Malgudi is living and real
If I were to ask, you, have you read any work of Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami, you would say” who is that?
I too was wonderstruck when a friend asked me this question. When I said I have never heard of this name he handed me the Malgudi Days by RK Narayan. I said Oh RK Narayan! Yes of course I have seen the serial on Doordarshan. ”He said “Yes RK Narayan is the short name for Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami.

Malgudi was created out of RK Narayan’s imagination it is very lively, real and vibrant city. Everything is there, the little post office, the grocery shop, the town hall park, the vendor of fried groundnuts, the astrologer, the vinayak mudali Street with four parallel streets, thanappa the postman on his bicycle pedaling furiously down one of the streets, City X Ray Institute at Race Course Road.

It’s so real that Malgudi can be anywhere. It has no geographical limitations, you walk down the street in your city and it is as good as walking down Malgudi. You will find most of the characters that inhibit Malgudi present in your city too. Malgudi is depicted in the 1930s India when modern day developments had not taken place. If RK Narayan were to write some new stories depicting the present day world, probably Malgudi would have developed into a modern city with the neon lights, flashing banners, and multistoried building, well human values, culture, will also change?

The character in the stories is simple city folk whom you come across “everyday in real life”. There are no super heroes or villains, No kings and king makers. No beautiful damsels in distress. Nothing is too small or too big, yet, the characters are very live and, central character faces some kind of crisis in life and either resolves it or lives with it. The characters are in tune completely with the truth of life, truth as I perceive it...” It captures the ironic humor of ordinary men and women, set in the fictitious (but still people try to find it on Indian map) town of Malgudi which closely resembles Mysore city. Malgudi accepts the social system as it is, and makes no attempt to criticize social evils or deal with the plight of the underdog; it can be seen in drawn in several stories, like in Swami and Friends, swami 10 year old boy growing up, his innocence, wonder, mischief and growing pains gives us the sense of upbringing of a boy in a middle class family in a small town India. Government High school teacher, astrologer, a snake-charmer, a postman, a vendor of pies and chapattis, sweet vendor, beggar - all kinds of people, drawn in full color and endearing the real essence of small town India and of human experience. All the above characters ‘The hardest of all things for a novelist to communicate is the extraordinary ordinariness of most human happiness … Jane Austen, Soseki, Chekhov: a few bring it off. Narayan is one of them’ – Francis King ‘A treat … he is an enchanter’ – Hilary Spurling in the Observer ‘Narayan is a trustworthy guide to the heart and mind of India’ – Bernard Levin in the Sunday Times ‘Narayan’s fabled artistic innocence is at once studied and sincere’ – The Nation is a showcase of real India where life is very hard and there is very little human happiness, it reflects the triumphs of the Human Spirit over the cruel circumstances of life. In India, poverty and the lack of education are prejudiced against and people are discriminated because they are poor and cant afford a certain class of education, on the contrary we can see the changing face of small town India where the technology /internet, coaching class factories (tuition class) is enabling us to feel and sense “Human Equality”