Worksheet: Screening of the Short Film “An Astrologer’s Day” Based on R.K. Narayan’s “An Astrologer’s Day”
Introduction
R.K. Narayan’s “An Astrologer’s Day” is a masterclass in short fiction—a story that achieves in a few pages what many novels struggle to accomplish in hundreds. Published in 1947 as the titular story of Narayan’s fourth collection, it follows a day in the life of an unnamed astrologer in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi who is not what he appears to be. The story is a thriller, a comedy of manners, and a profound meditation on guilt, fate, and the ironies of existence, all rolled into one. When Pocket Films adapted this story into a short film, directed and produced by Sushant Bhat, it brought Narayan’s words to visual life. This blog is a response to a worksheet assigned as part of our coursework, and it engages with the post-viewing questions that ask us to critically examine the relationship between the original text and its cinematic adaptation.
The worksheet asks us to consider fidelity, perception, aesthetic delight, understanding, perfect moments, and directorial choices. In what follows, I have tried to answer each question with reference to both Narayan’s prose and Bhat’s film, using MLA citations. My aim is not simply to compare the two works but to explore how each medium illuminates the other—and how the act of adaptation itself becomes a way of reading.
1. How Faithful is the Film to the Story?
Plot and Characters Preserved
The short film adaptation by Pocket Films is, on the whole, remarkably faithful to R.K. Narayan’s original short story. It preserves the essential plot, the central characters, the setting of Malgudi’s market, and the pivotal encounter between the astrologer and Guru Nayak. The film captures the atmosphere of the story—the dimly lit marketplace with its hissing gaslights and naked flares, the astrologer’s saffron turban and his makeshift equipment, and the tense, confrontational dialogue that drives the narrative toward its revelation. The core of the story—that the astrologer is a fraud who has been running from a past crime, and that his past literally walks up to him one evening in the form of the man he thought he had killed—remains intact.
The Challenge of Ironic Narration
However, fidelity in adaptation is never a simple matter of transcription. Even when a film follows the plot of its source material closely, it inevitably makes choices that reshape the story’s meaning. The short story is a work of verbal irony, narrated by an omniscient third-person voice that constantly undercuts the astrologer’s pretensions. The narrator tells us directly that the astrologer “had not the least knowledge of the stars” and that he depended “solely on his wits” (Narayan). This ironic distance is central to the story’s effect. In the film, this irony must be conveyed through performance, cinematography, and editing rather than through a narratorial voice. The actor playing the astrologer must embody both the outward confidence of a man who appears to know the future and the inner terror of a man who knows he is a fraud. To the film’s credit, it manages this balancing act reasonably well, particularly in the close-up shots during the encounter with Guru Nayak, where the astrologer’s face registers the shock of recognition before he composes himself.
Humour and the Limits of the Medium
That said, there are moments where the film does not quite capture the layered irony of Narayan’s prose. The story’s humor—which is gentle, wry, and deeply human—is more difficult to translate to the screen. Narayan’s narrator observes the astrologer’s customers with a kind of amused compassion, noting how the astrologer “knew there were certain vague statements that would stroke the ego of any individual” (Narayan). The film, by contrast, often plays the market scenes more straightforwardly, without the narrator’s knowing wink. This is not a flaw so much as a limitation of the medium. Cinema excels at showing; it struggles to convey the kind of ironic commentary that prose can deliver effortlessly.
Compression of Backstory and Softened Themes
Another point of departure is the treatment of the astrologer’s backstory. In the story, the narrator provides a brief but crucial account of the astrologer’s youth—his refusal to become a farmer like his ancestors, his flight from his village, and the vague suggestion of a misdeed that prompted his departure. The film, working within the constraints of a short runtime, tends to show rather than tell this backstory. This is effective in its own way, but it means that some of the story’s thematic resonance—the tension between fate and free will, the idea that the astrologer is both a victim and an agent of his own destiny—is somewhat softened. The story invites us to reflect on the nature of guilt and the possibility of redemption; the film, more focused on the suspense of the encounter, leaves less room for that reflection.
Faithful to the Letter, Partial to the Spirit
In summary, the film is faithful to the letter of Narayan’s story but only partially faithful to its spirit. It preserves the plot and the characters, but the ironic, philosophical dimensions of the original are more fully realized on the page than on the screen. This is not a criticism of the filmmakers—it is simply an acknowledgment that adaptation is always a process of translation, and some things are lost in the journey from one medium to another.
