Why RK Narayan’s Malgudi is still relevant today

Google tipped its hat to RK Narayan on his 108th birthday with a doodle showing the master author reading his much loved book Malgudi Days.

What makes RK Narayan so special? It wasn’t just that he was a master of prose, but like the best authors, he managed to make us believe that his subjects weren’t figments of his creation but actually existed. For a generation that might have grown up on a steady diet of Chetan Bhagat novels and IIT coaching manuals, RK Narayan should be mandatory reading. 

Every child should discover Malgudi, those joyous, believable characters we encounter in everyday life. They should discover a world where people can just be and aren’t part of a huge rat race. No wonder that Narayan has been compared to a host of literary stalwarts like Guy De Maupassant, James Faulkner, Anton Chekov and even Nikolai Gogol. 

Swami and Friends is the closest thing we Indians have to an angst-ridden adolescent novel; it’s our The Catcher in the Rye. Of course, Swami isn’t as rebellious as Holden Caulfield, but from a middle-class Indian perspective, he’s defiant nonetheless. Narayan was the first proper author to write English for Indians. Till then, most Indian English literature was anglicised to the point that it felt like Britishers commenting on Indian affairs. 

Only when Narayan got his fame from abroad and the West tipped its proverbial hat at him, did Indians realise what a jewel we had in our midst. For that we have to thank Graham Greene, inarguably the greatest author of his generation. Greene came across a manuscript of Swami and Friends and was so enthralled that he helped Narayan get his works published in Britain. It’s even more ironic that immensely bitter and bipolar Greene took such a liking to Narayan, suggesting minor changes and staying in correspondence till their death. He even claimed that Malgudi seemed more familiar to him than Battersea or the Euston Road. 

Greene’s letter to Narayan when the latter’s wife passed away is perhaps the most big-hearted the former has ever been. He wrote: ‘To send the sympathy of strangers at such a cruel time seems like a mockery. But I've been happily married now for a long time, and I can imagine how appalling everything must seem to you now. I don't suppose you'll write again for months, but eventually you will, not because you are just a good writer (there are hundreds), but because you are one of the finest. We still hope we shall see you, here or in India. If there is no war.’

So why should this generation find time for Narayan? Because everyone should visit his Malgudi - without it, you will be missing out on one of the most beautifully crafted stories set in this country.