CHAPTER IV R. K. NARAYAN’S “MALGUDI”

1 182 CHAPTER IV R. K. NARAYAN S malgudi Introduction Narayan has emerged as one of the great writers in the area of the Commonwealth Literature. He has fictionally located most his novels and short stories in a small fictional town called malgudi . Narayan s Swami and Friends (1935) is his first malgudi novel leading further to The Bachelor of Arts (1937), The Dark Room (1938), The English Teacher (1945), Mr. Sampath (1949), The Financial Expert (1952), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955), The Guide (1958), The Man Eater of malgudi (1961), The Vendor of Sweets (1967), The Painter of Signs (1967), a tiger for malgudi (1983), Talkative Man (1986), and The World of Nataraj (1990). malgudi is the fictional world of Narayan s novels. It is an imaginary place that Narayan finds himself writing about.

2 It is in this fictional realm where he enjoys tremendous sense of freedom and expresses what he feels and thinks for his readers, quite freely and openly. In an interview with Ved Mehta, Narayan states: I remember waking up with the name sat down and wrote the first sentence about my town: The train had just arrived at malgudi Station (56). It is in September 1930 that Narayan starts depicting the first vision the malgudi Station. Narayan, as a storyteller, creates malgudi as a locale for his novels, for it is the only place that he can shape and make it the way he wants it to be. The novelist realizes the ontological and the poetical differences between the actual world and the fictional world. He refuses to be restricted by the 183 ontology of the actual world that surrounds him and chooses to create his own world as a setting place for his novels.

3 Narayan explains to his uncle his choice of malgudi , the imaginary world that does not exist anywhere else than in words only. He states: An imaginary town like that has great possibilities. You can make anything out of it, whereas if you set your town in a real place you are bound by geography and its existing structure. But in a place like malgudi , though the heart of the city may be fixed it can expand. (Putatunda 105) This explanation clearly brings out the differences between the actual, real world and the fictional, imaginary world. The actual world has a fixed status that cannot be altered or amended. Narayan wants to be free from the biological and physical laws and principles of actuality. These ontological elements of actuality are unalterable.

4 Moreover, Narayan is also aware of social and cultural trends, tendencies and fashions which come and go outer and inner. But, he wants neither to be restricted by the social settings and cultural contexts nor to be misunderstood by the actual physical surroundings. He avoids taking a real city or town for it might aggravate the rage of any townsmen or town-father. Consequently, he defines the locale for his novels and starts the creation of his own world out of nowhere: little street or a school or a temple or a bungalow or even a , a minor depots in little world. I began to be fascinated by its possibilities; its river, market place, and the far-off mountain roads and (Krishnan 400). It is a fact that Narayan does not model or name malgudi after any real place.

5 As malgudi forms the setting for one novel after another, it is elastic enough to expand with the needs of times and characters. Starting with Swami and Friends, the topography of malgudi expands with the subsequent novels with some certain places which remain the 184 centre of action. New extensions are added to the malgudi town and become integral parts of the town. Narayan considers malgudi the supreme creation, for it is as dynamic as a character that grows, changes, reacts to time and circumstance, has a spirit and a soul. Relatively other characters appear to be less dynamic (Putatunda 105). Mohammad Ejaz Alam states: malgudi is an intense, emotional curiosity o f R. K. Narayan; it is not merely a background of his novels a leading hero which is present in one way or the is a place where ordinary people live; not have any control over events although it seems as if they control everything.

6 They are helpless creatures torn by desires and led this way or that emerges as the real hero of the land. (159-160) Starting with Swami and Friends, malgudi is an extraordinary achievement of the Indian narrative imagination. Narayan invokes various imaginary narrative spaces with people and events. Many changes happen in malgudi . Readers can notice the gradual growing of malgudi securing all the essential amenities such as schools, colleges, hospitals, banks, roads, railways, printing press, studio, hotels, clubs and industries. In the malgudi novels, readers come across teachers, school and college students, shopkeepers, archaeologists, clerks, printers, sculptors, doctors, tutors, artists, film-actors, house-wives, journalists, astrologers, etc.

7 Narayan s malgudi , unlike Faulkner s Yoknapatawpha which is moulded in Lafayette County, does not exist anywhere in India. There is no place in India that is the prototype of malgudi . Reading the R. K. Narayan criticism, many critics try to locate malgudi somewhere in Karnataka State. Some others state that it is a small 185 village in Tamil Nadu State. Some others try to draw its map. malgudi cannot be located in the map of India. It is an imaginary creation, a figment of Narayan s narrative imagination. The vivid picture of malgudi makes one feel and visualize that it is a terrestrial place in a physical land where one can go by train. However, no one can go to malgudi . It is a fictional world that lacks material and physical specificities.

8 If malgudi is an actual place, it would be difficult for Narayan to be free in writing. Using an actual place as a setting for a literary piece of writing restricts the writer and makes him bound to that place, only this scene and that location, nothing more, nothing less. At the very outset, we see Narayan avoiding the mention of an actual place or actual name. One of the reasons Narayan states and comes to favour the theory of fictional world is his requirement for a place that cannot be found in actuality. He explains that it is so, because somebody may come and say: This place is not there, that shop he has mentioned is not there. If it s a real town, it s a nuisance for a writer (Iyer 3). This is how malgudi launches itself into our view as readers.

9 malgudi To put an end to the efforts of all those who try to find malgudi in the actual map of India, Narayan clearly mentions that any similarities between the names and the places are merely a matter of coincidence. To the researchers and academicians who want to assign an exact location of malgudi , Narayan states: Many academicians are hard at work trying to find where, exactly, malgudi might be My books are full of contradictory leads. Once, a 186 researcher wrote to ask me how long it took to go from malgudi to Madras by train. I wrote back that the train journey from Mysore to Madras was fourteen hours but that it took Margayya more than twice as long to get from malgudi to Madras. I never heard from that gentleman again.

10 (V. Mehta 157) To explain the nature of malgudi in the light of the theory of fictional world, malgudi does not exist in a vacuum. There must be something that precedes the creation of malgudi . This something is Narayan s actual society in which malgudi has been anchored. Narayan s actual world is used as a frame of reference. malgudi does not anchor autonomously to all by itself. In fact, the fictional world of malgudi is, in one way or another, a way, a town in India might have been. Thus, in this actual town the river, for instance, lacks the features mentioned by the creator of the Sarayu River occurs in malgudi . However, while creating malgudi , Narayan draws on his surrounding world in many ways: adopting its components, varieties and the structural models; utilizing actual location to create a fictional place; borrowing social issues, facts, cultural aspects; sharing frames of reference or discursive features anchoring the fictional story to a historical event, and so on.