2. Have Your Perceptions Changed After Watching the Film?
From Clever Thriller to Emotional Drama
Watching the short film did change my perception of the story in several subtle but significant ways. When I first read “An Astrologer’s Day,” I was struck primarily by its cleverness—the ingenious plot twist, the way Narayan withholds information until the final paragraphs, and the satisfying irony of the astrologer using his wits to escape the very past he has been fleeing. The story felt, above all, like a well-crafted piece of entertainment, a thriller in miniature.
The film, however, made me more acutely aware of the story’s emotional undercurrents. Seeing the astrologer’s face when he recognizes Guru Nayak—the flash of terror, the desperate attempt to maintain composure—brought home the psychological weight of his situation. In the story, the astrologer’s fear is described, but in the film, it is felt. The performance made me realize that this is not just a clever man who has stumbled into a dangerous situation; he is a man who has been living with guilt and dread for years. Every day at his stall, he has been performing not just for his customers but for himself, maintaining the fiction that he has escaped his past.
The Astrologer as a Sympathetic Figure
This changed my perception of the astrologer as a character. In the story, he can come across as somewhat of a rogue—a conman who exploits the gullibility of his customers for profit. The film, by giving us access to his inner turmoil through facial expressions and body language, made him more sympathetic. I began to see him as a man trapped by his own choices, someone who has built an entire life on a lie and is now forced to confront the consequences. His fraudulence is not simply a matter of opportunism; it is a survival strategy, a way of avoiding the fate he fled from.
Guru Nayak: More Than a Menace
The film also changed my perception of the encounter with Guru Nayak. In the story, this scene is tense and dramatic, but it is also somewhat abstract—we are told about the astrologer’s fear, but we do not see it. In the film, the physicality of the confrontation is palpable. Guru Nayak’s aggression, the way he grabs the astrologer, the claustrophobic framing of the shots—all of this made the scene feel more immediate and more dangerous. I found myself holding my breath, even though I knew how the story would end.
Irony Deepened, Not Diminished
One perception that did not change, however, was my appreciation for Narayan’s irony. If anything, the film deepened my awareness of how central irony is to the story. The astrologer’s profession—claiming to know the future—is itself an irony, since he cannot even predict his own. His escape from Guru Nayak is achieved not through any supernatural insight but through quick thinking and a convenient lie. The film captures this irony in its own way, particularly in the final scene where the astrologer returns home to his wife and the ordinary rhythms of domestic life. After the drama of the marketplace, the quiet of his home feels like a kind of grace—a respite, however temporary, from the fear that has defined his existence.
3. Did You Feel Aesthetic Delight While Watching the Film?
Defining Aesthetic Delight
Yes, I did feel a sense of aesthetic delight while watching the film, though it occurred at unexpected moments rather than during the dramatic climax. Aesthetic delight, as I understand it, is that feeling of pleasure and satisfaction that arises when a work of art achieves a kind of harmony—when form and content, style and substance, come together in a way that feels inevitable and right.
The Marketplace Opening
The first moment of aesthetic delight came during the opening scenes of the marketplace. The film does a beautiful job of capturing the sensory texture of Narayan’s Malgudi—the flickering gaslights, the crowded stalls, the hum of conversation, the smell of groundnuts roasting. There is a particular shot of the astrologer’s stall at dusk, with the light from a nearby flare casting long shadows across his charts and his saffron turban glowing in the semi-darkness, that felt utterly true to the spirit of the story. It was as if the film had reached into my imagination and pulled out the image I had formed when reading Narayan’s description of the “light of a flare which crackled and smoked up above the groundnut heap nearby” (Narayan). That moment of recognition—of seeing something you have only imagined made concrete and beautiful—is a form of aesthetic delight.
The Close-Up After the Prophecy
The second moment came during the encounter between the astrologer and Guru Nayak, specifically in the pause after the astrologer delivers his prophecy. There is a long, lingering close-up of the astrologer’s face as he waits to see whether his gamble has paid off. The actor’s expression is a masterclass in restraint—a flicker of hope, a trace of fear, a desperate calm. In that moment, the film achieves something that the story can only suggest: the sheer precariousness of the astrologer’s existence, the way his entire life hangs on a single performance. It is a moment of visual poetry that deepened my appreciation for the story.
The Use of Silence
There was also aesthetic delight in the film’s use of sound—or, more precisely, in its use of silence. During the tense exchange with Guru Nayak, the ambient sounds of the market fade into the background, and we are left with the two men’s voices and the heavy silence between their words. This use of silence creates a sense of intimacy and danger that is difficult to achieve in prose. It made the scene feel more like a stage play than a film, in the best possible sense.
Minor Shortcomings
That said, there were also moments where the film did not quite achieve aesthetic delight. Some of the transitions between scenes felt abrupt, and the pacing in the middle section dragged slightly. But these are minor quibbles. On the whole, the film is a sensitive and visually evocative adaptation that captures much of what makes Narayan’s story so enduring.
