A lazy weekend
afternoon with nothing much to do, I decided to lull myself to sleep with a
book in hand. The book was Malgudi Days by RK Narayan and thought to be light
reading. And what a book it has turned out to be.
The book is a collection of short
stories which are really short except for a few and are all about characters
who live in the fictional and charming town of Malgudi that the writer has so
lovingly created. The beauty lies in the fact that Malgudi could easily be any
small South Indian town that one knows of and most characters are people in
real life one would be familiar with. They go about their daily lives with
nothing much to look forward to, displaying the entire range of human behavior
and emotions.
We have the story of an
astrologer going about his business until one day a past deed of his catches up
with him and how he gets out of the situation. We have Naga the snake which has
grown old and cannot earn its master a livelihood and is therefore sought to be
rid off, but failing all his master’s attempts to do so. A postman who is more
than a deliverer of letters, but also a harbinger of news, good and bad, as
also an adviser. A street vendor who has fallen on bad times, a pickpocket who
learns the hard way that his skill is only in picking pockets not putting back
into them. A Cobbler’s interaction with a hippie on life and God. We
have the story of a miserly shopman who is fooled into believing a stealthy cat
to be a ghost. We have Selvi who is taken advantage of before she decides to
take matters in hand and restores order.. We have Rama the knife sharpener who
works hard and how he ends up in a comic situation. We have a ripe old
gentleman who in one of his fits of nostalgia goes in search of his former
lover. We have Raman the painter who meets the boy Raju in a town fair and
dreams of a family life. The landmarks in
these stories like Kabir lane, Lawley Road, Albert Mission School, Mempi
Hills, Malgudi medical Centre and other places all ring so true in our minds.
At the end of it one realises among
several things that everyday life which
is dull and monotonous was not so in the hands of a master story teller. That
we do not necessarily need to have a perfect ending to every story. That Simplicity
is the ultimate sophistication as Da Vinci put it and that simple English words
used with great skill and dexterity can work wonders instead of those highbrow
ones that are only used for exaggeration.
