”I am often asked, ‘Where is Malgudi?’ All I can say is that it is imaginary and not to be found on any map. If I explain that Malgudi is a small town in South India I shall only be expressing a half-truth, for the characteristics of Malgudi seem to me universal.”
— R.K. Narayan
Ah, the sleepy South Indian town of Malgudi. A place made to fill in blanks on the map; a place where nothing happens. But look a little closer, and things start to get interesting.
Now you notice a scamming astrologer who, surprisingly, knows exactly how his client brushed shoulders with death, a teacher who brushed shoulders with imprisonment because of an outrageous lie a student conjured about them, madmen sculptors, the sculptures which drove them mad (and in one case, nearly brought on The End of the World as We Know It), snake charmers, fire-eaters, a battle with a tiger where the human emerged the victor, a road engine being pushed along the street by fifty men (and pulled by an elephant)...
...yes, when you look closer, Malgudi does far, far more than fill empty space on the map. After all, that’s why all 32 short stories in this anthology are set in it, and why there’s a TV show in the same place, with the same name (and a 9.4 rating on IMDB!).
This anthology provides examples of:
- Accidental Hero: Attila the dog. Originally meant to guard the house of his owners, he befriends Ranga, a thief, and runs away with him. Later, a member of the house spots Attila in public, and yells for him to return. Ranga flees the scene, but Attila, thinking that Ranga is abandoning him, chases after him... and accidentally trips him over, causing a ring he stole from the property to fall out of his pocket. The dog is hailed as a hero for his cleverness in catching the thief, but in reality, all he had intended was to catch up to his friend.
- Awful Wedded Life: Kannan and his unnamed wife. Being bad with numbers, he cannot remember how long they've been married, but has despised each second of it. It seems that she interminably forces him to work even when he is about to collapse from exhaustion, as though his human needs of rest and recreation don't matter at all, and then gives most of the money he earns to her brother anyway. His story is even named "Wife's Holiday" because of the joy he feels when she spends the holiday away from him. On the other hand, he may not be a saint either. While she is away, he does no work at all, loses all the money he has, raids her most prized possessions to find cash to gamble with and, upon coming with nothing, destroys his son's most beloved object in the world (a metal cigarette box which he uses as a piggy bank) to get it, and earns nothing while gambling anyway. Yikes.
- Beneath the Mask: Iswaran dressed in fancy clothes, boasted to any person who would listen (and would not listen), and acted like he didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought of him. Beneath the bravado, however, he was profoundly insecure about failing his college entrance exams for nine years straight, and scalded by the mockery and disrespect he faced from his community and own family for it. The narrative literally even used the word “mask” to describe his act. In reality, he yearned to succeed, to fulfill his education, and to prove to everyone that he wasn’t a failure.
- Character Title: “Iswaran”
- Downer Ending: The ending of Iswaran. Convinced he had failed his college entrance exams the tenth time as well, he decides to kill himself by jumping into a river and writes a suicide note... but walks to the hall to check the results before doing it. He had not only passed, but passed with second-degree honors. Sounds like Earn Your Happy Ending? In his ecstasy about moving to university, he jumps into the river anyway, and his corpse and note are found the next day. To make it worse, he had lied about what his index number was earlier, making his worst nightmare come true: nobody may know that he graduated with honors and everyone will think he died a failure.
- Happily Failed Suicide: Rama Rao, from the story "Out of Business". After a stock market crash causes him to lose his job at a gramophone company, his family is sent spiraling into debt. With no-one willing to employ an aging man, Rama develops an addiction to crossword puzzles, in the hope that by solving one of them correctly, he'll get enough wealth to turn things around for them. This actually makes their financial situation worse, and after losing a particularly large sum of money from one, he decides that everything is too much and that he wants to commit suicide. He goes and lies down on the train tracks... but the train he expects never arrives. Upon asking someone what happened, he is told that a goods train was derailed and blocking all the lines, meaning that all the trains would be three hours late. Rama joyfully accepts this as God's mercy and runs back home.
- Hero of Another Story: The Municipal Chairman from "Lawley Road". The Talkative Man mentions that the Chairman supplied blankets to the army during the war, before proceeding to say that "That's an epic by itself and does not concern us now", and resuming the tale about himself and the statue on Lawley Road.
- How We Got Here: "Gateman's Gift". The story begins with the eponymous gateman, Govind Singh, trying to read a letter he received without opening it. Then the author writes "But before saying anything further about his progress, it would be useful to go back to an earlier chapter in his history", after which he recounts the events which led up to that point.
- In Medias Res: "Naga" starts when the eponymous snake has become old and useless to the Snake Charmer protagonist, but then goes on to recount how life was like when he and the protagonist were young and the protagonist's father was still around.
- Recurring Character: The Talkative Man. He is shown to appear in four stories: “The Tiger’s Claw”, “The Snake-Song”, “Engine Trouble”, and “Lawley Road”.
- Snake Charmer:
- The Talkative Man unwillingly becomes this in “The Snake-Song”. After not allowing a beggar inside for food, or even to hear him play the flute, the beggar places a curse on him and walks away. Later, while he’s playing the titular tune, a black cobra slithers in through the open door, enchanted by the music. Each time the Talkative Man stops playing the snake-song, the serpent prepares to attack him, and each time he plays it again, the serpent remains still. This forces him to play it all night to survive, until he collapses from exhaustion.
- In "Naga", a father goes around houses charming the titular snake to make a living for his son and himself. He eventually runs away with a woman, forcing the son to take up the snake-charming business alone.
