This book comprises of 3 stories, "Swami and his friends", "Bachelor of Arts" and "Vendor of Sweets". R. K. Narayan was no doubt a wonderful story teller. "Swami and His Friends" was the first of R. K. Narayan's novels published in 1935. The stage of this story is set in the pre-independence era in the town of Malgudi. All of his novels revolve around this fictitious town of Malgudi. Malgudi was a town created from his own experiences, childhood and upbringing. Most of the characters in the town of Malgudi represented the southern India's middle class Brahmin population and their mentality on various situations and emotions of life. Hence, majority of the Indians (mostly South Indian's) could easily relate to his writings.
The famous Landmarks of Malgudi are the Railway Station, Lawley Extension, Lawley Statue, Market Road, Albert Mission School, Ananda Bhavan (Hotel), Sarayu River, Mempi forest and Kabir street. Though Malgudi does not exist on a map, it certainly does exist on the map of world literature. Malgudi is R.K. Narayan's greatest invention. He has put real people in surreal places in one harmony of day-to-day existence and eccentricity. Every character of Narayan's stories is fascinating and appear realistic. R.K. Narayan has urged the people into thinking that the ordinary is the most extra-ordinary aspect of the civilized living. His writings are simple and portrays a clean life around all the characters in it.
Lawley Statue By R. K. Laxman (Narayan’s Brother)
Malgudi is a place where, in Graham Greene's words, you could go "into those loved and shabby streets and see with excitement and a certainty of pleasure a stranger approaching past the bank, the cinema, the haircutting saloon, a stranger who will greet us, we know, with some unexpected and revealing phrase that will open the door to yet another human existence."
R. K. Narayan's writings involuntarily drags oneself into a living experience with those in the print. The only cardinal sins that Narayan ever talks about in his books are unkindness and immodesty. His books are clean of murders, sex and obscenity, violence that are the plots of major best-sellers today. R. K. Narayan was an artist and craftsman. He brought out the humor and energy of ordinary life and portrayed compassionate realism in his writings. Behind all the simplicity and ordinariness, his novels convey a sublime philosophy of life. Lives of ordinary people, like that of "Swami", are "full of incident without accomplishment" and yet full of happiness and joy. The love of Malathi for Chandran in Bachelor of Arts, and the unexplainable distance and lack of communication between Jagan and his son Mali in the Vendor of Sweets has been immaculately plotted and is elevating and instructive.
The town of Malgudi and its people reflect the triumph of the human spirit over the cruel circumstances if Life. This spell of Malgudi, cast on us by this great literary soul, will outlive us and never cease to hold the future generations in thrall.
While I am writing this, I am humming the theme music from the Television Serial "Malgudi days" - 'thaa naa naa thanaa nanaa na... thaa naa naa thanaa nanaa naa ...'
The videos of Malgudi Days can be viewed from here.
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