More than his masterpieces ‘The Guide’ and ‘The English Teacher’, his ever celebrated ‘Malgudi Days’ casts a magical spell on my imaginary faculty.
R.K. Narayan
He is none but R.K. Narayan, a legendary novelist and short story writer whose influence on the domain of Indian literature is ever prevalent with a tremendous sense of affluent impact in the beginning of the 1930s; it has even infiltrated the boundaries of the world literature.
Written with a direct focus on the period when India was under the domination of the British Raj, ‘Malgudi Days’ comes into the limelight as an imaginary village, born in the creative mind of its writer Narayan, which draws an amazing and live picture of the lives of the sub continental man.
’Malgudi Days’ at times settles on a bittersweet symphony of human emotions. It invites for a poetic uttering and voicing which mirror its abyss and longing.
It hunts through the depth of the lifestyle of the typical South Indians whose lives are relatively confronted by a multiple number of myths that still take the order of the day in some remote parts of South India where the traditions and superstitions take an upper hand on the hugely conservative mindsets of some people whose shadows have the potential of being influential with some emotionally driven matters.
Witty narrations
Narayan employs his unique strategies in presenting the amusing and witty narrations that are divided into a collection of 32 stories; they evoke a sense of intense interest and truthful humour while presenting a wave of gentle harmony that lingers across the soul.
‘Sarayu’- an imaginary town which was born in the blissful imaginations of Narayan is the focus on his setting; his plot is surrounded by this notable town that retains an unparalleled popularity among its readers, despite its existence being simply mythical.
Every story that was within the command of Narayan’s pen is the fragrance, the voice and the thought of the settlers of any typical South Indian village; the reader instantaneously embraces the different circumstances that arise within the story.
Stories in the collection do not directly revolve around a particular plot but significantly run through different plots that depict the essence of colonial India. Each story draws an amazing picture of love, amusement, identity crisis, expectations, human emotions and so on. Narayan’s knack for focusing his stories on some deeply rooted social taboos associated with Indian culture is rather exhilarating.
Focusing his stories on the ordinary people and the day today issues, encountered by them was Narayan’s forte which itself brought immense popularity to his ‘Malgudi Days’.
Although the stories are rather simple that are apt for an audience of ordinary readers, some of them carry a heavy weight where the writer highlights on a tremendous and significant evaluation on the unspoken but predominantly burning issues that people had to face with; they were frequently vulnerable and couldn’t resist the challenges of not being a victim.
The characteristics of humour often prevail within any story while the traits of agony, marginalisation and misogyny also raise their head quite frequently within the lives of the characters taken into consideration.
Frequent epidemics
Poverty was common in many Indian villages during the time. Epidemics were a frequent occurrence; they are occupied by good for nothing; the superstitious and illiterate folk had their own typical definition on certain things that shake their soul so enormously; it gives a heavy heart to the reader.
The charm that a reader cannot describe and the same charm that Narayan eloquently elaborates are not just two different things; they are either side of a coin.
This charm is widely visible throughout the story, and you would often take an attempt to get yourself stranded among the charming characters that you meet throughout the story. Narayan’s indirect classification on the deplorable status of human life that he depicts in the stories is his intrinsic skill on storytelling.
The immense degree of inquisitiveness that Narayan maintains through the flow of each story leaves room for the reader to have a concrete guess on the next step of the story; you may dive into the sea of your imaginations. The portrayal of the facet of life in Malgudi is as described by the New York Times is the virtue of the book; “everyone in the book seems to have a capacity for responding to the quality of his particular hour”.
Abrupt endings
Among all the timeless classics, ‘Malgudi Days’ sticks out like a moderate benign and zephyr- like reminder of life itself. I find that Narayan has eradicated the clutter, trash, and scrap that may appear in his words, and he has thrown them in the dumps.
The abrupt endings invite the readers to shun their laziness in delving into imaginations; the issues imagined are found to be not fiction but reality.
The reader is tactfully forced to have a factual conversation with the characters, and that creates a harmony of thoughts belonging to both the author and the reader alike; the reader initially comes closer to the point of view that the author holds while ultimately settling with the same where the readers themselves finally become the author himself.
Reading the most captivating story of the picturesque, fabled town of Malgudi is nothing but a sense of boasting and rejuvenating feeling on Narayan’s outstanding ability of being a stress buster to his reading public; it makes him venerated in his selected field of storytelling. The simple language and the compelling narrative of Narayan sets his readers in his realm. I read the book many times, and I have lost count.
