Another Community Another Community' is a moving story of a martyr at the blood altar of communal blood-bath" and is one of the

rare stories of RK Narayan with a topical theme being Community where he does not reveal the name of the communities involved . Another Community is indeed a moving story. It manages to take us inside the life of an appealing Everyman figure a good worker, a loving husband, and a good and devoted father who suddenly finds himself caught up and killed in a whirlwind of violence between two unidentified communities. The narrator deliberately does not mention any revealing details about the main character, including his personal identity or even the particular ethnic or religious community to which he belongs. By refraining from providing this kind of information, the narrator suggests that such information is ultimately unimportant. What matters is not the precise identity of this particular person but rather the general traits of human nature that cause people and communities to inflict violence on one another. The main character of this story is less important as a representative of any particular group than simply as a human being a husband, a father, a co-worker, a person. By presenting the major character as a kind of Everyman figure, the narrator allows us to identify with that character and to imagine how easily any one of us might have found ourselves in his position By treating the main character as an Everyman figure, the narrator broadens and deepens the implications of the story. This is not simply a story about conflict, say, between Hindus and Muslims in India (although that conflict seems to be the inspiration for this story); it is a story about conflict and violence between any groups of any sort. The narrator of the story is so adamant about the unimportance of the main characters precise identity that he makes a point of stressing this insignificance immediately: . . . I am giving the hero of this story no name. I want you to find out, if you like, to what community or section he belonged: Im sure you will not be able to guess it any more than you will be able to say what make of vest he wore under his shirt; and it will be just as immaterial to our purpose.

The chief irony in R. K. Narayans story Another Community is that the storys protagonist, who fears a violent clash between the two main communities in his town, and who does everything he can think of to prevent such a clash, is the very person who accidentally sparks

the violence that consumes his city. Another irony is that even after the accident has taken place and the violence has begun to break out, the main character wants to prevent the violence from escalating but is powerless to do so. Finally, he loses his own life as a result of the accidental fight.The story is ironic in multiple ways. If the narrator had in fact specified the identity of the main character, we might have been distracted by that identity. We might have assumed that this story was about this particular person rather than about the kind of fate that might befall any person of any group at anyplace and at any time in human history.