apart from the traditional orbit. Where from a metamorphosed Mali returns, as an alienated figure who does not hesitate to take beef and spends his days with a foreigner girl in live in. Various deviation from his roots have been explicit through his letters over from America

‘’I have started taken to beef; and I don’t think I am any worse for it now. I want to suggest why not you people start eating be beefs? It will solve the problem of useless cattle in our country and we would not have to beg from America.’’6

His advocacy for manufacturing story writing machine represents his highly advanced thinking. He is enthralled by the foreign pattern of life and goes to the extent of condemning his holy books.

“Now we are a little backward. Except Ramayana and Mahabharta. Those old stories. there is no modern writing whereas America every publishing season ten thousand books are published.”7

Finally his departure from Malgudi for good leaves an indelible mark on the probable change for future Malgudi.

Narayan’s female youth are also the harbinger of new trends in Malgudi, at the same time aware of the devastation of such a change might bring. Basically the women who represent themselves as the marker of change are outsiders and newcomer for Malgudi. In this way Narayan portrays Bharti,Rosie and Daisy, particularly the later two mirror the bafflement of a traditional male society in its face to face encounter with new notions of selfhood and womanhood as well.

Bharti [Waiting for Mahatma] is assertive and has a mind of her own with an equal amount of courage. She contrasts from normal expected traditional girls of India leading a hard life, working diligently all the time with no frill or fanciful dress. Rosie [The Guide] chooses an independent profession in life after she has found no support from so called humbug Raju. She attains such a height where she needs no emotional or economical sustainability by the males which she earlier craved for.

Daisy is perhaps the most radical and strongest character in early age Indian fiction. She has left behind a traditional framework of living and being, the blueprint for how a woman should live.
“Long ago I broke away from the routine of a woman’s life. There are millions of women who go through it happily. I am not one of them .I have planned for myself a different kind of life.”
And this is neither something she learnt through her studies nor her missionary friends; even as a child she is obsessed with the need to do something better, more useful. Her modernism seems to come her entirely unconsciously.

1.William Shakespeare “Hamlet’’ 2.Robert Browning “Rabbi Ben Ezra” 3.O.P. Mathur “West Wind Blows through Malgudi”, Perspective on R.K.Narayan,edited by .Atmaram.Ghaziabad Vimal Prakashan P -28 4. R.K.Narayan ‘The Bachelor of Arts’, P-70 Indian Thoughts Publication,1936 5. Suresh Nath ‘The Financial Expert’ An Appraisal’ on R.K. Narayan ,ed by Atmaram p.32 6. The Vendor of Sweets’,P.55 Indian Thought Publication,1967 7. Ibid P.77 8. R.K.Narayan ‘The Guide’,P. 75,Indian Thought Publication 1958 9. Alastair Narayan ‘R.K.Narayan’s The Guide: A Critical View London: Collins International TeText Books,1985 P.19 10. R.K.Narayan ‘The Guide’, P.78 11. Ibid p.199 12. S.Krishna Rao ;Daisy with Narayan’ The Times of India ,17 April,1982 13. R.K.Narayan “The Painter of Signs’, p.159,Indian Thought Publication,1982 D 14. ibid p.168 15. ibid 178