Within every person lies a small world, populated by all the people one has encountered, lessons taught by one’s circumstances, and small possibilities that open up with a path one chooses. A writer credited with capturing the essence of these small worlds in his words, R.K Narayan has authored many an iconic tales like Malgudi Days that typify the everyday Indian. His works, till today, makes one believe that every person, character, they encounter on the street is fit to be in a story.
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami or R.K Narayan, born at the onset of 20th century in a middle-class Brahmin household in South India, was one of the first Indian writers in English in the country. Growing up under the tutelage of his grandmother, Narayan read copious amounts of world literature as a child, stocking up from his headmaster father’s library. In his year off after school, he devoted time to writing, and well after his bachelor degree, was of the belief that being an author was his true calling. His short stories and novels are now considered classics world over, but his most notable contribution is the fictional world he created — that of Malgudi.
In this small town in Southern India without definite co-ordinates, his stories were imbued with the camaraderie, fallibility, and virtuosity that the microcosm provided. Malgudi Days, which was originally published in 1982, combines selections from two of Narayan’s short story collections: An Astrologer’s Day and Other Stories (1947) and Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956)
Written in simple prose, without grandiose words and deliberate complexity, these may be considered easy reads, but they are made up of measured sentences. The collections bind together inhabitants of the same town, however different their circumstances and station in life would be. Vastly different and equally witty, his stories about a blind beggar who tortures his watch-dog or a pick-pocket hot on a trail of riches, all look at characters with acceptance, as if the author was one of their own. As author Jhumpa Lahiri surmises, ‘there aren’t moral lessons here, just records of the frail human condition’
If objective placement comes in, it is when the town itself becomes a subject. For instance, in Lawley Road, the town’s municipality decides to nationalize all street names and landmarks, but ends up razing the statue of Sir Fredrick Lawley, who it later turns out, championed the cause of the natives!
If you grew up watching Shankar Nag’s adaptation of Malgudi
Days on Doordarshan, which starred actors like Manjunath and Girish Karnad, you will recall how Malgudi drew one closer to the real world, where people were depicted as they are. The cluster of by-lanes, shops, cafes, and the running streams and natural habitats of Malgudi were based on Narayan’s own stays in the town and countryside of Madras and Mysore. In the prefacing author’s note in an edition of Malgudi Days, Narayan says, “If I explain that Malgudi is a small town in South India I shall only be expressing a half-truth, for the characteristics of Malgudi seem to me universal”. It is this universality that garnered his work international acclaim.
Malgudi was a pervasive setting for most of his novels as well. In his first novel, Swami and his friends, Narayan introduced us to a child’s world of innocence and mischief, where his insouciance reduces everything to a cycle of play and wonder. Swami or Swaminathan, the ten year-old titular character observes the town around him with poetic distraction. Sitting in class, “It was the window, not the teacher that fascinated him”. As children often do, Narayan’s characters reduce everything to a world where only they exist. The manuscript was rejected countless times, until it reached the hands of British author Graham Greene, who fell in love with the India Narayan portrayed.
From a story about these golden days to that of undergraduates (and then onto adulthood), Narayan created more works that became part of the Malgudi series – The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The Dark Room (1938), and The English Teacher (1945). The death of his wife and consequent struggles for a steady income led him to turn inwards, and infuse more autobiographical elements in his these works.
One of his most revered works set in Malgudi was also written during this time. The Sahitya Academy award-winning The Guide, the story of a tourist guide who after a loss becomes a spiritual guide, became the hallmark of Indian cinema (although Narayan received a Filmfare award, he wasn’t too happy with the screen version)
In his fourty-year prolific oeuvre, he shied away from fame, but still managed to lecture at international universities, publish essays, and amass national awards in his own country. However, today his legacy lies not in being the harbinger of Indian writing in English and winning acclaim world over, but in remaining simply, according to writer V.S Naipul ‘the man of Malgudi’.
Some books by R. K. Narayan
Malgudi Adventures
Swami and Friends
The Vendor of Sweets
The Painter Of Signs
The Bachelor of Arts
Waiting for the Mahatma
The Guide
Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories
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