4. Does the Film Help You Better Understand the Story?
Making Malgudi Tangible
Yes, screening the film did help me better understand the short story, though not always in the ways I expected. Reading a story and watching a film adaptation are two very different experiences, and each can illuminate aspects of the other that might otherwise remain hidden. The most significant way the film helped me understand the story was by making the setting tangible. Narayan’s Malgudi is vividly described in the story, but it is still an imagined place—a product of the reader’s imagination guided by the author’s words. The film gave me a concrete visual reference for that setting: the narrow streets, the crowded market, the makeshift stalls, the quality of light at dusk. This visual grounding helped me appreciate the story’s atmosphere more fully. When I re-read the story after watching the film, I found that the descriptions felt richer and more immediate because I now had images to attach to them.
Humanizing Guru Nayak
The film also helped me understand the characters better, particularly Guru Nayak. In the story, Guru Nayak is described as a “stranger” who is “clearly aggressive and rude” (Narayan). But he remains somewhat of a cipher—we learn about his past with the astrologer only through the astrologer’s own account, which is itself unreliable. The film, by giving Guru Nayak a face and a voice, made him more of a presence. I could see his anger, his desperation, his stubborn determination to find the man who had wronged him. This made the encounter more emotionally complex. It is not simply a confrontation between a conman and a victim; it is a meeting between two men who are both, in their own ways, trapped by the past.
Revealing Narrative Economy
Finally, the film helped me appreciate the story’s structure more fully. Narayan’s story is a masterclass in narrative economy—every detail, every line of dialogue, serves a purpose. The film, by necessity, has to expand certain scenes and compress others, and this process of adaptation made me more aware of the choices Narayan made. Why does the story begin with the description of the marketplace rather than with the astrologer’s backstory? Why does the encounter with Guru Nayak take place at the end of the day, when the astrologer is tired and ready to go home? These structural decisions, which I might have taken for granted when reading the story, became more visible to me through the film’s adaptation.
The Film as Companion, Not Substitute
That said, the film cannot replace the story. There are dimensions of Narayan’s prose—its irony, its narrative voice, its philosophical reflections—that cannot be fully captured on screen. The film is a companion to the story, not a substitute. It illuminates certain aspects of the text while leaving others in shadow. The ideal experience, I think, is to engage with both: to read the story, watch the film, and then return to the story with new eyes.
5. Was Any Scene or Moment Perfect?
The Recognition Scene in the Story
If I had to identify a single moment that was perfect—in the sense of achieving a kind of artistic completeness that leaves nothing to be desired—it would be the moment of recognition between the astrologer and Guru Nayak. In the story, this moment is rendered with extraordinary economy:
“The astrologer felt very uncomfortable. ‘Here, take your money back. I won’t tell you anything. I am not in the humor for it,’ he said, and tried to rise. But the other caught him by the wrist and said, ‘You must not go. You must stay here. I have come to you after a long search. You are the only person who can help me.’” (Narayan)
Why Compression Works
This passage is perfect in its simplicity. The astrologer’s discomfort, his desperate attempt to escape, Guru Nayak’s physical restraint—all of it is conveyed in a few lines. Narayan does not need to explain what the astrologer is feeling; we can infer it from his actions. And Guru Nayak’s line—“I have come to you after a long search”—is laden with dramatic irony, because we do not yet know that the search is for the astrologer himself.
The Recognition Scene in the Film
In the film, this moment is also handled beautifully. The actor playing the astrologer conveys the shock of recognition with a subtle widening of the eyes, a slight stiffening of the body. It is a moment of pure cinema—emotion expressed through gesture rather than dialogue. The camera holds on his face for a beat longer than is comfortable, allowing us to feel his fear. What makes this scene perfect, in both the story and the film, is its compression. Everything that the story has been building toward—the astrologer’s hidden past, his fear of being discovered, the irony of his profession—converges in this single moment. It is a testament to Narayan’s skill as a storyteller that he can achieve so much with so little.
The Ending: A Study in Contrast
Another moment that I found perfect, particularly in the film, was the ending. In the story, after the encounter with Guru Nayak, the astrologer returns home to his wife. The final paragraph is a small masterpiece of understated emotion. The film adds a moment of domestic tenderness that is not in the story. This change works well on screen, but it slightly alters the tone. The story’s ending is more ambiguous, more ironic. The film’s ending is warmer, more comforting. Both are effective in their own way, but the story’s ending feels more true to Narayan’s vision.
6. What Changes Would You Make as Director?
If I were directing a remake of “An Astrologer’s Day,” I would approach the adaptation with a deep respect for Narayan’s text while also recognizing that cinema is a different medium with its own possibilities. My goal would be to create a film that is not merely a faithful transcription of the story but a genuine interpretation—a work that captures the spirit of Narayan’s vision while using the tools of cinema to explore new dimensions of the narrative.
Narrative Structure
The first change I would make concerns the narrative structure. Narayan’s story is told in a linear fashion, with the narrator providing exposition about the astrologer’s past at strategic moments. In a film, this kind of exposition can feel heavy-handed. I would instead use visual storytelling to convey the astrologer’s backstory—perhaps through brief, impressionistic flashbacks that are woven into the present-day narrative. A quick shot of a young man fleeing a village, a knife glinting in the dark, a body falling—these images could convey the essential information without slowing down the pace.
The Astrologer’s Wife
I would also expand the role of the astrologer’s wife. In the story, she appears only at the end, and she functions primarily as a device to reveal the astrologer’s thoughts. In the film, I would give her more presence—perhaps showing her at home, waiting, worrying, wondering about the man she married. This would add emotional depth to the story and make the ending more resonant. The astrologer’s secret would then be not just his own burden but a shadow that hangs over their entire household.
Guru Nayak
Another change I would make concerns the character of Guru Nayak. In the story, he is a menacing figure, but he is also somewhat one-dimensional. He wants revenge, and that is all we know about him. In the film, I would give him more complexity. I would show glimpses of his life before the encounter—perhaps his own struggles, his own losses, the way his obsession with revenge has consumed him. This would make the confrontation more morally ambiguous. Who is the villain here, and who is the victim? Narayan’s story resists easy answers, and the film should do the same.
Visual Style
Visually, I would want to create a film that feels both timeless and specific. Narayan’s Malgudi is a place out of time—it could be any small town in India, in any era. But it is also deeply rooted in the culture and geography of South India. I would work with a cinematographer to create a visual style that evokes the heat, the dust, the colors, and the textures of that world. I would use natural light wherever possible, and I would avoid the temptation to make the film look “cinematic” in a glossy, artificial way. The story’s power comes from its ordinariness, and the film should reflect that.
Sound Design
I would also pay careful attention to sound design. Narayan’s story is full of sounds—the hissing of gaslights, the crackling of flares, the hum of the marketplace, the silence between words. These sounds are not just background; they are part of the story’s texture. In the film, I would use sound to create a sense of place and to heighten the tension during the encounter with Guru Nayak. The moment when the ambient noise fades and we are left with just the two men’s voices—that is the moment the audience should feel the gravity of the situation.
The Ending
Finally, I would resist the urge to resolve the story’s ambiguities. Narayan’s story ends with a lie that may or may not be discovered, a guilt that may or may not be redeemed, a future that remains uncertain. A lesser filmmaker might be tempted to tie up these loose ends, to give the audience a clear resolution. I would do the opposite. I would leave the ending open, allowing the audience to sit with the discomfort of not knowing. That discomfort is the story’s gift, and the film should honor it.
Conclusion
R.K. Narayan’s “An Astrologer’s Day” is a story that rewards repeated engagement. Each reading reveals new layers of irony, new depths of feeling. The short film adaptation by Pocket Films is a worthy companion to the story—not a replacement, but an interpretation that brings its own insights and pleasures. Together, the story and the film illuminate each other, allowing us to see Narayan’s masterpiece from multiple angles.
The worksheet questions have guided me through a process of reflection that has deepened my appreciation for both the text and the adaptation. I have come to see that fidelity in adaptation is not a simple matter of matching the source material scene for scene. It is, rather, a matter of capturing the spirit of the original—its tone, its themes, its emotional truths—while also embracing the possibilities of the new medium. The Pocket Films adaptation does this admirably, even if it does not achieve perfection. It is a film that respects its source, engages with it creatively, and invites us to return to the story with fresh eyes.
In the end, what makes “An Astrologer’s Day” so enduring is its universality. The story is set in a specific place and time, but its themes—guilt, fear, the desire for redemption, the ironies of fate—are timeless and universal. Whether we encounter the astrologer on the page or on the screen, we recognize something of ourselves in his predicament. We are all, in our own ways, performing identities, hiding secrets, hoping that the past will not catch up with us. And we are all, in our own ways, searching for a moment of grace—a moment when the burden of our secrets is lifted, and we can go home.
Works Cited
Narayan, R.K. “An Astrologer’s Day.” Malgudi Days, Penguin Books, 1984, pp. 1–8.
“An Astrologer’s Day.” Directed by Sushant Bhat, Pocket Films, 2018. YouTube. Accessed 14 Sept. 2026.
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